MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Now, at the end of the ceremony, after the president's speech, after Beyonce, I caught up with Carrie Freeman of Omaha, Nebraska, as she headed off the Mall. She said this second Obama inauguration had a different feel.
CARRIE FREEMAN: Four years ago, we cheered a lot. We were just gala. We were celebrating. We weren't actually concentrating on the word. As you see, I'm black. And so I was very proud that it took us 400 years to get a black president. But now, we're celebrating because he brings more. And so we were actually listening to what he was saying. The urgency was there for me and for everybody that was there, I felt, to listen to what he said, to take in, to soak up the things that he was saying.
BLOCK: And one last thought from Chandra Knabel of Millersville, Maryland, who was soaking in the inauguration with her 9-year-old daughter Lauren.
CHANDRA KNABEL: What did you tell - say about next time, maybe?
LAUREN KNABEL: That it might be a girl president next time.
KNABEL: Which would be even more awesome, right?
KNABEL: Mm-hmm.
KNABEL: We'd definitely come for that one, wouldn't we? Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.