Obamamaniacs party at city’s first inaugural ball
By Joan Galler / The Trentonian / January 21, 2009
TRENTON— It was a night filled with emotion, glitz and glamour for 340 Trenton and area residents who attended the lavish champagne dinner dance celebrating Barack Obama’s inauguration at the Lafayette Yard Marriott in downtown Trenton.
Ladies in elegant ball gowns, evening dress and elaborate costumes floated through the hallways and lit up the ballroom, which was decorated in black and gold: black for Obama, gold for “all the Americans who helped to make this day possible.”
Cecelia B. Hodges, retired English literature professor at Princeton and Rutgers, wearing a floor-length gown of black velvet and white satin, said Obama’s inauguration left her “ecstatic.”
Hodges recalled attending the 1963 march on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his immortal “I Have A Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln monument. “So today means the partial fulfillment of the dream, and there is hope for everybody,” she said.
Arlene Evans White, co-chair of the ball’s hostess committee, wore an elegant off-the-shoulder beige gown.
She described watching Obama’s swearing-in ceremony in a hospital with her sickly 80-year-old father.
“I kept waking him up, saying, ‘Look, daddy, a black president,’” she said. “He has dementia, but he looked at me and said ‘I know him.’”
“Obama is a president for all the people,” she said.
Edith Savage-Jennings, Trenton’s grande dame of civil rights activists and the inaugural ball chairman, said she started planning the inaugural ball immediately after Obama won the primary race.
“I met (Obama) when he was a senator in Illinois, and I was his guest at the Meadowlands,” she reminisced. “I just felt he was going to be our president, so right after the primary, I immediately set down a date for the ball and started the planning.”
She noted that Gov. Jon S. Corzine sent a message that he was unable to attend because he, like many area politicians, was at the inaugural festivities in the nation’s capital.
The inaugural ball began at 6:30 p.m. with cash bar cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, followed by a program honoring deceased civil rights leaders, and dinner featuring cornish hens with wild rice.
Before the festivities ended around 11:30 p.m., the crowd danced to the music of the Rod Blackstone Band and watched a live television feed of the inaugural balls, past inaugural events, and long-gone civil rights leaders and activists piped in from Washington, D.C., on two big screens in the ballroom.
Tables were decorated with black and gold silk floral centerpieces and tea candles. Each place setting included a souvenir white ceramic mug featuring Obama’s photo and the inscription Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States.
A framed photo of Obama hung behind the bandstand, flanked by flags of the United States and New Jersey.
The 7:30 program began with trooping of the colors by a Civil War re-enactment group, the 6th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, led by 1st Sgt. Fred Minus, with a fife and drum corps.
Next came a candlelight procession by 10 local boys and girls between 12 and 14 years of age, all members of the Trenton Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council. They stood in the front of the room, holding aloft their candles, while Jennifer Sutphin, a graduate student with the New York City-based Alvin Ailey Dance Company, danced in memory of all deceased civil rights leaders to the hymn, “How Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”
After the dance came the somber roll call by the youth advisory council for deceased civil rights leaders.
The solemn recitation began with the names of national leaders: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, Medger Evans, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, C. Dolores Tucker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dr. William DuBois, Rev. J. A. Delaney, Bayard Rustin, A. Phillip Randolph, Shirley Chisholm, three slain civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
Then came New Jersey’s deceased civil rights activists: Gov. Robert B. Meyner and wife Helen Meyner, Fanny Lou Hamer, Gov. Richard P. Hughes and wife Betty Hughes, Trenton Mayor Arthur J. Holland, Stanley Van Ness, Esq., Rosa Lee Dietz, NAACP leader Catherine Graham, Annie M. Flowers, Dr. Leroy Morris, Dr. Morris and Molly Sorer, Paul Pintella Sr., Ruth Rabstein Pellettieri, Albert Bo Robinson, Mary G. Roebling, Jenny Stubblefield, Benny Taylor, Berline V. Williams, Gladys Hedgepeth, Rev. S. Howard Woodson Jr., Mr. and Mrs. William Dinkins (ex-New York Mayor David Dinkin’s parents).
Mercer County Freeholder Keith Hamilton served as master of ceremonies, Trenton Councilwoman Annette Lartigue gave the welcome, and Emily Mann, artistic director of the McCarter Theater in Princeton, offered the champagne toast for Barack Obama, The invocation was given by the Rev. Donald Medley, pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church in Trenton.
Mrs. Savage-Jennings and Jeffery Zeiger, the Marriott’s general manager, extended thanks to all who worked on the committee.
“Trenton is poised to be on the national map because of what’s happening in Washington, D.C.,” Zeiger said afterward. “We have the assets and passion to create an environment on a cold Tuesday night that attracts 340 people.”
Tickets for the ball cost $100, and proceeds will benefit three area nonprofit organizations: the Boys and Girls Club of Mercer County, New Jersey State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs for the mentoring program, and the I Am Trenton Foundation.
