Final Respects For Mr. Reagan

In a display of pageantry not seen since Lyndon Johnson's funeral in 1973, a military procession carried Ronald Reagan's flag-draped coffin through Washington to the Capitol, where after eulogies from Dick Cheney and others, ordinary Americans who waited hours to watch the ceremony are filing past the casket to pay their final respects.

With the storied riderless horse symbolizing the fallen president, Ronald Reagan's casket rolled on a century-old caisson to the Capitol on Wednesday past a crowd of thousands standing quiet witness to the high pageantry of America's first presidential state funeral in three decades.

Drums sounded, marking the cadence of the marchers, and cheers briefly broke out for Nancy Reagan at the head of the procession taking the body of the 40th president along the broad expanse of Constitution Avenue to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. She waved repeatedly, looking wan.

"God bless you, Nancy," a man cried out.

For the slow mile and half procession down Constitution Avenue to the Capitol, military tradition dictates the march move at 100 steps per minute, exactly three miles per hour, reports CBS News Correspondent Byron Pitts.

The military funeral procession convened at the west front entrance of the Capitol where the former president was carried by hand by an eight-member casket bearing team with one member of each branch of the military taking part, reports CBS News Anchor Dan Rather.

They climbed the 75 steps on the outside and then 33 more on the inside up into the rotunda with the casket holding the former president.

The coffin weighs over 700 pounds and requires three different teams of military carriers to transport it to the Capitol rotunda, reports Rather.

In his death as in his life, she was beside him at every step. When his casket reached the landing of the Capitol, she reached out and touched it. She gazed at it, as she had been known so long for gazing at him.

Vice President Dick Cheney hailed Ronald Reagan's vision and determination, saying he gave "hope to the oppressed, shamed the oppressor and ended the evil empire" of the Soviet Union.

Cheney traced the life of Reagan from his simple beginnings in Illinois through the achievements of his presidency and his struggle with Alzheimer's disease.

"Who else but Ronald Reagan could face his own decline in death with the message of hope?" Cheney said Wednesday evening during a ceremony at the Capitol that began a 34-hour period of lying in state.

Looking over to Reagan's widow, Nancy, Cheney said: "We honor your grace. ... I hope it's a comfort to know how much he means to us."

Cheney was the main speaker at the ceremony. President Bush was wrapping up meeting of the G-8 economic summit on Sea Island, Ga. He was expected to meet with Mrs. Reagan and her family Thursday night and offer a eulogy at Reagan's state funeral Friday.

Reagan's body arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland from California to close the first chapter in a slowly unfolding week of remembrance. In California, more than 100,000 people had paid respects to Reagan in his presidential hilltop library.

Reagan's funeral procession was formed within view of the South Lawn of the White House in steamy heat, the crowd standing 15 people deep on each side of the avenue. Following a long tradition, rarely seen, the body of the former president, who was an avid horseman, was carried on a black caisson drawn by six horses. The artillery carriage was built in 1918 to carry provisions and ammunition.

Behind that trailed Sgt. York, the horse with an empty saddle and boots reversed in the stirrups to symbolize a warrior who will ride no more and looks back a final time on his troops. Sgt. York stepped lively, tossing his head and appearing a bit spooked on occasion.

Overhead — only 1,000 feet overhead — 21 fighter jets screamed by in four formations, a wingman breaking away and rocketing upward to signify the loss of a comrade.

By early evening, 100 people on the National Mall had been treated for heat-related illnesses, said Alan Etter, speaking for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. U.S. Capitol Police trucked in about 150,000 of bottles of water and turned on large fans for people waiting in line to view Reagan's casket in the Capital Rotunda.

In the service opening 34 hours of Reagan's lying in state, Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, noted a tradition dating to 1824 of paying final tribute to public servants in the Rotunda.

"President Abraham Lincoln was the first president to lie in state under this Capitol dome," he said. "In the coming days, thousands will come to these hallowed halls to say goodbye to another son of Illinois who, like Lincoln, appealed to our best hopes, not our worst fears."

At Andrews, Mrs. Reagan walked slowly down the steps of the Boeing 747 that was sent by President Bush and watched silently as body bearers drawn from all branches of the armed forces carried her husband's casket from the plane. "Hail to the Chief" rang out and cannon fired, followed by "My Country 'Tis of Thee." Flags snapped in the stiff wind.

To Carol Williams of Chesterfield, Va., all the fanfare was for a common man.

"They didn't live in Camelot, they lived in reality with the rest of us," said Williams, a college professor who came before dawn and took first place in line for the night's public viewing.

Washington last staged these presidential rites in 1973, for Lyndon Johnson, less than a decade after John Kennedy's assassination produced the state funeral carved most deeply in America's memory.

Reagan's procession sometimes had the feel of a parade, in contrast to the shock and grief that attended every stage of the slain President Kennedy's funeral.

As always, every clicking step of shined boots, every sounding of the bugle, every firing of rifle and cannon was tightly scripted. As always, people made their unscripted emotional connections.

"He stood against communism, he believed in small government," said Bill Richardson, an engineer from Louisville, Ky., who watched the procession.

Gene Eiring, 49, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel from Custer, S.D., said he and his wife had dropped everything to rush to Washington. "He was my commander in chief for eight years," Eiring said. "He served so unselfishly, it was the least I could do for him."

In California, during a 45-minute motorcade to Point Mugu Naval Air Station, Calif., for the flight east, crowds watched from overpasses, traffic stopped on the other side of the freeway and some drivers got out and stood with hands over hearts.

Farm workers near the base climbed off tractors, removed hats from their heads and put them over their hearts. A little boy stood at attention and saluted from the tailgate of a pickup truck by an onion field. "Rest Well, President Reagan," said a sign.

Reagan, who died Saturday at 93, will be buried Friday in a sunset ceremony on the Simi Valley library grounds.

In Washington, 141 embassies accepted invitations to send representatives to the ceremony at Congress on Wednesday evening that begins Reagan's period of lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

Reagan returned in death to a Congress he loved to scold. "That big white dome, bulging with new tax revenues," he would say. "Tax and spend crowd," he called the inhabitants. "I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."

Seventeen years ago, he compared Democratic lawmakers to the "screeching" periodic cicadas that then — and again this spring — have infested the city.

Those battles were bygone Wednesday in a tribute drawing together Republicans who idolized Reagan and Democrats who liked him even while abhoring some of his conservative policies.

The Senate voted 98-0 to pass a resolution documenting Reagan's achievements from birth through Hollywood and the California governor's office to the White House. A House resolution, passed 375-0, said Reagan "championed freedom and democracy throughout the world."

First elected in 1980, Reagan won re-election in 1984. In 1994, he released a letter to the nation saying he had Alzheimer's disease and was embarking on "the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life."

President Bush planned to come back from the Group of Eight meeting in Georgia on Thursday and, with his wife Laura, call on Mrs. Reagan at Blair House, the official guest residence across the street from the White House.

Aides said Bush would visit the casket Thursday evening. Bush and his father, who was Reagan's vice president and succeeded him in the White House, will be among the eulogists Friday.