'She Made It Clear That One Person Could Make a Difference'

His cheeks were wet, too.

"It just means a lot to us," said Silver, 28, the daughter of a white Jewish father and a dark-skinned Jamaican mother. "I'm interracial. We're an interracial couple. And without the courage of this individual woman, we wouldn't be standing here engaged."

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Dan Norman flew yesterday from Chicago to pay his respects to "a lady who changed his life."

He was 9 when Parks hopped on her bus. Like so many of his peers, he watched his parents walk to the back of buses and buy food at restaurants from the back door. Once, he said, he watched in horror as a white police officer nearly beat his father to death.

"In the black community, there's always talk about what we should do," said Norman, 58, a real estate investor and father of four adult children. "She actually had the courage to do it. It's still clear in my head."

Her act of defiance, he said, gave him courage when he worked for a computer company. He managed to break the color barrier and become one of the firm's first black executives.

"I tried to do what she did," Norman said. "She helped me to understand to stand up for what is right, even if that is not the politically correct thing to do. Rosa Parks is my hero," he said.

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Monifa and Lyonel LaGrone brought their two sons, Jaylin, 4, and Tre, 4 months old, because they wanted them to witness a piece of history. At their home in New Jersey, they have started building a library about the civil rights movement to teach their sons. In three years, Lyonel said he plans to have Jaylin read about Parks.

"We would have come to this even if it was in Columbus, Ohio," said Lyonel LaGrone, who works as a fair housing specialist in Pennsylvania. "We would have gone wherever she was."

As Jaylin sucked a large lollipop and played on the steps of the Capitol, Lyonel picked up Tre and started playfully planting the legacy of Parks in the next generation.

"Say, 'I am going to be a civil rights activist," Lyonel Lagrone instructed his baby son, as his wife smiled in agreement. "Say, 'My father is going to tell me all about Rosa Parks when I grow up.' "