INAUGURATION #13
From Nixon To Biden, Pastor Hasn't Missed One
By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com
It began “almost on a lark,” but has gone on now for 48 years.
On Jan. 20, 1973, the Rev. Paul Messner, now pastor of the Church of the Atonement here and the county’s three other Lutheran churches in Hartwick Seminary, Laurens and West Burlington, had just been released from the Air Force and was living in Washington D.C., a poli-sci student at American University.
When he woke up that morning, an Air Force buddy who was visiting, Brad Crail, asked, “What do you want to do today?”
Before you know it, “almost on a lark,” the young men were driving up Independence Avenue to the Capitol in Crail’s red Toyota to see what they could see of President Richard M. Nixon’s second Inauguration.
Compared to more recent mass Inauguration gatherings – a stark exception, of course, being President Biden’s minimalist ceremony last month – it was intimate, with a crowd of maybe 20,000-25,000 people.
“It wasn’t a huge affair,” Messner said. “We just walked up.”
