THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT GEORGE H.W. BUSH FUNERAL SERVICES
HOUSTON — Former President George H.W. Bush will be honored during several private and public events in Houston and Washington, D.C., before he is buried in Texas next to wife, Barbara, and their daughter, Robin, who died in 1953.
The events for Bush, who died Friday at age 94, will be held over four days. They include a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral and a private service at Bush’s longtime church in Houston. The public will be able to pay their last respects during public viewings of his casket in both cities. Here are details about those events:
From Houston to Washington
Bush’s body will be transported by a motorcade Monday morning from a Houston funeral home to Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base, a Texas Air National Guard base. The casket will be loaded onto a plane during a departure ceremony scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. CST and flown to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
Relatives accompanying the casket will include his sons, former President George W. Bush and Neil Bush, along with members of their immediate families. The rest of the Bush family is expected to be at Joint Base Andrews when the body arrives.
State funeral
In Washington, Bush will lie in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol from Monday at 7:30 p.m. EST until Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. EST. His casket will be transported by motorcade Wednesday morning to the National Cathedral, where a state funeral will be held at 11 a.m. EST. President Donald Trump has indicated he and first lady Melania Trump will attend the state funeral.
Trump has said he plans to designate Wednesday as a national day of mourning.
Return to Houston
Following the service at the National Cathedral, Bush will be flown to Houston on Wednesday with a scheduled arrival of around 4:30 p.m. CST. His body will be transported by motorcade to St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, where he and his wife regularly worshipped. A public viewing of Bush’s casket will be held at the church from 6:45 p.m. CST on Wednesday until 6 a.m. CST on Thursday.
On Thursday, a private funeral service with about 1,200 invited guests will be held at the church starting at 10 a.m. CST. After the hourlong service, a motorcade will transport Bush’s casket to a train station north of Houston, near the international airport named after Bush.
A ceremony will be held at the train station as Bush’s casket is loaded onto a Union Pacific train. The train will take about 2½ hours to travel roughly 70 miles to the city of College Station, home to Bush’s presidential library at Texas A&M University. The locomotive has been painted the colors of the Air Force One plane used during his presidency and bears the number “4141” in honor of the 41st president.
Burial in College Station
The train is scheduled to arrive in College Station on Thursday around 3:45 p.m. CST. Bush’s casket will then be transported by motorcade to the presidential library, where he will be buried at the gated family plot near his wife and their daughter Robin, who died of leukemia at age 3. Barbara Bush died on April 17 at their Houston home. The couple was married for 73 years, longer than any other U.S. presidential couple.
Ceremonies at the presidential library will include a missing man formation flyover. The casket will then be rolled along a path through woods, over a bridge and over a creek for burial during a private graveside service with Bush’s family.