For VMI cadets, a march into history
Long before sunrise on Inauguration morning, the barracks at Virginia Military Institute was swarming with activity.
Cadets raced from their rooms to Crozet Hall to wolf down French toast, eggs and bacon before grabbing their full-dress uniforms and rifles and climbing aboard one of 26 charter buses.
For the 13th time in the institute’s history, the corps was headed to Washington, D.C. to march in an inaugural parade.
The convoy was moving by 5:15 a.m., and as the cadets settled in for what would be a long and grueling day, many knew the significance of their mission.
“It’s going to be busy, but we’re a part of history,” junior Brian Cvengros.
By the end of the day, when they finally marched past the reviewing stand a few minutes before 7 p.m. as the next-to-last unit in the parade, the cadets had made quite an impression on President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
As the band passed the reviewing stand in front of the White House, television cameras captured the first lady leaning over to the president.
“Wow!,” the first lady appeared to say. “That’s amazing.”
It was a historic day for the whole nation, but also for the Corps of Cadets. This year marked the 100th anniversary of their first appearance in the parade, when the corps helped William Howard Taft kick off his term in March 1909.
By 8 a.m., the buses were roaring down an unusually deserted Interstate 66, taking advantage of special bus routes and police assistance to race toward the Pentagon. And then the waiting started. The cadets had nearly 10 hours to kill until their 1.6 mile march down Pennsylvania Ave.
The Inaugural Parade is far more complicated than most. The cadets had to endure long periods of sitting on the bus, thorough security screening, long waits and bitter cold. And, of course, there were the hours of practice before they ever left Lexington.
“We’ve been practicing all week in the afternoon, just marching around the parade deck,” Alex Doseff said at breakfast Tuesday morning.
They were nervous about making a good impression and ensuring that days of practice weren’t wasted.
“My role is to march at the back of the formation, since I’m on the regimental staff, and try not to screw anything up,” Jonathan Price said that morning. “But it’s a pretty cool day; it’s not every day you get to salute your commander-in-chief.”
Cadets said their reward – a chance to march just feet away from new Obama – was well worth the practice and the waiting.
“It’s something down the road I’ll be able to look back and say I took part in,” said Doseff. “Not many people get to do it.”
When the cadets turned left from 15th Street onto Pennsylvania Avenue, it was already dark, and many of the almost two million people who had jammed the District were on their way out of town. But the Corps still delivered a full dose of pomp and circumstance as they passed the White House.
The band struck up “Shenandoah,” the corps’s officers snapped their sabers to attention, and all 1,300 cadets delivered an “eyes-left” salute as they passed the reviewing stand.
They were a dramatic sight as they continued up Pennsylvania Avenue: the long, perfectly arrayed ranks in full dress uniform, marching in step behind the American, state and institute flags.
VMI was the only military academy selected to bring its entire student body. Other service academies sent only a few companies. The Corps of Cadets was by far the largest single unit to march, and the cadets made up about 10 percent of the estimated 13,000 people who participated in the parade.
The parade was scheduled to step off at 2:30 p.m., but Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seizure at the Senate’s inaugural luncheon delayed the march. President and Mrs. Obama, after walking long stretches of the parade route, did not reach the White House until well after 4 p.m., and the Cadets did not start marching until about 5:15, the time they had originally planned to pass the reviewing stand.
By the time they turned off Pennsylvania Avenue and received permission to un-shoulder their rifles and remove their bayonets, they looked both tired and cold, as temperatures had dropped to 26 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of 16.
In such a fluid situation, the cadets said patience – and a willingness to follow orders – was required.
“I’m a corporal, so I’m pretty much just going to be doing what everyone else tells me to do,” sophomore Cam Rushton said before getting on his bus at 5 a.m. “Just line up and go with the flow.”
The cadets handled the cold and delays with their good humor intact, laughing and joking as they walked down 20th Street back to their buses. They were also excited to describe the experience of being so close to their commander-and-chief.
“It was a pretty cool experience,” Ryan Buell said as he got back on his bus. “I mean, of course it was pretty cold and we had to walk a long time, but that’s one of those things we’re always going to remember. It was a pretty surreal experience.”
Hunter Davis, a sophomore, said he was surprised at how smoothly things went.
“It was amazing, and it pretty much went off without a hitch,” he said.
But beyond the logistics, Davis, of Houma, La., said the experience of passing the president was deeply moving.
“I’ll tell my grandkids about a young me who was sitting around a very long time in the cold … and finally getting to pass the president, our first black president. I’ll tell them I felt honored and privileged.
“This memory will go down as one of my most powerful: passing by the president, listening to that hymn and marching in uniform.”
|
|
Produced by
Washington and Lee
journalism students.
Lead Supervisors:
Prof. Brian
Richardson
Prof. Indira Somani
Editing supervisor:
Prof. Lisa Tracy
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd