Reagan finally at ‘home now’ in California
Simi Valley, Calif. ? In a final hail to the chief Friday, the nation bade a lingering goodbye to Ronald Reagan at a service in Washington under somber skies and at a hilltop burial ceremony beneath a setting sun in his beloved California.
“He is home now. He is free,” Ron Reagan said in his father’s eulogy at the burial service. “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.”
After the burial service, a tearful Nancy Reagan kissed her husband’s coffin while holding an American flag. The former first lady was surrounded by her children, who also shed tears and tried to console her.
The flag-draped casket, accompanied by Nancy Reagan, arrived at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library after a flight from Washington and a slow, 25-mile motorcade from the airport. Hundreds of well-wishers cheered Mrs. 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.
The service 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 witness.
“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.
Mrs. Reagan, 82, 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.
Mrs. Reagan laughed. Her daughter Patti Davis laughed harder and longer. They exchanged glances with each cherished recollection. Reagan’s other surviving children, Ron and Michael, also were by her side. Reagan’s daughter Maureen, from his first marriage, died from cancer in 2001.
Patti Davis recounted Reagan’s last moments in her eulogy during the burial service. “I know that at his last moment, when he opened his eyes, eyes that had not opened for many, many days, and looked at my mother, he showed us that neither disease nor death can conquer love,” she said.
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, 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.”
That capped three days of pageantry and tradition unique to a presidential state funeral — the casket’s procession by horse-drawn caisson along Constitution Avenue, the lying in state in the Capitol’s hall of heroes and the national funeral service before an invitation-only crowd of 4,000. Tens of thousands of ordinary Americans visited his casket on Capitol Hill.
The service drew a large contingent of foreign guests, including 25 heads of state or government, 11 former leaders and more than 180 ambassadors and foreign ministers.
Several dignitaries and celebrities attended the burial ceremony in California, including actor Tom Selleck, former hockey star Wayne Gretzky, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who also became governor after a career in acting.
Reagan died last Saturday 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.
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