CLEVELAND — The crowds came early to secure their spot on Wade Oval, to celebrate a day they hoped would live among their life’s greatest memories.
It’s a date Jim and Laurel Tickle of Upper Michigan had circled on their calendar for years.
“We knew we were coming in 2017, but we had to wait til last year to book reservations,” Laurel said.
Jane Allison of Philadelphia also knew she was coming in 2017 after seeing that year’s partial eclipse back home.
“It was so magical to me that I thought I have to see a total eclipse,” Allison said. She initially planned to go to Indiana, but Cleveland was the easier drive with two dogs.
As the clock passed 3 p.m., the excitement built to a palpable level, emotions released with cheering as day turned to night at the time of totality.
But once the elation of the initial moment passed, there was another wave that overtook this crowd: silence. Words could hardly describe what was playing out above them, and so, for those few minutes, few were said.
As the sun began to reappear though, it brought the energy back to this crowd, who gave the stars of this show again a rousing ovation.
Julia Novies is a physics student from Virginia who drove up to see the eclipse, which literally brought her to tears.
“It was actually so gorgeous just seeing like the moon and the sun,” she said. “Way more wonderful, way more wonderful, it was amazing.”
Those emotions were echoed by Sheila Echols of Euclid, who said she didn’t know what to expect.
“It was daytime, it was warm, it was sunny and then just like that it was the dark of night and then again just like that it was daytime again. Amazing,” Echols said. “Once in a lifetime for me."
Bob Smith of Philadelphia said he was happy he was warned of the temperature drop.
“I was like glad I put my coat back on,” Smith said. “It got cold and just the total darkness because it looked like just the sunset all around you; it was beautiful, beautiful.”
The thousands gathered at Wade Oval this day may have known a handful of the others when they arrived, and they will likely never cross paths with the strangers around them again. But be sure they will forever have a mutual bond forged by a few minutes they once shared on an April Monday in Cleveland.
