Between angst about another terror attack and the cold, a sense of unease hung over representatives of Utah’s American Indian tribes as they stood in a long security line 10 years ago Feb. 8, waiting for clearance to perform in the Opening Ceremony of Salt Lake City’s Olympics.

Then Forrest Cuch looked into the sky west of Rice-Eccles Stadium and saw a golden eagle, symbol of good luck to Utah’s native people, warming up for its role in the spectacle.

"I looked over to my son and told him, ‘Let the people know,’ " said Cuch, then director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs. "All the Indian people settled down once they saw that eagle. Everything changed from fear to exhilaration and happiness."

Then, 10 minutes before their time on stage, the wind calmed. "Everyone looked at each other and said, ‘Wow. It’s like a message. Everything is going to be OK,’ " Cuch said. "It was very surreal."

Those positive omens proved clairvoyant. The Opening Ceremony dazzled, initiating 17 days of Olympic action in which potential problems seemed to evaporate into Utah’s thin mountain air.

The electric atmosphere at Opening Ceremony permeated to the depths of the University of Utah stadium, where volunteer Theresa Stauffer was helping other volunteers, painters and dry-wallers practiced in the art of walking on stilts, into costumes that would transform them into trees and crones for the show’s historical segment.

"Just seeing a production of that magnitude being put together was fascinating," said Stauffer, a respiratory therapist at University Hospital.

And there were added benefits. The final leg of the torch relay came right past her staging area, as did the procession of athletes. "We were high-fiving the athletes and giving them candy we had stashed and trading pins with them," she said. "It was a lot of fun."

In the stands, viewers were mesmerized by the ceremony’s mixture of Western history and its emotional references to the Sept. 11 tragedy and the Olympic movement’s devotion to principles of fair play and mutual respect.

What a lineup of luminaries carried in the Olympic flag: South African civil-rights leader Desmond Tutu, Polish strike leader Lech Walesa, American astronaut-turned-senator John Glenn and Cathy Freeman, Aboriginal star of the Sydney Olympics. Joining them were filmmaker Steven Spielberg, environmentalist Jean-Michel Costeau and Olympic stars Jean-Claude Killy and Kazuyoshi Funaki.

Jaime Rupert, a public relations consultant for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, had helped develop the idea of incorporating these distinguished global figures into the ceremony. She had pursued that task through the death of her mother the previous summer. As she stood alone in a camera platform at the stadium and watched the flag’s entry, "I cried the whole way through," Rupert recalled. "I was saying to my mom [in heaven], ‘Even though I had to leave you to do this, it was all worth it.’ "

Even more poignant for most observers was the arrival of a tattered U.S. flag recovered from the rubble of the World Trade Center.