Grand Rapids, Mich. ? The hometown that nurtured, voted for and never forgot Gerald R. Ford laid him to rest Wednesday after a simple but heartfelt funeral and an extraordinary display of public affection.

This was the final homecoming for the nation’s 38th president, who on a day of brilliant sunshine and cold temperatures was hailed as a citizen, public servant and, as a young congressman, a most unusual Washington politician – one who did not see a future president whenever he looked in the mirror.

“He put us on the right path when the way ahead was uncertain,” said an emotional Donald Rumsfeld, who sniffled every few seconds as he struggled through his 12-minute eulogy. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, served in the Ford administration.

Wednesday’s ceremonies marked the official end of national mourning that started in California, moved to Washington and concluded in the western Michigan city where Ford grew up, practiced law and later represented in Congress. This stop, lasting a little more than 24 hours, packed an emotional wallop.

While the 80-minute funeral at Grace Episcopal Church was dominated by personal friends and dignitaries, including Vice President Dick Cheney, former President Jimmy Carter, golf legend Jack Nicklaus and Rumsfeld, the goodbye was led by tens of thousands of Grand Rapids and Michigan residents who lined the streets and filed through the Gerald R. Ford Museum to pay their respects.

Ford helped plan his own funeral and wanted it to be an unpretentious reflection of his life. For all of the careful orchestration, there was no anticipating the throng of people who started showing up before Ford’s casket arrived Tuesday afternoon.

About 57,000 people, many of whom waited outside for up to eight hours in freezing overnight temperatures, walked through the museum during the 17 hours that Ford’s body lay in state. The lines never stopped until authorities cut them off late Wednesday morning, about two hours before the start of the funeral.

The casket of former President Gerald R. Ford is brought to a burial ceremony by a military honor guard outside the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, in this photo provided by the museum. Ford was buried Wednesday on the grounds of his museum in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“His last night was anything but lonely,” Richard Norton Smith, presidential historian and former director of the Ford Museum, said in his eulogy.

Crowds of people stood along city streets as the motorcade slowly drove the six miles between the museum and the church, and then back. The drapes in the hearse were open, allowing those gathered to catch a glimpse of the flag-draped casket.

At Grace Episcopal, 88-year-old former first lady Betty Ford, always accompanied by her daughter and three sons, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief as Rumsfeld, Carter and Smith eulogized the former president, often poignantly. Ford was a president who was not afraid to laugh at himself, Smith said.

For all of the solemnity of the event, the 93-year-old Ford’s return to the city he left more than 50 years ago was not a regal affair. It was more Trumanesque in tone, in keeping with the plainspoken tendencies of Ford, who represented this area in Congress for 25 years before assuming the vice presidency in 1973. He became president the next year.

Ford, like former President Harry Truman when he died, has enjoyed a rehabilitation of his reputation. In the weeklong series of funerals and remembrances, Ford’s controversial pardon of former President Richard Nixon in 1974, which probably cost him his bid for election two years later, is now praised as a nation-healing gesture.

As the sun began to set, a gravesite service outside the museum featured a Marine Corps choir, a 21-gun salute and a thundering 21-aircraft flyover that shook windows in the downtown area.

After the flag that draped Ford’s casket was removed and folded, Cheney, a former chief of staff for Ford, presented it to Betty Ford. She gently hugged it.