Bush makes his last journey to Washington

WASHINGTON • The body of former president George H.W. Bush arrived at the U.S. Capitol on Monday afternoon to begin several days of Washington tributes and all the solemn ceremony befitting a nation’s fallen leader.

The president’s cortège, and a flight of gleaming black limousines, arrived on a fading autumn day at the traditional site of public leave taking after a journey from Houston, where Bush died Friday at the age of 94.

As the sky grew pink to the east, and the Marione Band played hymns, an eight-man military team of bearers carried the casket one step at a time up the long flight at the east front of the Capitol.

The casket was placed on the same pine board catafalque, covered in black fabric, that held the coffin of Abraham Lincoln after he was assassinated in 1865.

Bush will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until 7 a.m. Wednesday.

After a private arrival ceremony with the Bush family and members of Congress, the Rotunda opened to the public at 7:30 p.m. on Monday.

A funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral, as the Bush family requested.

President Donald Trump is among the dignitaries who plan to attend but he will not speak. Instead, Bush is to be eulogized by his son, the former president, as well as former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, and the historian Jon Meacham, who wrote the definitive biography of the 41st president.