Haggs
AI Team Member Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 2723 Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota	Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 10:51 am    Post subject: Mourners Gather to Honor President Reagan   I didn't ever know the guy, and he wasn't president while I was alive, but a lot of people seem pretty fond of his leadership and what he did for America. Sleep well Reagan.. Here's the news article from CNN Quote: SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Ten years ago, Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) wrote poignantly about his diagnosis of Alzheimer's, calling it "the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life." On Monday, his family prepared for his last journey, one that will take his remains to the Capitol and then to his final resting place in California. His body was to be moved Monday from a Santa Monica funeral home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Following a private 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. Scores of people began gathering at the Santa Monica funeral home before dawn Monday to add to impromptu memorials placed on the lawn in front. Crowds also started arriving early at Moorpark College, where mourners were to take shuttle buses a short distance to the library later in the day. 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 and the federal government will shut down that day in Reagan's honor. The funeral will be at Washington National Cathedral, where President Bush (news - web sites) will be among the speakers. The body will then be returned to Reagan's library in Simi Valley for a private burial service. Reagan, 93, died at home Saturday of pneumonia. On Sunday, mourners milled around the funeral home, many leaving behind American flags, flowers and jars of jelly beans ' Reagan's favorite treat. "Thank you for changing the world," said a handwritten note among the tokens of remembrance. People did the same at Reagan's boyhood home in Dixon, Ill. Ken Dunwoody, who grew up outside Dixon, said Reagan, while an icon of Republican politics, transcended political partisanship. "I just think of him as being an American," said Dunwoody, 82. "I wish we all could get back to that." The Reagan family's spokeswoman said former first lady Nancy Reagan was thankful for the thousands of expressions of sympathy and, despite her sadness, relieved that her husband was no longer struggling with Alzheimer's disease (news - web sites), which robbed him of his memory. When Reagan announced in a letter to the public in 1994 that he had Alzheimer's, he said he was embarking on "the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life." "I can tell you most certainly that 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," said spokeswoman Joanne Drake. "It's been a really hard 10 years for her." In a piece written for Time magazine before Reagan's death, Mrs. Reagan remembered her husband as "a man of strong principles and integrity" who felt his greatest accomplishment was finding a safe end to the Cold War. "I think they broke the mold when they made Ronnie," she wrote in the article appearing Monday. "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." Former President Carter said Sunday that the death of Reagan, who defeated him in the 1980 presidential election, was "a sad day for our country." "I probably know as well as anybody what a formidable communicator and campaigner that President Reagan was. It was because of him that I was retired from my last job," Carter said before teaching Sunday school in his hometown of Plains, Ga. Bush, in France to commemorate D-Day, recalled that 20 years earlier Reagan had come to Normandy on the anniversary of the June 6, 1944, invasion. "He was a courageous leader himself and a gallant leader in the cause of freedom, and today we honor the memory of Ronald Reagan," Bush said. In an essay on the op-ed page of Monday's New York Times, former Sen. Bob Dole wrote that "Ronald Reagan is smiling upon us today because we are working on what he could not complete." "Not only did he use his grace, charm, wit and indomitable optimism, he used his strength of character to convey the greatness of America," Dole wrote. Reagan will be buried in a crypt beneath a memorial site at the library some 45 miles north of Los Angeles. A curved wall adorned with shrubbery and ivy lines the memorial and has a three-line inscription from Reagan: "I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."
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