As the casket carrying the remains of Ronald Reagan made its way to the Capitol in the first state funeral in more than three decades, a country in the midst of a presidential campaign, a war in Iraq and a heightened alarm over terrorism stood still for a moment. The only sound came from the 21 military jets overhead, flying a missing-man formation over the coffin of the 40th president. The only sight: a cinematic farewell to a man who well understood the power of ceremony.
“I just keep thinking, ‘I can’t believe he’s gone,'” said Beth Synowiec, 32, a mother of two from Virginia Beach, Va., tears streaming as the procession passed. “You want someone like that to live forever.”
She had spent the afternoon waiting near the Capitol, trading Reagan stories with others who had come from around the country, some just for the funeral. They had been through a lot in one afternoon, running away together in a brief scare before the ceremony. Police told them to evacuate, fearing that a small plane was headed toward the Capitol. Minutes later, the spectators returned – it was a false alarm – and resumed their roles in the ritual.
“It’s comforting to be here, watching,” said Synowiec, her husband holding her hand. “President Reagan is gone, but he’s not gone. Look at all these people – he’s alive in all these people. And today we’re united because of him.”
People could remember attending Reagan’s first inaugural in 1981 and described a less fearful time when presidents could be closer to the people. The nostalgic notion that Reagan belonged to a simpler era resonated throughout. No one paid much attention to the snipers on rooftops, the security cameras, the men in plainclothes talking into their wrists, the sirens interrupting the stillness.
But some contended that the harmony did not exist in a vacuum. It came, they said, with an expiration date.
“We’re united to pay our respects, but within a week it’ll probably fade from our minds,” said Dev Jagadesan, 35, a government lawyer. “We’re naive to think there wasn’t division in Reagan’s time. … But back then there was a longer window of tolerance where you set aside differences. Today, everything is communicated faster, everything evaporates quicker.”
During President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s state funeral, radio reporters held out their microphones to broadcast the sounds of horses’ hooves on the capital’s streets. Yesterday, cable networks carried the ceremonies live, spectators called relatives on their cell phones for updates on the procession’s whereabouts, people held out camera phones to record the moment.
‘Like you knew him’
Still, in the crowds, some found a sense of intimacy.
“You felt attached to him, like you knew him, even though you didn’t,” said Richard Waite, 50, who came from Lusby. He recalled coming with his wife to Reagan’s first inaugural, when she was 8 1/2 months’ pregnant, and said the family takes pride that one of their children was born during the Reagan years.
Presidential inaugurations celebrate a beginning; state funerals pay homage at the end. There are few other times when the nation stages such an elaborate ritual steeped in history and pageantry. And for many, the moment delivered.
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“Look to your left!” Martin Hoyt whispered to no one in particular. Twenty-one F-15E fighter planes roared overhead in the missing man formation, one jet spiraling off and leaving an empty space. Then came the casket and, after it, a horse with backward-facing stirrups bearing Reagan’s own riding boots.
“There goes a great man,” said Hoyt, 38, once an intern in the Reagan administration.
“Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye,” a toddler said, waving as the casket moved slowly past.
A U.S. government not always known for its grace offered a moment of exquisite dignity.
“There’s a sense of completion and order in a chaotic world,” said Mindy Alderson, 46, a homemaker from Greensboro, N.C., who rearranged the family’s vacation to attend the procession. “We don’t just move on to the next thing. We want to take a minute to recognize the emotional side of life – what makes us human.”
But for some, the vision of one man’s casket on a cross-country tour while those of hundreds of soldiers killed in Iraq were ordered hidden from public scrutiny by the Bush administration proved too sad a contrast. Even as they paid respects, some did so with bruised feelings.
“If we could see those coffins, maybe we’d think more about all those soldiers getting killed, maybe then more people would understand the big picture, that people are losing their children over there,” said Marilyn Bell, 53, who drove with her husband from their home in Severn to witness the ceremony.
The Democrat said there was much talk about unity in the crowd, but she didn’t really understand what that meant. “We’re all here to see the ceremony, but we’re not united, we’re all standing in our own little space. I just feel like, ‘All right, we’re here to see this.’ That’s it.”
But for others, the day was the embodiment of Reagan: Even in death, he brought people together.
Mark Slaby, 32, an IBM sales executive from Chicago, was on a business trip to Austin, Texas, this week when he decided, on the spur of the moment, to spend $500 on a new plane ticket to Washington.
“This is my way of meeting him and saying goodbye at the same time,” he said.
Stirring pageantry
The modern state funeral was invested with even greater pageantry by Jacqueline Kennedy, who planned President John F. Kennedy’s funeral, an event that helped cement the Camelot era in national memory. It was an affair steeped in history – the first lady sent historians to the Library of Congress in the middle of the night to look up the details of Abraham Lincoln’s state funeral – and carried out with deep ceremony.
Reagan’s ceremony went off in grand style as well. His casket rests in the Capitol Rotunda on the catafalque that held Lincoln’s, the simple wooden platform under a ceiling fresco that features founding fathers mingling with gods and goddesses.
Synowiec recalled her fifth-grade teacher telling the class to write a letter to a government official. She picked President Reagan, and over the course of several months sent him several letters, including one with a picture of her pet rabbit, Frisky. Reagan wrote back, sending her pictures and a handwritten note on her birthday. In the midst of yesterday’s stagecraft, she thought about those letters.
“He was for real,” she said. “There was no fakeness.”
Even so, imagery ruled the day. As the procession ended, the crack of a 21-gun salute filled the air. Pallbearers carried the casket up the Capitol steps. And a president’s last act began to play out, the nation his audience once again.
<!– ART CREDITJOHN MAKELY : SUN STAFF
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTIn silent ceremony, the funeral procession for former President Ronald Reagan halts in front of the White House as his flag-draped coffin is placed on a horse-drawn caisson for the march to the Capitol.
CUTLINE TEXT–> <!– ART CREDITANDRE F. CHUNG : SUN STAFF
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTSpectators along Constitution Avenue watch a ceremonial flyover by 21 F-15E fighter jets as the caisson carrying the casket of former President Ronald Reagans crosses Pennsylvania Avenue during the funeral procession to the Capitol.
CUTLINE TEXT–>