Throughout the presidential campaign, Ryan High School Assistant Principal Angela Ricks and her family paid close attention to every major moment.

DRC/Candace Carlisle

Denton resident Dolores Vann received her inaugural invitation in the mail Friday and has placed it on her mantel. Vann, who has glaucoma, can only spend a couple of hours a day reading or watching television. For the past few days, she has been forgoing reading in hopes her vision will last the entire inauguration ceremony.

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She and her husband, Roger, have been avid voters for years, but something new was in air and they wanted to share it with their children, she said.

This was the year that their eldest child would cast her first vote. And for the first time, Ricks and her husband sat their three children down to watch debates and taught them about the election process and the importance of voting. They told the children then that what they were witnessing would one day be something written about in history books.

Now Ricks and her husband will get a firsthand look at history in the making.

The week of Jan. 20, they will travel to Washington to see Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day when an African-American would be president of the United States,” Angela Ricks said. “Just to see that will be awesome. Just being able to see that, I think, will be the most awesome part of the trip for me.”

On election night, Ricks and her husband started sending e-mails to their elected officials asking for tickets to the inauguration. Just before Christmas, they received word from U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess’ office that they would receive two tickets. But the Ricks’ children could not get tickets to the event.

“They’re excited, but they’re really disappointed because they won’t be able to go,” she said.

Angela and Roger Ricks and several other area residents will be among an estimated 4 million people expected to descend on the National Mall for the inauguration.

Texas Woman’s University graduate student Ellen Chenoweth said she would miss her first two days of spring semester courses to participate in inaugural festivities.

She received tickets through Burgess’ office and will be attending the inauguration with her boyfriend, she said. Chenoweth, who lived in Washington before enrolling at TWU, took a flight to the city shortly before Christmas to stay with friends, and she said being there as the city prepares for the inauguration is exciting.

“The air is kind of charged,” she said.

Before Nov. 4, Chenoweth never thought of attending a presidential inauguration, but something changed for her when Obama won the election, she said. Shortly after the election, she requested tickets for the event, never expecting to get them but knowing she would already be in Washington on Jan. 20.

“I was really surprised and excited,” Chenoweth said of getting tickets. “I really didn’t think there was a chance, but I figured that I would give it a try anyway.”

She plans to collect her tickets Jan. 19, and she and her boyfriend plan to make the three-mile trip from his home to the inauguration site by bicycle.

While many will travel to Washington to simply view the swearing-in, students from both Argyle and Denton will attend festivities as participants in youth leadership conferences.

“I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and I feel honored to do that. I feel like it’s the best things to ever happen,” said Peyton Lenaburg, 11, of Denton.

Lenaburg was invited last spring to attend the Junior Presidential Youth Inaugural Conference, which coincides with the inauguration. She will attend several seminars and a ball where Obama is expected to make an appearance. Knowing she could possibly meet the next president is nerve-racking, she said.

“I’m kind of nervous and excited at the same time,” she said.

Denton City Council member Charlye Heggins received four tickets to the swearing-in — two each from Sen. John Cornyn and Burgess, she said. She gave three tickets to friends Michael Green and Lori Gore-Green of Denton and Barbara Edwards of Lewisville and plans to drive to Washington with Edwards and another friend, Amy Manuel, who also secured tickets.

The traveling trio — which is going by the moniker “ABC Obama Ladies,” an acronym for their first names — will stay at a hotel in Vienna, Va., about 15 miles west of the U.S. Capitol.

Heggins, 75, who grew up in segregation-era Dallas, called Obama’s election a defining moment in the country’s long quest for racial equality.

“I never thought I’d live to see this,” she said.

Ryan High School senior James Ryan will attend the Presidential Youth Inaugural Conference and said he looks forward to the memories the inauguration will bring.

“It’s going to be a cool story that I can tell my children about — just a great memory,” he said.

Staff writer Lowell Brown contributed to this report.

BRITNEY TABOR can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is btabor@dentonrc.com.