Elmer Smith: For those who paved the way, a moment at the mountaintop

BARACK OBAMA stood to take the oath of office and the residents of Opportunities Tower III struggled to their feet to stand with him.

They seemed to hold their breaths as he placed his hand on Abraham Lincoln's Bible and repeated the words that made him president of the United States.

Wilford Mintz, 82, dressed in a deep-purple dinner jacket and lavender bowtie, stood ramrod-straight in front of his abandoned walker until Obama had spoken the final word of the oath.

"To God be the glory!" Mintz shouted with his arms raised. "To God be the glory!"

The mostly elderly residents of the red-brick building at 55th Street and Haverford Avenue are of a generation that helped clear the path that Obama walked. But this was not supposed to be their day.

"If you took a poll, none of them would say they believed they would see this," Terrence Walker said of the exultant residents who shouted through the first 10 minutes of the Obama administration.

Least of all his mother, Viola Walker, who had cast an absentee ballot for Obama in April's Pennsylvania primary on her 103rd birthday. She voted for him again in November.

She had a place of honor in front of the flat-screen TV that Fourth District Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. had bought for them. She was transfixed by the images of an event that had to seem surreal.

I watched her push her wire-rimmed glasses up from the bridge of her nose and dab at her eyes with one of the tear-soaked napkins she had folded neatly on the table in front of her.

"My Lord, my Lord!" she said as she slowly shook her head from side to side. "What a day!

"It's overwhelming.

"God is over all," she said at one point. "I don't care what they say about us, we're on the mountaintop now."

The residents stayed on the mountaintop until their president strode to the podium. Then they took their seats and turned to the TV at the far end of their community room.

In another place, another crowd may have been parsing every word, listening to hear what this moment may mean for their future.

Those of us who function as pundits will pick his words apart for clues over the next few days.

His repudiation of "recriminations and worn-out dogmas" will be tonic for some. But it will be viewed with suspicion by those who felt well-served by the divisive doctrine of the Bush era.

When Obama talked about the "false choice between our safety and our ideals," it was received by some as a harbinger that those who threatened our way of life may be set free to threaten us again.

They may find some comfort in that moment when he turned to warn terrorists that "you cannot outlast us, we will defeat you."

But his promise to "extend a hand" to our enemies "if you're willing to unclench your fist" may be too conciliatory for those who found comfort in the tough talk that characterized the Bush years.

A roomful of mostly elderly black people responded to different applause lines.

When he described his generation as "keepers of the legacy," it resonated with them in a different way than it would with a younger crowd.

His fleeting reference to "those who endured the whip" drew "amens" around the room.

And when he said that the time had come when a man whose father "might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand and take this oath," the room erupted in shouts of "amen."

For this crowd, Obama's speech was not so much about the future. For them, the inauguration of the first black president was an end in itself.

"We have carried forth the great gift of freedom," he said in closing, "and delivered it safely to future generations."

And with that, the residents of Opportunities Tower III struggled to their feet to stand with their president again.

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly. com/smith