June 8, 2004
Down to the Last Detail, a Reagan-Style Funeral
By ELISABETH BUMILLERand ELIZABETH BECKER
|
|
ASHINGTON, June 7--Nothing has been left to chance in the 300-page funeral plan for Ronald Reagan.
A riderless jet-black horse will walk with Mr. Reagan’s riding boots turned backward, as Nancy Reagan requested. A group of F-15’s will streak above Constitution Avenue in the missing-man formation, as the family wanted.
And Mr. Reagan will be buried at his presidential library in the Simi Valley hills in time for the golden light of a California sunset, which he himself planned as the final image of his life.
But Washington was still scrambling frantically on Monday to prepare for the first presidential state funeral in more than three decades, an inaugural in reverse, pulled together in five days instead of 10 weeks.
Many of the rites for the last production of the man who was the best-known practitioner of presidential stagecraft will be dictated by history and military custom, since all American presidents are entitled to state funerals. But the details were adapted to meet the Reagans’ personal wishes and have been reviewed yearly by Mrs. Reagan.
The result is to be pageantry that is reminiscent of what the Reagans first brought to Washington nearly a quarter-century ago.
“This is the way he would have wanted it,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, Mr. Reagan’s last White House chief of staff. The four living former American presidents are expected, as are leaders and dignitaries from as many as 170 nations, which may be one of the largest gatherings of top foreign officials ever in Washington. Mr. Reagan’s body will arrive in Washington on Wednesday from California and proceed by horse-drawn caisson up Constitution Avenue to the Capitol Rotunda, where he will lie in state through Thursday. On Friday, there will be a funeral service at Washington National Cathedral, where President Bush will deliver a eulogy.
Mr. Reagan’s body will then return late on Friday to California for the sunset burial.
In one break with tradition, Mr. Reagan’s coffin will be carried up the West Front of the Capitol, not the East Front, the custom for presidential funerals in the past. The switch was practical as well as highly symbolic: The West Front is at present the only formal entrance into the Capitol, because the East Front is closed for renovations. But Mr. Reagan was also the first president to switch his inaugural address from the East Front to the West, partly because there was more space, and partly so he could make the point of looking toward his political roots in California.
In another request, Mr. Reagan asked for the hymn “Amazing Grace” to be played by bagpipes at his burial in California.
“It is an American service, and it is as American as Ronald Reagan, but there are some touches that go back to his Irish-English background,” said Frederick J. Ryan Jr., the chairman of the board of the Ronald Reagan Foundation, who helped plan the funeral with a small group of Reagan loyalists, including Michael K. Deaver, Reagan’s image maker, and Sheila Tate, Mrs. Reagan’s White House press secretary.
Mr. Ryan said that officials from the Military District of Washington, who oversee presidential funerals, asked the Reagans to begin planning the rites in 1989, the year Mr. Reagan left office, as is the custom. (Former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush have a funeral plan on file with the Military District, but Bill Clinton does not.)
Many presidents have chose not to have a state funeral, like Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose rites were held at the family home in Hyde Park, N.Y. Many others have chosen not to lie in state, like Richard M. Nixon, who was buried in a simple ceremony at his presidential library in Yorba Linda, Calif. Mr. Nixon, who resigned in 1974 at the height of the Watergate scandal, never felt welcome in Washington.
But Lyndon B. Johnson had a full state funeral in Washington in 1973, as did Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1969 and John F. Kennedy in 1963. “It’s become standard procedure in the 20th century,” said Betty Koed, the assistant Senate historian. “Part of it has to do with the advent of television. This gives an opportunity for the American people to participate in a way they couldn’t before.”
Command central for funeral planning is the Joint Operations Center of the Military District of Washington, inside Fort McNair in the southeastern quadrant of the capital. The Military District includes 1,200 soldiers of the Third United States Infantry Regiment, otherwise known as the Old Guard, who are in charge of transporting Mr. Reagan’s coffin from California to Washington and back.
Some of Mr. Reagan’s former presidential advance staff, who planned all his trips while he was in office, are also volunteering for the funeral. Among them is Rick Ahearn, the man who can be seen behind Mr. Reagan in the photographs capturing the assassination attempt in 1981. On Monday afternoon, Mr. Ahearn was in the rotunda planning the logistics for how Mr. Reagan’s coffin would be received.
Invitations for the Friday service at the National Cathedral had not even gone out from the State Department by Monday afternoon, but foreign leaders were already planning their trips. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, who sent his letter of condolences to Mrs. Reagan on Sunday, wrote that President Reagan would always be revered there because “his vision of a free and united Europe helped pave the way” for a unified Germany. Canada also decided to send its head of state, Adrienne Clarkson, governor general of Canada, even before invitations were in hand.
Other countries, however, held off final plans until their embassies in Washington received the official invitation to attend the ceremony at the rotunda on Thursday and the funeral on Friday.
Even Ireland, the home of Mr. Reagan’s forebears, who hailed from Ballypooreen in County Tipperary, had yet to hear from the administration.
“The funeral is by invitation only,” said Josephine Doyle, administrator at the Irish Embassy here. “We don’t know whether it will be Prime Minister Bertie Ahern or President Mary McAleese. We’re waiting to be invited.”
At the State Department, a task force for the event was set up in the Office of Protocol and was immediately besieged by officials and dignitaries asking for details. At day’s end, the White House had yet to confirm a list of the countries to be invited or the final wording of the invitation.
Officials said that by Wednesday they would have a list of those who will attend, their times of arrival and departure, and the order of seniority of the foreign dignitaries.
“Honestly, this is in flux,” said Kurtis Cooper, a spokesman at the State Department. “But by Thursday the State Department will have coordinated the representatives from foreign governments attending the funeral.”
Most of these heads of states and foreign dignitaries are expected to be put up at the often-sumptuous residences of their ambassadors here in Washington. Sweden’s deputy prime minister, Lars Engqvist cq, will represent his country and stay at the 1920’s Mediterranean-style residence across the street from the Department of Homeland Security.
The question of seniority will be sorted once the State Department compiles a list of foreign guests. At one of the last big ceremonies on the death of a world leader, that of former French President François Mitterrand in 1996, King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia led the parade of dignitaries, said Roland Eng, the Cambodian ambassador to the United States.
Mr. Duberstein recalled Monday how Mr. Reagan had picked out the time and spot for his burial during the groundbreaking for his library, toward the end of his second term.
“I remember talking about that with him,” Mr. Duberstein said. “He said dusk is the time to do this. He understood that this would be his closing scene.”