Opinion: Off the Mall: an impromptu listening party

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WASHINGTON -- On a quiet street six blocks from the Capitol, a random group gathered in front of a block of row houses where President Obama’s inaugural address blared.

Roland Sharpe, a 52-year-old T-shirt vendor who drove his salty black sedan from Philadelphia in a snowstorm, had thrown open all four doors and turned the radio on full blast.

It was not the way Ari Jean-Baptiste, a 36-year-old African American Army pilot wounded in Iraq, envisioned the experience when he brought his family in from Lawrence, Kan. But he couldn’t get through the security gates either.

Listening to Obama’s words on the sidewalk with two dozen people he didn’t know, he had chills, and it wasn’t from the weather.

‘These are the moments when we experience history,’ he said. ‘It’s not where you wanted to be that matters, it’s where you are.’

Mike Ryan, 55, had driven his family from the Chicago suburbs to see his 17-year-old daughter, Heidi, march in the parade with the Carl Sandburg High School band. She is a drum captain. But they couldn’t get through security and were searching for a restaurant when they heard Sharpe’s radio.

They listened to the entire speech. Then Ryan bought one of Sharpe’s T-shirts, even though he didn’t need it.

‘I feel like I made a contribution,’ Sharpe said when his little audience dispersed.

He was still turning over the message he took away from Obama’s speech, about those with plenty sharing with those with less. He loaded up his car, most of the T-shirts unsold, confident that he had been right where he needed to be.

-- Faye Fiore

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