Bush to lie in state at Capitol, be laid to rest at Texas A&M
After the family of former President George H.W. Bush announced his death Friday night, the tributes and condolences began pouring in.
Within hours, students at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University in College Station came together — somewhat instinctually, according to the school newspaper The Battalion — for an on-campus candlelight vigil in his honor.
By Saturday, more formal funeral arrangements for the 41st president were taking shape.
Bush, who died at home in Houston, will soon be taken to Washington. President Donald Trump, speaking Saturday from the G-20 summit meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, said the plane known as Air Force One when the president is aboard will transport Bush’s coffin. Trump said it was “a special tribute that he deserves very much.”
Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives announced that a bicameral arrival ceremony for Bush will be held at 5 p.m. Monday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
Bush will lie in state in the Rotunda with his coffin on display for public viewing until Wednesday morning. He will be the 11th president to lie in state there; others include Gerald R. Ford in 2006 and 2007 and Ronald Reagan in 2004. The most recent official to lie in state was Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Aug. 31.
Bush will also be honored with a state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington. The White House confirmed that Trump will attend.
Members of the Bush family and officials from the Joint Task Force for the National Capital Region are still determining the final schedule for the funeral at the cathedral.
“This state funeral is a culmination of years of planning and rehearsal to ensure the support the military renders President Bush is nothing less than a first-class tribute,” Maj. Gen. Michael L. Howard, the task force’s commanding general, said in a statement Saturday. On Thursday, Bush will
be laid to rest on the grounds of his presidential library and museum at Texas A&M University. He will be buried in a family plot behind the library alongside his wife, Barbara, who died in April after 73 years of marriage; and a daughter, Robin, who died at age 3 in 1953, according to a statement from the university.