June 2004

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Final Hail to the Chief 6/11/2004 5:20 PM The nation bid a final farewell to Ronald Reagan on Friday in a funeral praising the former president for his lifelong optimism, sense of humor and political accomplishments as dignitaries from around the world and others watched solemnly from packed pews. With his sunset burial, said President Bush, "a great American story will close." Bells tolled 40 times to honor America's 40th president, as his casket left the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., after the funeral service. Read the article Reagan Hailed as 'Great Liberator' 6/11/2004 12:17 PM In tributes laced with laughter and tears, President Ronald Reagan was hailed Friday as a kind and modest soul who saw the best in America and a "great liberator" who helped to defeat communism. "Our 40th president wore his title lightly, and it fit like a white Stetson," said President Bush, offering a graceful nod to Reagan's self-made image as an American cowboy. Read the article Reagan & Bush, Father & Son 6/10/2004 9:01 PM "Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system," one president said in his inaugural, "which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity." "And we will reduce taxes," the other president said at his swearing-in, "to recover the momentum of our economy and reward the effort and enterprise of working Americans." The first president was Ronald Reagan. The second was George W. Bush. Two decades separated their inaugurations, but the similarities in the speeches are among several common threads of their presidencies. Read the article A Veteran Honors Ronald Reagan 6/10/2004 9:00 PM Tens of thousands weave through the line; clump up the gravel walkway and over the limestone of the Capitol to file past Ronald Reagan's flag-draped coffin. Some have waited in line for four hours, sweaty, thirsty, solemn to the moment they enter. Many recall moments that endeared Mr. Reagan to a nation. There was the speech at the Berlin wall. The disarming quip when he said to former President Carter, "There you go again." Or when he told his wife, Nancy, that he almost died by an assassin's bullet because, "Honey, I forgot to duck." Most of all, there is an enduring shared memory of Mr. Reagan as the man who loved his wife, as a loner that led the nation. Read the article Reagan's 50-Year Pen Pal Remembers Friend 6/10/2004 8:54 PM In the Oval Office, she always referred to him as "Mr. President," but in her letters, it was "Dear Ron." Philadelphia native Lorraine Wagner first wrote to President Reagan when she was 13 and he was in his 30s. Her request was an autographed picture. Out of 10 celebrities she wrote to, only then-actor Ronald Reagan wrote back. They were pen pals for the next 50 years. Read the article President Bush, Tens of Thousands Visit Casket 6/10/2004 8:53 PM President Bush paid his respects to former President Ronald Reagan Thursday, joining the tens of thousands of mourners who flocked to the Capitol to bid a final farewell to the 40th president. Arm in arm with First Lady Laura Bush, the president walked across the hushed rotunda to Reagan's casket, bowed his head in prayer and touched the flag draping the coffin. The Bushes then quickly exited. Supreme Court justices, tourists, Boy Scouts and world leaders were also among those who gazed upon Reagan's casket in silent contemplation under the Capitol Dome. Read the article Reagan's Casket Lies in State in Capitol 6/9/2004 10:04 PM With the storied riderless horse symbolizing the fallen president, Ronald Reagan's casket rolled on a century-old caisson to the Capitol on Wednesday for final tributes from high officials and common Americans in the first presidential state funeral in three decades. The 40th president lay in state under a dome where public servants from Abraham Lincoln forward have been honored. People stood by the thousands in quiet witness to his funeral procession along the broad expanse of Constitution Avenue and waited hours in steamy heat to pay last respects in the Capitol Rotunda. Read the article Reagan Remembered as Kind, Hopeful, Caring 6/9/2004 10:01 PM Stealing a few moments before she turned over her husband to the masses waiting to say their final goodbyes, Nancy Reagan rubbed her hands across the casket of Ronald Reagan, her lips moving, uttering unspoken words. But aside from a slight glistening in her eyes as she whispered to her husband, lying in state beneath a U.S. flag, the former first lady publicly remained totally composed throughout Wednesday, a day that saw her late husband carried across the nation and then remembered in a memorial service at the Capitol, where he will remain until his state funeral on Friday. During a service attended by hundreds of Washington dignitaries, the vice president and congressional leaders praised the 40th president for his humility, charm and never-ending hope. Read the article Reagan Ceremonies to Shift to Washington 6/9/2004 9:57 AM Ronald Reagan's body was flown to the nation's capitol Wednesday so that supporters and well-wishers around the Washington area can pay their respects to the nation's 40th president. More than 100,000 admirers of the Republican leader filed past the former president's flag-draped coffin at the hilltop library in California that bears his name. The Reagan family was to escort the body from the library Wednesday to the nearby Navy base at Point Mugu for a flight to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington aboard a presidential Boeing 747. Read the article State Funeral for Presidents Includes Centuries-old Rituals 6/9/2004 9:54 AM Former President Reagan will be remembered this week with a state funeral and military honors, the first such ceremony for a departed president since Lyndon Johnson's in 1973. Here are some answers to questions viewers may have while watching. Read the article The Gipper's Long Shadow 6/8/2004 9:39 PM Partisan politics pauses this week as America mourns the death of former President Ronald Reagan. But beneath the bowing heads, the flags at half-mast and the waning solitude of America's 40th president laying in repose, are the tremors of a beloved Republican icon dying during a pivotal election year. The political implications of Mr. Reagan's death are unclear. President Bush announced that Friday will be a national day of mourning to mark the funeral. The federal government will close down. Both Mr. Bush and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry will pull political advertising that day. The financial markets will be closed. Read the article The Woman Behind A Great Man 6/8/2004 6:58 PM From the first days of Ronald Reagan's administration, they were a glamorous couple, who seemed to enjoy the spotlight and who moved easily in the glare of publicity. Yet, no matter how public the occasion, Ronald and Nancy Reagan always seemed to share a very private pleasure with each other. No matter how solemn the moment, they managed to show their affection. In a Valentine's Day card the president once wrote: "February 14 may be the day that they observe and call Valentine's Day. But that is for people of only ordinary luck. I happen to have a Valentine's life which started on March 4, 1952, and will continue as long as I have you." Read the article Reagan's Farewell A Rare Gesture 6/8/2004 6:52 PM Even as thousands of average people lined up to view his casket on Tuesday, the late President Reagan was soon to receive a most extraordinary honor, even for presidents: to lie in state in the United States capitol. On Wednesday, Reagan's body is to be flown to Washington, D.C., where there will be a ceremony that night in the Capitol Rotunda. The body will then lie in state - only the 10th time that honor has been performed for a president, and the 27th instance overall, from 152 years ago with Henry Clay and most recently carried out in 1998, when two Capitol policemen slain by a gunmen were memorialized in the Rotunda. Read the article Estimated 52,000 View Reagan's Casket 6/8/2004 11:29 AM An estimated 52,000 mourners filed past former President Reagan's flag-draped casket in the 24 hours after the viewing began, officials said Tuesday. Waiting good-naturedly for as much as half a day in traffic jams and a parking lot, the throngs forced organizers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to extend the viewing period Tuesday by four hours. "He gave us eight years of service," said Keith Godliman, 50, of Santa Clarita. "It doesn't hurt for us to wait eight hours for him. He deserves us to wait eight hours for him." Read the article As President, Reagan Made us Proud Again 6/7/2004 4:38 PM Ronald Reagan, one of the most popular U.S. presidents of the 20th century, transformed politics and government while ensuring that the United States would win the Cold War. His death on Saturday at 93 stirred the nation's memories of the White House in the 1980s - of eight years in which Mr. Reagan restored the power of the presidency, cut taxes and nurtured prosperity, strengthened the military and made unabashed patriotism fashionable again. Read the article State Funerals Have Long History of Tradition 6/7/2004 12:03 PM Ronald 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. Presidents, former presidents and presidents-elect are entitled to state funerals. It is left to the family to decide whether one should be held and how involved it should be. No detail in the planning is too small. The military, for instance, has a 138-page planning document that dictates everything from seating charts to floral arrangements. Processions must move at 20 miles per hour. The footsteps of military guards are elaborately prescribed. Read the article Nation to Begin Week of Mourning for Reagan 6/7/2004 12:00 PM Californians were expected to pay their final respects to Ronald Reagan on Monday, touching off a week of official mourning for the nation's 40th president. Reagan, 93, died Saturday following a 10-year battle with Alzheimer's disease. He had left office at the end of his second term in 1989. On Monday, his body was to be moved from a Santa Monica funeral home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Following a private family ceremony, it will lie in repose at the library through Tuesday night, giving Reagan's fellow Californians a chance to pay their final respects to the man who was their governor from 1967 to 1975. On Wednesday, the former president's body was to be flown to Washington, D.C. Following a state funeral, it will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until Friday. Read the article Hitting the History Books 6/2/2004 9:15 PM White House political czar Karl Rove is known for his voracious appetite for American political history. So, it should come as no surprise, as the St. Petersburg Times reports, that two years ago he dispatched chief Bush-Cheney strategist Matthew Dowd to the presidential libraries of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush to scour their old memos, polls and organizational plans. Read the article Poll: Campaign Ads Panned 6/2/2004 9:10 PM In the battle for the White House, the air war has begun in earnest. Both John Kerry and George W. Bush launched opening barrages of television advertising this spring, hoping to define themselves and the issues at stake in the election. And already, most U.S. voters have seen those ads and almost all the voters in the hotly contested "battleground" states have seen them. Yet many also say the ads were negative and did not offer any new information. Many voters also view the ads they see through a very partisan lens. Read the article Bikers Roll For Bush 6/2/2004 9:08 PM Members of the Rolling Thunder motorcycling group revved their engines on the White House driveway Sunday during a visit with President Bush, who took about 10 bikers in jeans and leather jackets for an Oval Office tour. The roar from bikers on the Mall could be heard on the South Lawn as eight motorcycles, headlights illuminated and American flags jutting off the rear seats, rolled up the driveway to the South Portico where Mr. Bush was waiting to greet them. Read the article