FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH LIES IN STATE IN THE U.S. CAPITOL ROTUNDA MONDAY IN WASHINGTON, D.C. HIS FUNERAL IS SCHEDULED FOR WEDNESDAY.
WASHINGTON • The body of former president George H.W. Bush arrived at the U.S. Capitol 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 U.S. army 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 crash of an artillery salute, fired before the memorial to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, echoed over the grounds.
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. Among the gathered dignitaries was Vice President Mike Pence. “President Bush was a great leader, who made a great difference in the life of this nation,” he said. “But he was also just a good man, who was devoted to his wife, his family, and his friends.” Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called Bush a hero, and “a steady hand.”
Amid the speeches and the pomp, Bush’s son, former president George W. Bush sat, looking haggard with grief.
The late president’s casket and his family had arrived at Joint Base Andrews earlier on a presidential jumbo jet that landed at the base in suburban Maryland at about 3:20 p.m.
Bush will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda from 5 p.m. Monday through 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. 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 prime minister Brian Mulroney, former U.S. senator Alan Simpson, and the historian Jon Meacham, who wrote the definitive biography of the 41st president. Trump, who has been sharply critical of the Bush family in the past, has offered nothing but praise for the former president since his death at age 94 on Friday and made no complaint about being left off the roster of funeral speakers. “Looking forward to being with the Bush Family to pay my respects to President George H.W. Bush,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday.