Reagan's Family Holds Private Service
June 7, 22004
By JEFF WILSON
Photo: The casket carrying the remains of President Ronald Reagan arrives at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., Monday, June 7, 2004. The remains will lie in repose through Tuesday evening. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) - The body of Ronald Reagan, accompanied by a fragile Nancy Reagan, arrived Monday at his presidential library to begin nearly a week of journeying that will take him to a state funeral in Washington, then back to California for burial on a hilltop.
At the close of a brief family ceremony at the library, Mrs. Reagan touched her cheek to the flag-draped casket, began to cry, and was embraced tightly by her daughter, Patti Davis.
A band played "Hail to the Chief" and flags at half-staff gently waved under an overcast sky as eight armed forces members removed the casket from the hearse and placed it in the library rotunda before the service.
"As we were in procession, I couldn't help but think of the love and the outpouring that has begun in the nation for a great president, a great world leader and a faithful servent of almighty God," said the Rev. Michael Wenning, retired senior pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian Church, where Reagan had worshipped.
Photo: The hearse carrying the remains of former President Ronald Reagan arrive at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., Monday, June 7, 2004. The remains will lie in repose through Tuesday evening. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
The 93-year-old former president was to lie in repose at the library through Tuesday night, giving Californians a chance to pay their final respects to the man who was their governor from 1967 to 1975. Funeral ceremonies begin in Washington on Wednesday.
During the 40-mile drive to the library from a Santa Monica funeral home, clusters of people watched from overpasses and roadsides as the motorcade headed north on Interstate 405 and then west toward Simi Valley on the Ronald Reagan Freeway. Motorcycle officers cleared traffic from the freeways ahead of the hearse, limousine and accompanying vehicles.
Along the way it passed beneath a huge American flag suspended between the ladders of two firetrucks on an overpass. Traffic on the other side of the freeway came to a halt.
A banner hung along the route through Porter Ranch declared, "God bless you Ronald & Nancy." At another overpass, a banner proclaimed, "God bless the Gipper."
Mrs. Reagan, accompanied by Patti and son Ron, paused on her way into the funeral home as she passed a display of impromptu remembrances. American flags, flowers and jars of jelly beans - Reagan's favorite treat - were left along with notes, stuffed animals and candles in the spontaneous shrine.
Photo: Escorted by an unidentified officer, Nancy Reagan waves to cheering and applauding onlookers as she and her daughter Patti Davis, right, leave a funeral home in Santa Monica, Calif., Monday, June 7, 2004. Her son Ronald Prescott Reagan is obscured at top left. Reagan's body was being taken to lie in state at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
"Thank you for changing the world," said one handwritten note, and the words "Thank you, Ronald Reagan" were drawn across a map of the United States.
Eighty-five-year-old Peggy Sheffey said she drove to the funeral home from the nearby Mar Vista area of Los Angeles to "just feel closer" to the man she had never seen in person.
"He's a wonderful man," she said, putting her hand to her chest and choking back tears. "He was so real, absolutely real. Down to earth. He didn't just think of himself. He thought of everybody else."
On Wednesday, the former president's body is to be flown to Washington, D.C. Following a ceremony Wednesday night in the Capitol Rotunda, the body will lie in state there.
The national funeral will be Friday at Washington National Cathedral; President Bush will deliver a eulogy and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will be among the mourners. The body will then be returned to Reagan's library in Simi Valley for a private burial service.
Mourners also gathered at Reagan's boyhood home in Dixon, Ill.
Ken Dunwoody, who grew up outside Dixon, said Reagan, while an icon of Republican politics, transcended political partisanship. "I just think of him as being an American," said Dunwoody, 82. "I wish we all could get back to that."
The Reagan family's spokeswoman said Mrs. Reagan was thankful for the thousands of expressions of sympathy and, despite her sadness, relieved that her husband was no longer struggling with Alzheimer's disease.
Photo: Members of the Los Angelea County Fire Department salute along with members of the public as the hearse carrying the body of former President Ronald Reagan head up the 118 Ronald Reagan Freeway in Simi Valley, Calif., Monday, June 7, 2004. Reagan's body was being taken to lie in state at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
When Reagan announced in a letter to the public in 1994 that he had Alzheimer's, he said he was embarking on "the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life."
"I can tell you most certainly that while it is an extremely sad time for Mrs. Reagan, there is definitely a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering, and that he has gone to a better place," said spokeswoman Joanne Drake. "It's been a really hard 10 years for her."
In a piece written for Time magazine before Reagan's death Saturday, Mrs. Reagan remembered her husband as "a man of strong principles and integrity" who felt his greatest accomplishment was finding a safe end to the Cold War.
"I think they broke the mold when they made Ronnie," she wrote in the article appearing Monday. "He had absolutely no ego, and he was very comfortable in his own skin; therefore, he didn't feel he ever had to prove anything to anyone."
In an essay on the op-ed page of Monday's New York Times, former Sen. Bob Dole wrote that "Ronald Reagan is smiling upon us today because we are working on what he could not complete."
Photo: Nancy Reagan, center, and her family, at left, watch as the casket carrying the remains of President Ronald Reagan arrives at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library for the public viewing period, Monday, June 7, 2004, in Simi Valley, Calif. Reagan's remains will lie in repose through Tuesday evening. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
"Not only did he use his grace, charm, wit and indomitable optimism, he used his strength of character to convey the greatness of America," Dole wrote.
Reagan will be buried in a crypt beneath a memorial site at the library some 45 miles north of Los Angeles.
A curved wall adorned with shrubbery and ivy lines the memorial and has a three-line inscription from Reagan: "I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."
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On the Net:
http://www.ronaldreaganmemorial.com
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040607/D832BKSO0.html