By DAVID ADAM
Herald-Whig Staff Writer
Adam Weisenberger spent Monday night sleeping on a gymnasium floor, awoke at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday and spent much of the day outside, shivering in frigid temperatures.
But when he marched past President Barack Obama during the inauguration parade in Washington, D.C., shortly after 4 p.m. as a member of the Colts Drum and Bugle Corps of Dubuque, Iowa, he said the experience left him speechless.
"I mean, it's Barack Obama, he's from Illinois, and he's the president," said Weisenberger, a 2005 graduate of Quincy High School and a son of Jerry and Candi Weisenberger of Quincy. "The way this election has been covered and the way this president has bridged the generation gap to reach out to all people ... well, the word 'honor' doesn't quite cover it."
Click here to see video from KCRG-TV of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, of the Colts Drum and Bugle Corps as they marched past Obama's stand during the parade.
Weisenberger, who turns 22 next month, is a senior at the University of Nebraska. He joined the Colts in 2005 and has toured the country for three summers with the corps, which is for people ages 15-21. He said the corps learned in December it had been chosen to march in the parade.
Six buses carrying about 240 people, including 119 marchers, left Dubuque on Saturday and arrived late Sunday night in the nation's capital. The group battled snow, ice and a broken-down bus on the Pennsylvania Turnpike along the way.
The Colts rehearsed Sunday night and again for four hours on Monday in temperatures around 30 degrees. Members then slept on a gymnasium floor at Gallaudet University before waking up early Tuesday to drive to the Pentagon for a security check.
The staging area for all groups in the parade was the Ellipse between the National Mall and the White House, and Weisenberger said he watched the inauguration inside a heated tent. Once that ended, the Colts went outside to prepare for the parade, which started at the U.S. Capitol and ended near the White House.
However, the start of the parade was delayed when Sen. Edward Kennedy was rushed from a Senate luncheon after the swearing-in.
"There we were, standing out in sub-freezing weather for three hours before we actually got started," Weisenberger said. "It was a doozy."
The Colts huddled together for warmth, then walked up and down the stairs at the National Art Museum to keep the blood flowing. Finally, the corps marched in front of the president's viewing stand across the street from the White House, playing "76 Trombones." Weisenberger played the mellophone. The actual marching took less than 45 minutes, he said.
Not long afterward, Weisenberger was on a bus headed for Indianapolis, where he would board a plane to fly to Lincoln, Neb., for classes on Thursday.
"There's not really any bigger honor than to play for the president," he said. "It was worth it."
-- dadam@whig.com/221-3376
