Who’s watching our Presidents Inauguration this Monday?

I haven't watched a presidential inauguration since Eisenhower disdained the top hat and wore a homburg to his swearing-in ceremony. What year was that? It may have been the first 'live' broadcast inauguration on TV. And my last (I hope).

. . . I was a senior at Boston U. that year.

I used to have a skeleton of Abe Lincoln taken when he was a very small boy. .

I've probably watched a bit of most of them but the only inauguration I recall is JFK's in 1961.
I would have been all of 14 so it was my first one as a young adult and the young JFK was taking over from the war hero, Ike. The torch was being passed etc.
But I was more than a casual observer. In the 1958-59 school year, Charlottesville schools were closed by the state of Virginia in a last futile attempt to avoid integration, and the next year 4 black kids joined my 8th grade class at Lane High. And the world didn't end. I was on my way to becoming a Liberal.
But I digress from the inauguration of January 20th. I remember it was really cold and it had snowed the night before. It was brilliantly sunny.
A very old and frail Robert Frost tried to read a poem he had written for the occasion, but the glare from the sun made it very difficult. I vividly remember - or think I do - JFK using his hat to try to help Frost.
It's funny that that is the image I have from 50 years ago: The young JFK futilely trying to block the sun.

I was a liberal then too, but the subsequent eight years cured me of that forever.