Festivities Open Amid Cold, Snow

Blasts of arctic air and falling snow failed to chill the enthusiasm of thousands of celebrants as they gathered Friday night on the Ellipse to kick off the four-day festivities marking the second presidential inauguration of Ronald Reagan.

As temperatures dipped into the 20s, parties, pageants and pomp began with a bang in what may turn out to be the coldest inauguration since Ulysses S. Grant took the oath on a windy, 16-degree day in 1873.

It was so cold that the guests of honor at Friday night’s “Prelude Pageant,” President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, and Vice President George Bush and his wife, Barbara, viewed the entire affair from a heated, bulletproof glass booth--pausing outdoors only long enough to wave briefly to a chilled crowd estimated by Park Police at 16,000.

The pageant was one of the outdoor inaugural events designed specifically to include more young and middle-class participants than were in evidence at Reagan’s glamorous inauguration in 1981, which prompted some criticism. Instead, this inaugural event has been scaled down to a $12.5-million production bearing the theme, “We, the People.”

Despite the bitter cold, the rest of the festivities, including an outdoor youth pageant Sunday and the parade and ceremonial swearing-in Monday, are expected to proceed as scheduled.

“The inaugural will go on whether it rains, snows or a tornado comes through,” inaugural committee spokesman John Buckley said.

Outdoor Ceremony Set

Only an extremely severe snowstorm or rainstorm would prompt Reagan to take his public oath Monday inside the Capitol instead of outdoors in view of 140,000 guests. Regardless, Reagan already will have been officially sworn in Sunday, as law requires, in a private ceremony in the White House.

The last Inauguration Day storm came through in 1961, forcing John F. Kennedy to fiddle with his notes to keep them from blowing away. The most famous victim of bad-weather inaugurations was President William Henry Harrison, who failed to wear an overcoat for his 1841 swearing-in and died of pneumonia a month later.

On the Ellipse on Friday night, the hearty and hardy celebrants--bundled in coats, ski caps and blankets--applauded Reagan, sang “God Bless America” and shrieked in delight at a booming fireworks display that was seen and heard all over the city. Between musical numbers, actor Fess Parker read a narrative of presidential history and past inaugural speeches.

After the pageant, a gala produced by entertainer Frank Sinatra saluted the Bushes, with hundreds of empty seats in the 6,000-capacity D.C. Convention Center. Foul weather and inaugural festivities combined to snarl Washington traffic to a near halt in the early evening.

Security forces, meanwhile, prepared the most stringent protective measures in capital history, including blockades of dozens of streets, miles of crowd-control fences and metal detectors at every event that Reagan was scheduled to attend. Practically every officer available to the Secret Service and Washington’s police agencies was ordered to work throughout the four-day weekend.