State Funeral For Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th president of the United States is being mourned and remembered across a country and a world that he influenced mightily at the end of the 20th century.

The cheerful crusader and "Great Communicator" who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, scaling back American government and convincing the country it was "morning again in America," died Saturday after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease.

Mr. Reagan will be memorialized at the first presidential state funeral in more than three decades, a ritual rich in traditions from the country's earliest days. Flags at the White House and across the country are flying at half staff, and Monday, the New York Stock Exchange will open two minutes late - in tribute to the former president.

The former president's death was marked by silences and prayer at ball parks, church services and other gatherings, and one by one, around the world, dignitaries, friends, politicians, and loved ones are each making their own statements about Mr. Reagan and his legacy.

"I think they broke the mold when they made Ronnie," says former first lady Nancy Reagan, in a Time Magazine article being published Monday, and written before Mr. Reagan's death. "He was a man of strong principles and integrity. He had absolutely no ego, and he was very comfortable in his own skin; therefore, he didn't feel he ever had to prove anything to anyone."

The funeral is set for Friday, which President Bush has declared a national day of mourning.

The state funeral will be held at the National Cathedral in Washington. Mr. Bush will speak.

A family spokeswoman says Mr. Reagan's body will lie in repose Monday and Tuesday at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, California, and will then be flown to Washington on Wednesday.

There will be a formal funeral procession Wednesday evening from Andrews Air Force Base to the U.S. Capitol, where the body will lie in state until Friday morning.

After the 11:30 a.m. funeral, the body will be flown back to California for burial at the Reagan library.

Mr. Bush on Sunday paid tribute to Mr. Reagan during a D-Day commemoration at Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

"Twenty summers ago, another American president came here to Normandy to pay tribute to the men of D-Day. He was a courageous man, himself, and a gallant leader in the cause of freedom. And today we honor the memory of Ronald Reagan," Mr. Bush said, prompting applause. French and American flags flew at half-staff.

Mr. Reagan was the oldest man ever elected to the White House. He was re-elected in 1984, with the greatest landslide in American history. He is widely credited with restoring optimism and confidence to nation scarred by Vietnam and Watergate.

Over two presidential terms, from 1981 to 1989, Mr. Reagan reshaped the Republican Party in his conservative image, fixed his eye on the demise of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism and tripled the national debt to $3 trillion in his single-minded competition with the other superpower.

"Ronald Reagan had a higher claim than any other leader to have won the Cold War for liberty and he did it without a shot being fired," former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said.

At the time of Mr. Reagan's retirement, his very name suggested a populist brand of conservative politics that still inspires the Republican Party.

He declared at the outset, "Government is not the solution, it's the problem," although reducing that government proved harder to do in reality than in his rhetoric.

Even so, he challenged the status quo on welfare and other programs that had put government on a growth spurt ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal strengthened the federal presence in the lives of average Americans.

In foreign affairs, he built the arsenals of war while seeking and achieving arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.

Mr. Reagan's famed "Star Wars" program drew the Soviets into a costly arms race it couldn't afford. His 1987 declaration to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall — "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" — was the ultimate challenge of the Cold War.

Gorbachev on Sunday hailed Mr. Reagan as a great president and said he was distraught by news of his death.

"Reagan was a statesman who, despite all disagreements that existed between our countries at the time, displayed foresight and determination to meet our proposals halfway and change our relations for the better, stop the nuclear race, start scrapping nuclear weapons, and arrange normal relations between our countries," Gorbachev said.

"I do not know how other statesmen would have acted at that moment, because the situation was too difficult. Mr. Reagan, whom many considered extremely rightist, dared to make these steps, and this is his most important deed," the former Soviet leader said.

In his second term, Mr. Reagan was dogged by revelations that he authorized secret arms sales to Iran while seeking Iranian aid to gain release of American hostages held in Lebanon. Some of the money was used to aid rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.

Despite the ensuing investigations, he left office in 1989 with the highest popularity rating of any retiring president in the history of modern-day public opinion polls.

Five years after leaving office, the nation's 40th president told the world in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer's, an incurable illness that destroys brain cells. He said he had begun "the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life."

Although fiercely protective of Mr. Reagan's privacy, former first lady Reagan let people know his mental condition had deteriorated terribly. Last month, she said: "Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him."

"It's been a really hard ten years for her," Reagan family spokeswoman Joanne Drake said of the former first lady, at a news conference Sunday outside the funeral home in Santa Monica. "While it is an extremely sad time for Mrs. Reagan, there is definitely a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering, and that he has gone to a better place."

Mr. Reagan's presidency overlaid the spendthrift 1980s, tagged by some as the "Greed Decade." It was a time of conspicuous consumption, hostile takeovers, new billionaires. American power was ascendant after the angst of the 1970s over Vietnam and the release of the hostages in Iran at the start of his presidency.

In large ways and small — from the president's tough talk against the Evil Empire and "welfare queens" to his wife's designer dresses and new china for the White House — the Reagans seemed to embody the times.

And for all the glowing talk of Mr. Reagan's folksy appeal and infectious optimism, it was a time of growing division between rich and poor. Now, as then, critics point to Reaganomics in lamenting big defense spending at the expense of domestic needs and a growing national debt.

Mr. Reagan, a Democrat in his acting days, got a taste of politics when he served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947 to 1952.

He appeared in more than

Near-tragedy struck on his 70th day as president. On March 30, 1981, Mr. Reagan was leaving a Washington hotel after addressing labor leaders when a young drifter, John Hinckley, fired six shots at him. A bullet lodged an inch from Mr. Reagan's heart, but he recovered.

Mr. Reagan lived longer than any U.S. president, spending his last decade in the shrouded seclusion wrought by his disease, tended by his wife, whom he called Mommy, and the select few closest to him. Now, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton are the surviving ex-presidents.

"Ronald Reagan was an excellent leader of our nation during challenging times at home and abroad. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to Nancy and his family," Ford said.

President Clinton called Mr. Reagan "a true American original."

Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry said that Mr. Reagan's "love of country was infectious. Even when he was breaking Democrats hearts, he did so with a smile and in the spirit of honest and open debate."

Mr. Reagan's oldest daughter, Maureen, from his first marriage, died in August 2001 at age 60 from cancer. Three other children survive: Michael, from his first marriage, and Patti Davis and Ron from his second.