Jody Powell
Press Secretary
Age at the Time: 33

Originally published Jan. 13, 2001

It was a very cold Inauguration Day. My widowed mother and aunt, and my little sister and her husband and I all sat in the stands and watched the inaugural parade. My aunt had read somewhere that one way to keep warm was to wrap garbage bags around your feet and knees. So we sat there half-wrapped in garbage bags.

Then it dawned on me that it was past 12 o'clock, so we could go into the White House and get warm. One of the guards at the gate recognized me from the campaign and opened those big wide gates. Up we walked to the North Portico, and it hit me. I got inside and had a lump in my throat. The first person I ran into was a lady from Georgia setting up flowers for the inaugural. And I thought, if she was up here, then maybe we'd be all right.

I didn't know that (Carter) had decided he wanted to do the walk until after the decision had already been made. For obvious reasons, they wanted to keep it quiet. I think it's hard for people who haven't lived through the late '60s and early '70s and all the rancor and violence that took place then to fully appreciate the level of symbolism conveyed when a president walked down in front of thousands of people without any problems.

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