Grandma cried.

Grandma cried.

More than two months have passed since that moment, but it still lingers in the mind of a Youngstown elementary pupil.

Grandma had been cheering alongside her granddaughter — cheers that Barack Obama was elected president.

Then, she removed her glasses, lay down on the couch and began to cry.

Obama’s ascension to the highest seat of power in the U.S., and by some definitions, the world, culminates Tuesday.

The Vindicator has lined up a coverage plan to celebrate one of the more historic presidencies in recent memory.

It starts today and continues through Wednesday.

Obama slept here

The 2008 presidential campaign logged plenty of miles through the Valley.

And in the dust of those miles is a ton of memories that for the next 50 years will start with “Barack Obama, America’s first black president, [fill in the blank] here.”

Part of that tale involves the Yankee Kitchen, where Obama ate. I took my son, Maxwell, there for pancakes about a month after the election.

You can’t miss the booth where the Obamas and Bidens sat. It is lined with about 20 nicely framed photos.

So our story on today’s A1 (and on vindy.com) is a must-read. It was written by Dave Skolnick and photographed by Bob Yosay.

School letters

My initial tale of the Youngstown grandmother is from one of many letters we received from Valley students in a project we took on with our Newspapers In Education team.

We received hundreds of letters addressed, “Dear Mr. President.” They are precious.

There’s humor. There’s hope. There’s sadness.

One fifth-grader is eager for cheaper gas prices so her family can start going places again.

For four days starting today, we will publish a sample of some of the letters.

We regret that space will not allow us to print all of them. We promise to forward all of them to President Obama through the help of U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan.

The front pages

Outside the hallways of our newsroom are more than 20 Vindicator front pages that capture world history as we reported it.

Moon landings, wars, ship sinkings, etc.

Even boxer Jack Dempsey fighting in Toledo made huge front page news in The Vindicator — long before Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Kelly Pavlik.

We aim to make this Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s front pages equally special.

Tuesday will be one of the more unique front pages we’ve had in years as we offer essentially a poster of the 44th president.

Keepsake editions

“Four Days in History” is the name of our Sunday-to-Wednesday project covering the inauguration of President Obama.

We’ll package all the papers together for you for $2. For an extra dollar, we’ll protect the papers in a plastic folder.

If you are interested, call (330) 747-1471, ext. 1294 or 1601.

Trip of a lifetime

Vindicator staffers John Goodwin and Bill Lewis will have a unique reporting assignment Tuesday. They will spend 24 hours — by bus, by train, by foot — with the Jerusalem Baptist Church of Youngstown as they make their way to the inauguration.

Watch for their work — blogs, stories, photos and video — live Tuesday on vindy.com, and in full detail in Wednesday’s Vindicator.