In honor of 41st president
Today’s viewing in Capitol starts four days of mourning
WASHINGTON — Americans will begin saying goodbye to former President George H.W. Bush today when his body arrives in Washington for public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda — a rare honor that will be bestowed on a man who earned the respect and admiration of many with his leadership, bravery and grace.
The public viewing will kick off four days of events that will include a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral on Wednesday and a private service at Bush’s longtime church in Houston on Thursday. But tributes from leaders around the world have been pouring in since his death Friday night.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell called him “a perfect American” for how “he served the country in so many capacities.”
“He never forgot who he was,” Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Bush’s presidency, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “He never let it all go to his head. He was a man of great humility.”
Bush, who died at his Houston home at age 94, will be buried Thursday on the grounds of his presidential library at Texas A&M University.
In Washington, D.C., he will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda from 7:30 p.m. today to 8:45 a.m. Wednesday. President Donald Trump, who ordered federal offices closed for a national day of mourning on Wednesday, is to attend the state funeral with first lady Melania Trump and other high-ranking officials.
Air Force One arrived Sunday in Texas to transport the body of the former president to Washington.
Bush spokesman Jim McGrath tweeted a photo of the presidential plane on a tarmac Sunday afternoon.
He wrote, “Air Force One has arrived in Houston for what will technically be called ‘Special Air Mission 41’ tomorrow and Wednesday.”
He added: “A beautiful day In Texas — ‘ceiling and visibility unlimited,’ Mr. President.”
James Baker, Bush’s former chief of staff and secretary of state, called his boss’ tenure in office “a consequential presidency” because of his foreign policy achievements.
“Yes, he’s a one-term president, but he is going to be and was a very consequential oneterm president. And I would argue far and away the best one-term president we’ve ever had,” Baker told This Week.
Baker described the 41st president’s final hours of life during a blitz of appearances on five Sunday talk shows.
“His sense of humor was intact right up till the very end,” Baker recalled. “His passing was really very peaceful. No struggling, no pain at all.”
Baker expected to see Bush asleep when he stopped in at 7:15 a.m. on Friday.
“But he was alert,” Baker said. “We all began to think, ‘Here we are. He’s going to surprise us again. It’s another bounce-back day.’”
Bush had been in and out of the hospital in recent years, primarily due to the Parkinson’s disease that Baker said hampered his body’s ability to get rid of phlegm, often causing pneumonia.
But each time he was hospitalized, Bush rallied and was released, free to return to his home in Houston or the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
There would be no bouncing back this time.
After it became clear that death was imminent, they got all the Bush kids on the phone, with son Neil Bush the only one in the room.
Each one spoke to the former president and “he mumbled back,” Baker said. Another son, former President George W. Bush, was the last on the line, telling his dying father how much he loved him and promising they would see each other again in heaven.
“And 41 said, ‘I love you, too,’ and those were the last words that he ever spoke,” Baker said.
Bush’s crowning achievement as president was assembling the international military coalition that liberated the tiny, oil-rich nation of Kuwait from invading Iraq in 1991 in a war that lasted just 100 hours.
He also presided over the end of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
At the Group of 20 summit in Argentina, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was raised in East Germany, told reporters she likely would never have become her country’s leader had Bush not pressed for the nation’s reunification in 1990.
A humble hero of World War II, Bush was just 20 when he survived being shot down during a bombing run over Japan. He enlisted in the Navy on his 18th birthday.
Shortly before leaving the service, he married his 19-yearold sweetheart, Barbara Pierce, in a union that lasted until her death earlier this year.
Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville, Ivan Moreno, John Rogers and Susan Haigh of The Associated Press.