ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md., Jan. 20, 2009 – Air Force Maj. Geraldine Holmes-Barnett remembers boarding a bus in Ohio when she was just 9 years old to hear Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” during the 1963 March on Washington.

That memory came full circle his morning as the 54-year-old African-American nurse with the 779th Medical Group waited here at the base club for another bus – this one transporting her and other active-duty airmen to march in President Barack Obama’s inaugural parade.

“I knew that this would happen in my lifetime, but I thought it would be when I was 90 or 100 years old,” she said of the inauguration of the nation’s first African-American president. “And now that I have the privilege to be a part of it, I still don’t believe it. I just want to be there in the moment.”

Excitement and anticipation filled the Andrews club as Holmes-Barnett and about 70 other airmen gathered at 6 a.m. to prepare for the march. They’ll travel to nearby Bolling Air Force Base to pick up additional Air Force marchers, then head out to a staging area at the Pentagon.

Air Force Capt. Christopher Karins, officer in charge of the 316th Wing contingency, estimated that the airmen will begin the 1.5-mile march from the Capitol to the White House at about 4 p.m.