PALESTINE, Texas -- Elizabeth S. Hutchinson sat in the audience in 1961 as a 43-year-old Senator from Massachusetts took the presidential oath. She heard John F. Kennedy admonish his fellow Americans to "ask not what you country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Eight years later she watched at the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol when former Vice President Richard Nixon took the oath and described America's pursuit of peace as a "summons to greatness."

She heard Lyndon B. Johnson talk about the Great Society in 1965 and Ronald Reagan pledge to make government work in 1980. She witnessed the oaths sworn by Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and his son George W. Bush.

Despite recent cancer treatments, Hutchinson, 88, plans to witness Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20, when he becomes the country's 44th president and the first African-American to hold the office.

Fact is, she would be there even if November's election had gone the other way, sending Obama's opponent, Republican Sen. John McCain, to the White House.

"I didn't care who won," she said. "I just wanted to attend the inauguration. I don’t want to break my streak since 1952.”

That was the year Eisenhower, a Texan and five-star general who commanded the Allied forces in Europe, was elected to the White House as a Republican. Hutchinson was a Democrat. It didn't matter.

"All of us Democrats were for Eisenhower," she said. "We were Eisenhower Democrats."