"Thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders, progress has been made since I was a child and barriers have been overcome," he said. "More work has to be done, and I think that President(-elect) Obama will serve as a great motivation and inspiration for that work to be completed."
Napier was busy because he was making plans to see Obama be inaugurated as the nation's 44th president.
"It will be an historic event in the history of this country that I wasn't going to miss seeing in person," he said.
But Napier wasn't just making his own plans to attend the inauguration. He was helping hundreds of other people make theirs.
The morning after the election, the phones rang off the hook at the Main Street office of Kentucky Tours and Travel, a company he and his wife, Eliza, own. And the phones kept ringing for weeks.
"We have done some big tours before, but this one to the inauguration has kept us about as busy as we've ever been," he said.
Kentucky Tours and Travel has arranged from nine to 10 buses to transport some 350 central Kentuckians to Washington, D.C., to see the inauguration on Tuesday, Napier said.
"We have about 40 to 50 people from Boyle and neighboring counties going," he said.
The largest single group is comprised of 200 students from Frankfort High School. Another large group of 90 to 100 will be going from Lexington, he said.
Kentucky Tours and Travel offered several different packages, and the price for each package depends on the numbers of meals and the kind of accommodations and amenities included, and also the time frame of the trip, Napier said.
All of the groups are leaving today, but some will return on Tuesday, others on Wednesday and still others on Thursday, Napier said.
"Basically, the packages run from $275 a person to $500 a person," he said.
All groups will be transported from their hotels and motels to various places to see the inauguration on Tuesday, Napier said. Some will be dropped off near train, subway and city bus stations for their trips to the area around the Capitol, he said.
Focusing on MLK history
But most of the groups also will be taken to several historic places on Monday to honor the history made in D.C. by another famous African-American.
"The celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday will be Monday, and in observance of that our coaches will be taking groups to the Washington Mall in front of the Capitol where Dr. King delivered his 'I have a dream' speech in 1963 and also to the Lincoln Memorial," he said.
"We want to put the inauguration in historic context for our groups," he said. "On Monday, they will be able to see where Dr. King talked about his dream, and on Tuesday, they will be able to see at least part of his dream realized in the person of Barack Obama and his inauguration as the country's first African-American president."
While Kentucky Tours and Travel has been booking hundreds of people for trips to the inauguration, area travel agencies have not been nearly as busy.
In fact, representatives of two agencies in Danville and one in Harrodsburg said they have had no inauguration-related business at all.
Those three agencies are Carson Wagonlit Travel Leaders and The Travel Authority, both of Danville, and Travel Professionals of Harrodsburg.
Deb Thomas of Carson Wagonlit said the lack of inauguration business for local travel agencies reflects a national situation.
Thomas cited a recent survey done by Travel Leaders of its agencies around the country that showed that only 11 percent of the agencies had booked any inauguration travelers. Fourteen percent of the agencies reported "some interest" from customers but no bookings, the study showed.
Meanwhile, 75 percent of the travel agencies surveyed reported no interest and no bookings.
Thomas and other local travel agents said one of the big reasons for the lack of business has been the fact that most of the motel and hotel rooms in D.C. and nearby suburbs were booked right after Obama's election. That probably scared off potential customers from even checking on travel packages, they said.
They also said many people have made arrangements directly with bus coach services, like Kentucky Tours and Travel, which offer a variety of packages at reasonable rates as compared with plans that feature much more expensive air travel and high-end hotel and motel accommodations.
