By DON STINE
Tickets or no tickets, area residents are gearing up and heading out to attend the historic inauguration ceremonies for President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20.
Seventy-eight-year-old Marian McKillop, who lives in the Francis Asbury Manor in Ocean Grove, said she campaigned and voted for Obama and is now heading down by bus to see him inaugurated.
“It’s an historic event and I wanted very much to go. Just to be there is important for me. His inauguration sets the tone for a more inclusive society rather than an exclusive society,” she said.
McKillop will be taking a chartered bus from Neptune at 4:30 a.m. on that Tuesday and hopes to get a good spot on the mall area to see the ceremony.
“I’m not sure what is planned after the ceremony but we will return that night,” she said.
She said she has other friends that are also going to the ceremony although not with her group.
“I’ve been excited for a couple of weeks now since I found out I was able to go,” she said.
John R. Tatulli, a locally-born campaign worker for Vice-President-elect Joe Biden, has received an invitation to the inaugural ceremony- an invitation he said he is proud to receive.
Tatulli, who was raised in Asbury Park and West Long Branch and currently lives in Oakhurst, said he feels a special movement is underway in the country.
“It is the most incredible thing and I am absolutely thrilled to be part of this historic event,” he said.
Tatulli, 33, said he is proud to be involved in a movement he feels strikes chords with the common American.
“People are really trying to do something- whether on a national or local level. They feel compelled to do something and I feel very fortunate to be a part of it,” he said.
Tatulli, a partner in the Long Branch law firm of Tucci and Tatulli, said he has tickets both for mall seats and an inaugural ball at the Smithsonian Museum.
He said he will leave by car on Sunday and stay with family in Virginia and then participate in preparing care packages for overseas military personnel on Monday- Martin Luther King Day.
On the same day he will participate in a Sons of Italy Foundation leadership council in Georgetown.
Tatulli is a graduate of Shore Regional High School. He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in international affairs and took his law degree at New York Law School in 2004.
Tatulli worked on Delaware Sen. Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in Iowa for two months last year, where he drove 1,600 miles just to become a regional field director there.
Biden eventually became Barack Obama’s vice-presidential nominee and he will be sworn-in, along with Obama, on Jan. 20.
“The rest is history,” Tatulli said
The Oakhurst resident said he met Biden twice during his two-month stint in Iowa.
“Biden is nationally known for his foreign affairs experience and I think he helps balance out the Obama ticket. He always has a salt-of-the-earth approach to the average American. He is always the same person and maintains his character and basic principles,” he said.
Tatulli said his work for Biden obviously paid off with his invitation to the inauguration.
“When you really believe in something and take a shot at it- you never know what happens,” he said.
Tatulli said he hopes to contribute his legal background and experience in land use, zoning, and real estate law to local urban areas, like Red Bank, Asbury Park and Long Branch.
“I would like to contribute my passion for public service back to the shore towns where I was raised,” he said.
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