President Obama yesterday celebrated the nation's diversity as a strength, not a weakness, a belief influenced by his experiences growing up in Hawai'i.

Obama, the son of an African father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, was raised by his white grandparents in Makiki and learned some of his first lessons about race and social class at the exclusive and mostly white and Asian Punahou School.

Obama has written and spoken of the pain and awkwardness of his teenage years, but also about how Hawai'i has shown that people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds can live together.

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers," Obama said in his inaugural address outside the U.S. Capitol.

"We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth, and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass, that the lines of tribes shall soon dissolve, that as the world grows smaller our common humanity shall reveal itself, and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."

In the Islands yesterday, many people awoke early and gathered around television sets to watch Obama become the first African-American and the first person from Hawai'i sworn in as president.

While the historic moment was shared with the nation, many in Hawai'i have an intense local pride in Obama's achievement. His election is a reminder that anything is possible, that race or class or being born and raised in the middle of the Pacific are not barriers.

"I was particularly interested in the way he contextualized his own experience, in terms of his historical presence but also the way forward for the United States," said Elisa Joy White, an assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. "So there was a sense of not forgetting the significance of his being the first African-American president while simultaneously seeing a way for us to start to, if anything, reorganize the way that we see race in our society and the way we engage with people who are different from us globally."

White taught a class yesterday in the African-American experience where she discussed the nation's shameful history of lynchings. She said her students, about half of whom grew up in Hawai'i, are conscious of race but not always of racism.

"I often have to help students understand that the space of Hawai'i, and the way Hawai'i experiences multiethnicity and racial discourse, is very different from the larger context of the United States," she said.

Florence Kong Kee, the former political director of the Democratic Party of Hawai'i, was a year behind Obama at Punahou. She believes his reference to the strength of the nation's "patchwork heritage" grew out of his time in the Islands.

"It was so beautiful," she said of the inaugural address. "It was so beautiful and moving."

Lono Lyman, who lives in Makiki and was on the platform committee at the Democratic National Convention, said Obama's victory is still unbelievable to him. "There's still a sense of disbelief that someone from Hawai'i and someone who is African-American was elected president," he said.

With the nation in an economic recession, and all the expectations for change, Obama will have to move quickly from the glow of the inaugural to the hard work ahead. "His life has changed so much and, in a way, we who have supported him are very mindful of the weight on his shoulders," Lyman said.

State Rep. Jessica Wooley, D-47th (La'ie, Hau'ula, Punalu'u), said Obama articulated hope for a new era in politics and government. Obama spoke of the need "to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."

We need "people working together and being positive rather than fighting each other and being negative," Wooley said. We need to focus on community service and on people helping people, rather than people being greedy, she said. "Success for us, for a long time, has been on how much money you make, and CEOs of big businesses and large corporations, they have been making record profits, and working families and the poor have been suffering.

"And I think that this is a new era, to say 'We're all in this together.' "

Kallie Keith-Agaran, a research consultant who lives in Wailuku and who campaigned for Obama on the Mainland, had a Champagne breakfast with friends yesterday morning. She said it has only sunk in during the past few days that Obama would be president.

"The speech was amazing. It was absolutely everything we needed and, to me, it was about who we are as people," she said. "I cried."

Obama, describing the inaugural as a moment that could define a generation, spoke of the quiet force of progress throughout the nation's history. He talked of responsibility and the price and promise of citizenship. He also made reference, without saying his name, to the challenges of Barack Obama Sr., the father he barely knew.

"This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall," Obama said, "and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant, can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."