CAVE CITY — CAVE CITY — Caverna Elementary students spent most of Tuesday morning watching the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

They watched it either in their classrooms or in the school’s cafeteria where it was projected on a wall.

Jamie Maxey, building supervisor, took time out from sweeping up after the students, to sit down at a table and watch the event on the cafeteria wall.

“It’s the all-American dream,” he said. “It really is.”

Maxey didn’t know much about Obama at first, so he did a little research. What he found astonished him.

“He grew up on food stamps and now he’s the president of the United States. It’s a rags to riches story. So it’s pretty amazing that anything can happen in America,” he said.

Maxey was impressed by the number of people who traveled to Washington D.C. to witness the event.

“He has inspired so many millions of people from every economic status to come out and celebrate the inauguration,” Maxey said. “It’s pretty amazing to me.”

Maxey is the father of two children — 12-year-old Makayla and 1-year-old Joseph. He said he has talked to his daughter about what it means for the United States to have an African-American president.

“This is very historic,” he said. “Anything is possible in the United Sates. Part of it is Martin Luther King Jr’s dream that has come alive. It’s just amazing that America is being more open minded. It’s not about him. It’s about the United States coming together in unity.”

Sitting not very far from him was LeStaye Perry, a fourth-grader, who has decided she wants to be president some day.

“It’s possible now, because we’ve got the role model to go by,” Maxey said.

Perry said the election of Barack Obama as president is a “blessing.”

“I know God helped him to be president,” she said. “I think he’s going to be a good president. I think that if I had been 18 I would have voted for him.”

How does she know he will be a good president?

“He’s going to make America change,” she said. “He’s going to make black people and white people come together.”

While watching the inauguration on television with her classmates, Perry repeated the words of a poem recited by Elizabeth Alexander, who teaches at Yale University. The poem will be published in a book titled “Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration.”

Joe Scott works with Maxey at the school and said he has heard students talk about Obama becoming the nation’s next president.

“The main thing is it’s the American dream. Anybody can get anything they want if they work hard enough to get there,” he said. “I’m of the age where eight to 10 years ago I would never have thought I would have voted for Barack Obama, but I did.”

“I think we’re headed in the right direction,” he said.

Scott said Obama reminds him of President Jimmy Carter, only Obama seems to have more desire.

“You can tell he means what he’s saying,” Scott said. “Most of the people in Washington, you can listen to them speak and it’s like they are looking out ... over the crowd. This guy looks at the crowd.”

Scott also thinks the election of an African-American president will change the perspective other countries have of the United States.

“I think it’s one of the best things that could happen to us,” he said. “I think it’s great for our country.”