Close the window or be shot

 

Jan and I have been recalling the one Presidential inauguration day that we witnessed, and reflecting how very different the inauguration and downtown D.C. was that day from 2021.

 

It was 20 January 1981, and the incoming president was Ronald Reagan. My office, 1203 National Press Building, had an unimpeded view of Pennsylvania Avenue and the D.C. government building on the other side of the Avenue. We could not see the swearing in from there but we had a prime view of the subsequent parade. My work colleagues and their husbands came along, as did a few British journalists.

 

The National Press Building at 14th and F Streets NW, quite some time before I worked there!

Unlike January 2020, we were able to travel freely to work in the very heart of the capital, there were no evident signs of intense security and certainly not tens of thousands of armed National Guards. That security had not been neglected we soon learned. Before the parade started, someone knocked on our door. I opened it and a D.C. police officer helpfully pointed out that we had opened our window. If we didn’t close it pretty soon, snipers on the roof of the D.C. building may have been be obliged to open fire. We closed the window!

 

The John Wilson District of Columbia Government Building. The sharp shooters were stationed on the roof

Such precautions were necessary. John F Kennedy had been shot from a window in Dallas, and his brother Bobby murdered by a man with a handgun at close quarters in Los Angeles. Indeed, two months later the President, his press secretary James Brady, police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, were shot at the side entrance of the Washington Hilton. We heard the sirens wailing as Mr Reagan was rushed to George Washington University Hospital.

 

The scene at the Washington Hilton shortly after the shooting of Ronald Reagan

Mr Brady was left permanently disabled. He became a determined advocate of the control of handguns and assault weapons: the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (passed in 1993 when bill Clinton was president) was named in his honour. I can hardly imagine the horror with which Mr Brady would have responded to violent fantasists armed with assault rifles, dressed in camouflage as if carrying out an honourable duty, were stalking the capitals of the nation and of some states.

 

Like all inaugurations, the Reagan one was accompanied by many satellite events. One was held early one evening at the Lincoln Memorial. Jan and I strolled down there to take in the scene. We could see very little except a large number of very large stretch limos. Nobody checked us, nor stopped us from getting quite close to the event.

 

Now, the apparently genial Mr Reagan had a hard, not to say murderous side, as the Iran-Contra affair revealed. In secret, but with President Reagan’s approval, guns were supplied to insurgents in Nicaragua to overthrow the newly installed Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega. These insurrectionists murdered a good many innocent people with guns supplied by the Reagan administration.

 

Nevertheless, not a soul could have dreamed in 1981 that one day the entire expanse of downtown D.C. would have been a militarized zone. A sad day, but perhaps the glimmering dawn of a new one.