Presidents and other dignitaries gathered for Richard Nixon's funeral Wednesday, but the night belonged to ordinary people who stood for hours in chilly, damp weather to say goodbye.
Mourners waited up to eight hours in a line that at its peak was three miles long to file past the flag-draped mahogany casket of the 37th president, borne home with fanfare Tuesday to the place of his austere childhood."You're standing out there for hours in the cold. You don't know what to expect. But those five minutes made the whole thing worth it. It was worth every minute," said a tearful Barbara Casey, 46, of Westminster.
Nixon's body was carried home aboard the same blue-and-white jet that brought him back to California after he resigned in disgrace 20 years ago. He died Friday in New York at age 81 after a stroke.
An estimated 25,000 people had filed past the closed casket at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace by early Wednesday, waiting for hours as temperatures fell below 50 degrees. The viewing continued until noon, with the funeral Wednesday evening.
"I would have been here even if the wait had been all night," said Dennis Elmore, 41, of San Jacinto, emerging from the library early Wednesday morning. "I turned and saw the coffin, and there he was. His soul is there. You can feel the aura."
In the library's lobby, mourners were greeted by a photograph of a grinning Nixon giving a thumbs-up gesture. Wreaths from China, Poland and Russia adorned the coffin, which stood on a pedestal under the gaze of a military honor guard.
Wednesday's ceremony was for the powerful, with every living president and delegations from at least 55 countries expected. President Clinton, who as a student protested Nixon's Vietnam War policies, was to deliver a eulogy.
Clinton's press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, said Clinton "believes that Nixon's life ought to be judged in its totality and not by any particular event, that he was involved in public service for nearly 50 years and that he had many accomplishments, some setbacks during those years, but that history will remember him for his life more broadly."
Nixon is to be buried next to his wife, Pat, a few steps from the tiny clapboard farmhouse built by Nixon's father. Nixon was born there and lived there until he was 9.
Edward Nixon, the youngest of the five Nixon children, fought back tears as he remembered the brother who was 17 years his senior.
"He was like a second father to me and our cousins," Edward Nixon recalled. "He would step in whenever it appeared there would be fights and make sure we would all play by the rules."
The 37th president went into a self-imposed, five-year exile in California after he resigned in 1974 rather than risk impeachment over the Watergate scandal.
He did not want a Washington funeral, and his family declined to have his body lie in state in the Capitol rotunda.
Members of Congress marked his death in the rotunda anyway Tuesday, placing a large wreath at its center, where the coffin would have been.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Hill F-16s perform a ceremonial flyby
F-16s from Hill Air Force Base performed a ceremonial missing man flyby at former President Richard Nixon's funeral Wednesday. Twenty-one Fighting Falcons from the 388th Fighter Wing flew over the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif. Lt. Col. Tim Brown flew the 21st plane, which trailed a formation of the others and pulled out, climbing vertically out of sight signifying the missing man.