Ohio woman, 104, to attend inauguration

Ella Mae Johnson of Cleveland said she is impressed by Barack Obama.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Ella Mae Johnson hasn’t just paid attention to American history, she’s lived it.

The 104-year-old black woman from Cleveland plans to be present at the one of the new century’s most anticipated moments: the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Johnson, a former social worker who turns 105 on Jan. 13, says she’ll be there in her wheelchair no matter the weather to see the nation’s first black president sworn into office.

“I admire him,” she said Wednesday at her home, Judson at University Circle, a retirement and assisted-care facility.

It will be the first inauguration for Johnson, a graduate of Nashville’s Fisk University in 1925 who went on to get a master’s degree at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) School of Applied Social Sciences in 1928.

Johnson, who was born in Dallas, experienced and overcame racial prejudice in America throughout the last century. But she sees Obama as sending a message that goes deeper than just setting an example of what blacks can accomplish.

The centenarian is more impressed with Obama’s young family, his willingness to show affection to wife, Michelle, and daughters and his roots, through his father, to Kenya.

“This affects young people in a way that’s different,” Johnson says. “I think it’s good for us all. He’s leading the country in the direction of taking care of each other.”

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat from Cleveland, invited Johnson to the inauguration at the suggestion of Johnson’s retirement home.

“It is fitting that she should mark her 105th birthday this January by witnessing the swearing-in of our nation’s first African-American president,” Brown said in a statement. “I am honored to be part of her journey and humbled by her legacy.”

Johnson’s nurse, Iris Williams, will make the flight with Johnson and stay with her at an assisted-care facility in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood.

“I’m looking forward to it on a lot of different levels,” said the 50-year-old Williams. “Personally, I’ve always wanted to see an inauguration, regardless of how I got there or where I stayed. To know I’m going to see it with Mrs. Johnson, to see it through the eyes of a centenarian, is just fabulous. Her perspective on this is going to be very insightful for me.”

During a 1973 tour of Kenya, Johnson talked with people struggling in the years after Kenya won its independence from the British in 1963.

Helping the people of Kenya became Johnson’s passion. She included requests for donations to Kenyan aid organizations on invitations to her 100th birthday, raising $3,000.

Johnson said she’d like to see all people benefit from Obama’s rise to power. “I don’t mean just every American,” she said. “There are other people, like those from whom he came in Africa.”

She also wouldn’t mind a chance to meet the Obamas.

“I would like it,” she said in a soft, thoughtful tone.

2008, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.