Farewell to President 41
Bush’s life of public service focus of Washington funeral
“To us, his was the brightest of a thousand points of light.” Former President George W. Bush, eulogizing his father
WASHINGTON — Five U.S. presidents and an assortment of royalty and other leaders from around the world gathered Wednesday morning for the state funeral of George H.W. Bush, the nation’s 41st president.
They recalled him as a statesman of unusual restraint and wisdom, a father with enough heart to befriend even his adversaries, a blue blood with a deep sense of public duty.
“He recognized that serving others enriched the givers’ soul. To us, his was the brightest of a thousand points of light,” another president, his son George W. Bush, said in his eulogy. “When the history books are written they will say that George H.W. Bush was a great president ... a diplomat of unmatched skill ... and a gentleman who executed the duties of his office with dignity and honor.”
The recollections entwined the personal and geopolitical as the nation bid farewell to the patriarch of one of its most enduring political dynasties amid elaborate pageantry at the Washington National Cathedral.
“Through our tears let us know the blessings of knowing and loving you, a great and noble man. The best father a son or daughter could have,” Bush said, unsuccessfully stifling a sob at the end.
Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of George and Laura, said her dad felt “a lot of pressure ... to get it just right” in the eulogy. Her sister, Barbara Bush, said he’d been working on getting through it “without breaking down.”
Such occasions provide an opportunity to recall bygone eras, and to observe the passage of time in the graying hair of Cabinet secretaries and senior aides and ex-presidents.
Jimmy Carter, born four months after the elder Bush, is 94. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are 72, as is President Donald Trump. Barack Obama is the youngest member of the club at 57. All sat in a front pew, with Trump on the end and first lady Melania Trump between him and Obama.
The funeral marks the first time that Trump has been in the same place with all his living predecessors. He stood when the Bush family entered. George W. Bush shook his hand, then Melania Trump’s, and worked his way to the end, greeting all the presidents and first ladies. Laura Bush and the Trumps exchanged greetings.
The elder Bush, who died at age 94, left office 26 years ago after one term as president, eight years as Ronald Reagan’s vice president, and stints in the U.S. House, as CIA director, chairman of the Republican Party and U.S. envoy to China. He was a Navy pilot
Since his death Friday night at home in Houston, memories of a kinder, gentler time in the nation’s political life have come flooding back. Thousands of mourners recalled his genial demeanor and lifetime of public service this week, paying their respects at the U.S. Capitol as Bush lay in state.
The eulogies
Presidential historian Jon Meacham, a Bush biographer, delivered a eulogy that charted the course of the former president’s life, highlighting the enduring impact of the nearly deadly plane crash Bush experienced while serving in World War II.
“Throughout the ensuing decades, President Bush would frequently ask, nearly daily, ‘Why me? Why was I spared?’” Meacham said. “And in a sense, the rest of his life was a perennial effort to prove himself worthy of salvation on that distant morning.”
“To him, his life was no longer his own,” the historian continued. “There were always more missions to undertake.”
Meacham was also sure to point out the lighter sides of Bush’s biography, recalling the time Bush accidentally shook the hand of a mannequin while on the campaign trail. That tale and others recounting Bush’s verbal flubs drew laughter from George W. Bush, who’s had similar gaffes.
But the historian also sought to capture Bush’s place in history, hailing him as “America’s last great solider-statesman, a 20th-century founding father.”
Meacham compared Bush’s “thousand points of light” to Abraham Lincoln’s call to “better angels,” describing them as “companion verses in America’s national hymn.” And while the historian noted Bush’s sometimes unyielding ambition, he said Bush’s “heart was steadfast.”
“An imperfect man, he left us a more perfect union,” Meacham said.
Other eulogies came from Brian Mulroney, Canada’s prime minister during Bush’s tenure, and former senator Alan Simpson, a longtime friend.
Mulroney lauded Bush for hammering out a trade deal with Canada and Mexico.
Speaking feet from Clinton, who finalized NAFTA, and Trump, who trashed it as the worst deal in U.S. history, Mulroney diplomatically noted that it had spurred unprecedented growth across the continent, even as it was “recently modernized and improved by new administrations.”
He posited that a century from now, historians will rank Bush atop the list of presidents, citing in particular his deft handling of the Soviet Union’s implosion. At a juncture fraught with peril for the world, he said, Bush provided “the Russian people the opportunity to build democracy in a country that had been ruled by czars and tyrants for a millennium.”
Dictators fell across Eastern Europe, and Germany stood on the precipice of reunification — another dangerous turning point for the world order.
“I believe it will be said that no occupant of the Oval Office was more courageous, more principled, and more honorable than George Herbert Walker Bush,” Mulroney predicted.