SIMI VALLEY, Calif. – In a final, majestic hail to the chief on Friday, the nation bade a lingering goodbye to Ronald Reagan at a stately service in Washington, D.C., beneath somber skies and at a hilltop burial ceremony beneath a setting sun in California.
The flag-draped casket, accompanied by a stoic Nancy Reagan, arrived at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library following a flight from Washington and a slow, 25-mile motorcade from the airport. Hundreds of well-wishers cheered Nancy Reagan when she left the plane, and crowds along the motorcade route waved flags, held their hands over their hearts and applauded as the hearse passed.
“He is home now. He is free,” said his son, Ron Reagan. “In his final letter to the American people, Dad wrote, ‘I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.’ This evening, he has arrived.”
The service earlier at Washington National Cathedral dropped the curtain on a week of American majesty, with dozens of world leaders, the four living ex-presidents and lifelong friends as witnesses. “Ronald Reagan belongs to the ages now,” President Bush said in his eulogy, “but we preferred it when he belonged to us.”
The cathedral’s great bells pealed as Reagan’s casket arrived in the rain, the flag over it a burst of color in the gray pall, and pealed again with the motorcade’s departure. Irish tenor Ronan Tynan filled the soaring space of the cathedral with “Ave Maria.” The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” rang out.
And after a week of largely silent ritual, there were words – a stream of them praising the 40th president for rendering “bold strokes” on the American canvas, for staying humble, for loving his wife, for having a quip for any occasion.
“His politics had a freshness and optimism that won converts from every class and every nation – and ultimately from the very heart of the evil empire,” said former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in taped remarks presented at the funeral. Thatcher, who has given up public speaking after a series of small strokes, sat next to Mikhail Gorbachev, who led that Soviet empire and eventually became Reagan’s friend.
Nancy Reagan, 82, slow in step yet keenly alert to every polished move in the week’s remembrance, shepherded the casket with quiet intensity, turning the most public of events into a series of private moments. She kissed it lightly at the Capitol Rotunda, where Reagan lay in state. She ran her hands slowly up and down the stripes of the flag and, leaning close, seemed to whisper something to her husband of 52 years.
Her expression rarely changed, but Bush and his father brought smiles to the funeral service by recalling her husband’s wisecracks. The elder George Bush, in his eulogy for the man he served as vice president, remembered when Reagan was asked how a meeting went with South African Bishop Desmond Tutu. “So-so,” Reagan said.
Nancy Reagan laughed. Her daughter Patti Davis laughed harder and longer. Reagan’s other surviving children, Ron and Michael, also were by her side. Reagan’s daughter Maureen, from his first marriage, died of cancer in 2001.
The elder Bush said Reagan was beloved because he was “strong and gentle.”
“I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life,” Bush said, his voice breaking with emotion.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, a good friend of the Reagans, remembered the former president in his eulogy as possessing “a rare and prized gift called leadership.”
“Ronald Reagan does not enter history tentatively – he does so with certainty and panache,” said Mulroney, who shared Irish ancestry with Reagan and once sang “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” with him onstage. “At home and on the world stage, his were not the pallid etchings of a timorous politician. They were the bold strokes of a confident and accomplished leader.”
But a state funeral is only partly about a president. It is also about a nation. Depending on the planners and the times, the rituals can emphasize majesty or the common touch. Reagan and his supporting crew were masters of every variety of public event. They put Hollywood’s production values at the service of the presidency as never before. The president who promised to restore American greatness and confidence was especially partial to the sweeping, the stirring, the spectacular.
So his team pulled out all the stops.
A funeral years in the planning – Nancy Reagan met every six months or so with key advisers to update preparations – began with the gradual arrival of the guests, who had colored dots discreetly marked on the back of their tickets. Black dots sat way in the back; status-conscious Washingtonians soon figured out that orange was better, red better still and yellow quite exalted. Twenty-five heads of state, 11 former heads of state, and 180 ambassadors or foreign ministers converged on the cathedral.
American guns around the world fired in Reagan’s honor – 21-gun salutes at the stroke of noon local time at U.S. military bases, and at dusk, another worldwide round of 50-gun salutes.
Final military flourishes saw Reagan’s body off at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland, the many playings of “Hail to the Chief” over the past few days giving way to Antonin Dvorak’s “Going Home.”
Hundreds of mourners also attended the burial service, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor Tom Selleck and singer Wayne Newton.
Reagan died June 5 at 93 from pneumonia complicated by the Alzheimer’s disease that had progressively clouded his mind. He told the world in 1994, five years after ending his two-term presidency, that he had Alzheimer’s.
Reagan had begun thinking of his last rites in 1981, his first year as president, and planned some elements of the funeral – inviting the elder Bush and Thatcher to speak, asking Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to do a reading and expressing a wish for an operatic soloist, family representatives said.
Nancy Reagan filled in the program by asking the current president and Mulroney to take part and inviting former Sen. John Danforth, an Episcopalian priest, to officiate at the multifaith service.
Delivering the homily, Danforth read from the Sermon on the Mount, Reagan’s favorite biblical theme.
The Gospel of Matthew, 5:14-16, reads, “You are the light of the world, a city set on a hill cannot be hid,” a passage that Reagan often quoted to project his view of America as a beacon of freedom and hope.
“If ever we have known a child of light, it was Ronald Reagan,” Danforth said.
The Washington Post contributed to this report.
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