EVERETT — On the morning of the presidential inauguration, Tami Monkman was doing what she does on most Tuesdays.
The Lake Stevens woman was chopping vegetables. Only this time, she was crying.
As President Barack Obama delivered his inauguration speech, Monkman chopped vegetables at The Salvation Army in Everett to make soup for the soup kitchen. Listening to the radio, she clung to Obama’s powerful words.
“I was chopping vegetables and just crying,” she said.
Monkman and her husband, Frank, were among the roughly 30 people who attended an Inauguration Day potluck at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Everett on Tuesday night.
Democrats and Republicans, men and women, young and old, the small group gathered around tables draped in crimson to eat, to pray and to talk.
Many were of Norwegian ancestry, but they were Americans first. And together, they prayed for the nation and thanked God for the dreams and the possibilities this day and this president had bestowed upon them.
The potluck was not a political statement, but a celebration of new beginnings, said pastor Susan Kirlin-Hackett.
The church had opened its doors for prayer all day on Election Day and wanted to recognize Inauguration Day, too, Brenda Mann Harrison said.
So midway through the evening, Russ Hannigan set up a laptop, a projector and a screen so everyone could watch a video of the inauguration. President Obama appeared, large as life.
The room became quiet. People stopped eating. Some wiped tears from their eyes.
Tami Monkman was excited. She had wanted to watch Obama’s speech live, she said, but hadn’t been near a television.
Now, she watched with misty eyes. In a soft whisper, she repeated the favorite phrases she’d heard earlier by radio.
“We have chosen hope over fear,” she whispered. “All are free.”
“To think that in my lifetime this could happen,” she said, “that you can vote for someone based on the fact that they can lead.”
Monkman grew up in Liberia, West Africa, the daughter of missionary parents. She lived in that country during the military coup d’etat, when on April 12, 1980, President William Tolbert was killed, along with 26 of his supporters in a raid led by Samuel Kanyon Doe.
Monkman recalled being awakened in the middle of the night by armed men smashing down her door.
On Tuesday, the Holy Cross congregation held a potluck to celebrate a blessing as invisible and vital as the threads holding together a garment — the orderly transition of power in the United States.
“I celebrate with my kids,” Monkman said. “My kids are part of a dramatic change, an historic change, but not in the context of violence.”
As she listened to Obama speak, Monkman thought about the people in villages and countries in distant lands, listening to Obama’s words, perhaps by radio, as she had earlier in the day.
“An entire village would surround a small transistor radio,” she said. “Imagine how different ears are hearing those words.”
Charlie Hannigan, 15, had proposed the idea for the potluck. He said he liked how Obama avoided using slogans and cliches in his speech and how he quoted President George Washington.
“He was saying, ‘It’s not about me becoming president. It’s about our country and its values, the principles that are going to make it a better place to live,’” he said.
And because a black American president said those words, Monkman’s tears were tears of joy.
Reporter Leita Crossfield: 425-339-3449 or crossfield@heraldnet.com.
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