08 June 2004 08:44
Reagan to get state farewell in Washington
Washington, June 8 (PTI) The US capital, where Ronald Reagan as President almost lost his life to the bullet of an
assassin, is preparing to give him a ceremonial farewell reserved for the best and most beloved of the country's
citizens. Long missing from public view, he will be lifted up and accorded a state funeral filled with pomp and
spectacle, the muffled drum and riderless horse, silent throngs and the haunting recollections of past national
mourning. Federal offices will be closed Friday, the White House announced Monday night. Federal offices and programmes
essential for national defence, homeland security and other essential business might be kept open at the discretion of
agency heads. Many past and present world leaders are expected to attend the event. The participants include former
Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Prime Minister of Canada
Brian Mulroney. President George W Bush's democrat rival for the White House has suspended his campaign for a week
as a mark of respect for the late President. With thousands of people expected to attend, the mourning and services have
been declared national special security events because of the risk of a terrorist attack, the Department of Homeland
Security said. The funeral is a uniquely Washington event, the first in more than a generation, a rare and exquisitely
scripted goodbye that the former actor would have understood.
Borne through the streets by mounted soldiers in boots and spurs, in the footsteps of other dead statesmen, his body
will rest in state on a bier made for Abraham Lincoln, beneath the monumental fresco of George Washington in the Capitol
Rotunda, while tens of thousands pass in mourning, 'The Washington Post' reported. Starting Wednesday evening,
when his body arrives at Andrews Air Force Base from California, it will be transported by motorcade to 16th Street and
Constitution Avenue NW, where the casket will be transferred to a ceremonial Army caisson, dating from 1918, and drawn
by six matched horses along Constitution. In the hands of the blue-jacketed Caisson Platoon of the Army's elite 3rd
Infantry Regiment "Old Guard," the caisson will be accompanied by the traditional, and ghostly, riderless
horse to the Capitol, where the body will lie in state all day Thursday. It will be a scene reminiscent of the crisp
Wednesday in January 1973 when a similar cortege carried former president Lyndon B. Johnson's remains to the
Capitol, and the stunning days of November 1963 when the nation watched President John F. Kennedy's casket wind
through the streets of Washington. Reagan will be the first president since Johnson to rest before the public beneath
the 180-foot-high Capitol Rotunda, with its gigantic 139-year-old painting, the Apotheosis of Washington. Nixon's
funeral in 1994 was in California. Although Reagan would no doubt have been honoured by the tribute, he considered
California, where he moved in the 1930s after signing a movie contract with Warner Bros., his true home. (THROUGH ASIA
PULSE)
[Press Trust of India] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
