Rep. Costello recalls a ‘kindler, gentler’ time at Bush’s service

When George Herbert Walker Bush was inaugurated as the United States’s 41st president, Ryan Costello was a 13-year-old Owen J. Roberts School District student just beginning to feel an interest in the world of politics.

On that January 1989 day in Washington, Bush gave Americans an idea of what he wanted the country he had been elected to lead to achieve.

“America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle.,” Bush said his address. “We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.”

On Wednesday as Costello, a soon-to-be retired member of the U.S. House of Representatives, sat mere feet from a row of former presidents and dignitaries, to hear Bush eulogized during his formal state funeral, he remembered the message that Bush had tried to convey.

“I kept coming back to his ‘kinder, gentler’ quote from his time in office, and thinking those words matter now more than ever,” Costello, R6th, of West Goshen, wrote in an e-mail about his thoughts on Bush’s memorial service.

“It was one of, if not the most, regal events I’ve ever witnessed,” wrote Costello of the funeral, attended by all the nation’s living presidents. “I was seated about 30 feet off the the left of the presidents so it was a bit surreal. There was a television screen in front of me to observe their expressions in real time.

“I thought (historian and Bush biographer) Jon Meecham’s speech was phenomenal,” the outgoing congressman wrote. “I found meaning in him calling (Bush) ‘the last soldier statesman’ of a rich tradition of American presidents. Also ‘a 20th century founding father,’ something I agree with and hope we return to in our politics.

Costello wrote that the words used to describe the late president gave him time to reflect on his own time in office.

“I always viewed (him) as a good role model by which to conduct oneself in public office,” he wrote. “Friendly, focused on solving problems, respectful of the honor and obligation of serving, someone special and to whom the country should be grateful for as a citizen servant.”

Costello’s comments came as the nation bid goodbye to Bush with high praise, cannon salutes and gentle humor, celebrating the life of the Texan who embraced a lifetime of service in Washington and was the last president to fight for the U.S. in wartime. Three former presidents looked on at Washington National Cathedral as a fourth — George W. Bush — eulogized his dad as “the brightest of a thousand points of light.”

After three days of remembrance in the capital city, the Air Force plane with Bush’s casket left for a final service in Houston and burial Thursday at his family plot on the presidential library grounds at Texas A&M University in College Station. His final resting place is alongside Barbara Bush, his wife of 73 years, and Robin Bush, the daughter who died of leukemia at age 3.

His plane, which often serves as Air Force One, arrived at Ellington Field outside Houston in late afternoon.

The national funeral service at the cathedral was a tribute to a president, a patriarch and a faded political era that prized military service and public responsibility. It was laced with indirect comparisons to President Donald Trump but was not consumed by them, as speakers focused on Bush’s public life and character — with plenty of cracks about his goofy side, too.

Trump sat with his wife, a trio of ex-presidents and their wives, several of the group sharp critics of his presidency and one of them, Hillary Clinton, his 2016 Democratic foe. Apart from courteous nods and some handshakes, there was little interaction between Trump and the others.

George W. Bush broke down briefly at the end of his eulogy while invoking the daughter his parents lost in 1953 and his mother, who died in April. He said he took comfort in knowing “Dad is hugging Robin and holding Mom’s hand again.”

The family occupied the White House for a dozen years — the 41st president defeated after one term, the 43rd serving two. Jeb Bush stepped up to try to extend that run but fell short when Trump won the 2016 Republican primaries.

But he took a lighter tone, too, noting that Bush, campaigning in a crowd in a department store, once shook hands with a mannequin. Rather than flushing in embarrassment, he simply quipped, “Never know. Gotta ask.”

Meacham recounted how comedian Dana Carvey once said the key to doing an impersonation of Bush was “Mr. Rogers trying to be John Wayne.”

None of that would be a surprise to Bush. Meacham had read his eulogy to him, said Bush spokesman Jim McGrath, and Bush responded to it with the crack: “That’s a lot about me, Jon.”

The congregation at the cathedral, filled with foreign leaders and diplomats, Americans of high office and others touched by Bush’s life, rose for the arrival of the casket, accompanied by clergy of faiths from around the world. In their row together, Trump and former Presidents Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton stood with their spouses and all placed their hands over their hearts.

Alan Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming, regaled the congregation with stories from his years as Bush’s friend in Washington. More seriously, he recalled that when he went through a rough patch in the political game, Bush conspicuously stood by him against the advice of aides. “You would have wanted him on your side,” he said.

Simpson said Bush “loved a good joke — the richer the better. And he threw his head back and gave that great laugh, but he never, ever could remember a punchline. And I mean never.”

George W. Bush turned the humor back on the acerbic ex-senator, saying of the late president: “He placed great value on a good joke, so he chose Simpson to speak.”

Meacham praised Bush’s call to volunteerism, placing his “1,000 points of light” alongside Abraham Lincoln’s call to honor “the better angels of our nature” in the American rhetorical canon. Meacham called those lines “companion verses in America’s national hymn.”

Trump had mocked “1,000 points of light” last summer at a rally, saying “What the hell is that? Has anyone ever figured that one out? And it was put out by a Republican, wasn’t it?”

Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney praised Bush as a strong world leader who helped oversee the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union and helped bring about the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, signed into law by his successor, Clinton.

With Trump, a bitter NAFTA critic, seated in the front row, Mulroney hailed the “largest and richest free trade area in the history of the world.” The three countries have agreed on a revised trade agreement pushed by Trump.

Earlier, a military band played “Hail to the Chief” as Bush’s casket was carried down the steps of the U.S. Capitol, where he had lain in state. Family members looked on as servicemen fired off a cannon salute.

Trump tweeted Wednesday that the day marked “a celebration for a great man who has led a long and distinguished life.”

Bush’s death makes Carter, also 94 but more than 100 days younger, the oldest living ex-president.

Following the cathedral service, the hearse and its long motorcade drove to the National Mall to pass by the World War II Memorial, a nod to the late president’s service as a World War II Navy pilot, then transferred his remains at Joint Base Andrews for the flight home to Texas with members of his family.

Bush will lie in repose at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church before his burial Thursday.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.