SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Ronald Wilson Reagan went to his final rest on a California hilltop Friday in a cinematic finish to a life that took him from a small town in the Midwest, to the glamour of Hollywood, to the role of a lifetime as the nation's 40th president.
As the sun slipped toward the Pacific Ocean, a lone bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" during a burial service at Reagan's presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., that closed the curtain on six days of remembrance, pageantry and patriotic ritual for a larger-than-life figure whose influence was felt around the globe.
After maintaining her composure in public all week, Nancy Reagan dissolved into tears after receiving the carefully folded flag that had encased her husband's casket. She rested her head on the coffin and cried softly while her children and her stepson, Michael Reagan, tried to comfort her.
During the intensely personal service the Reagan children offered emotional tributes to their father.
"You knew my father as governor and as president, but I knew him as Dad," said Michael Reagan, the former president's adopted son who recalled how his father had raced with him and his brothers and sisters, always making sure that the races ended in a tie.
"I don't know why Alzheimer's was allowed to steal so much of my father before releasing him into the arms of death," daughter Patti Davis, 51, said of Reagan's 10-year struggle with the debilitating ailment. "But I know that at his last moment, when he opened his eyes, eyes that had not opened for many, many days, and looked at my mother, he showed us that neither disease nor death can conquer love."
His son Ron Reagan remembered his father by saying: "He was the most plainly decent man you could ever hope to meet. . . . He always said that a gentleman always does the right thing. But I guess I'm telling you things you already know."
The evening service came hours after another memorial a continent away at the Washington National Cathedral earlier in the day, where world leaders remembered the 40th president as a man of humor, humility and bedrock American values.
"With the lever of American patriotism, he lifted up the world," former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in a tribute delivered on videotape because of her failing health. "And so today, the world — in Prague, in Budapest, in Warsaw and Sofia, in Bucharest, in Kiev and in Moscow itself — mourns the passing of the great liberator and echoes his prayer: God bless America."
Reagan selected his own burial site at his presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., a picture-perfect spot for the curtain-closer to a send-off that many Americans will remember for the rest of their lives. Reagan began planning his funeral in 1981, his first year as president, and the carefully choreographed finale was filled with the patriotic flourishes and symbols of democracy that he so loved.
Minutes after Friday's service, churches across the country rang their bells 40 times for the 40th president. U.S. military bases around the world marked the burial with a 21-gun salute at noon, to be followed by a 50-gun salute at day's end.
In a quieter moment Friday morning, a tired and frail Nancy Reagan leaned over and kissed her husband's flag-draped casket minutes before it was carried out of the Capitol Rotunda at the close of a 34-hour vigil. She appeared to have a final whispered message for her deceased husband of 52 years.
Some 200,000 Americans filed past Reagan's casket at separate vigils on both coasts, first at his presidential library in California on Monday and Tuesday and then in the Capitol from Wednesday until Friday morning.
At Friday's church service, the powerful shared the pews with the once-powerful at the majestic Gothic cathedral in northwest Washington, the world's sixth-largest cathedral.
The front two rows across from the Reagan family were reserved for President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and four former presidents — Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. They sat next to their spouses in the order of their elections.
Reagan's 720-pound casket rested steps away from the crypt holding the remains of former President Woodrow Wilson, who was elected the year after Reagan's birth in 1911.
Also in the audience were British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Britain's Prince Charles, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who forged an alliance with Reagan that helped end the Cold War and then presided over the breakup of the Soviet empire, sat beside Thatcher, the "iron lady" whose resilience has been tested in recent years by a series of small strokes.
The gray, rainy skies outside the cathedral matched the somber mood inside.
"Ronald Reagan belongs to the ages now, but we preferred it when he belonged to us," President Bush said from the church pulpit. "As he showed what a president should be, he also showed us what a man should be."
Drawing on snapshots that helped define a decade, Bush recalled the images from Reagan's White House years, "that tilt of a head and snap of a salute, the big-screen smile, and the glint in his Irish eyes when a story came to mind."
Although he and the other eulogizers praised Reagan's policies, giving him credit for the defeat of communism and for boosting the nation's spirits, they became more animated when talking about the man behind the headlines.
Bush traced the former president's remarkable life from his boyhood in Dixon, Ill., to his days as a radio sportscaster in Des Moines, Iowa, to his Hollywood career, to his service as governor of California and president.
"As an actor, he was the handsome, all-American good guy, which in his case required knowing his lines and being himself," he said.
All recalled his sense of humor.
Former President Bush, who served as Reagan's vice president, told of the time Reagan was asked for his assessment of a meeting with South African Bishop Desmond Tutu. "So-so," he replied.
Then there was the time a boy asked for federal assistance after his mother declared his room a disaster area.
"You are in an excellent position to launch another volunteer program in our nation," Reagan wrote back. "Congratulations."
Nancy Reagan, seated on the front row on the center aisle, smiled or chuckled softly at each of her husband's laugh lines, just as she did in earlier days.
Former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, an Episcopal priest who presided over the service, described Reagan as "a child of light" who was determined to overcome darkness — as a person and as a president.
"He was aglow with it. He had no dark side, no scary, hidden agenda," said Danforth, recently tapped by Bush to become ambassador to the United Nations. "What you saw was what you got. And what you saw was that sure sign of inner light, the twinkle in the eye."
Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said Reagan "possessed a rare and prized gift called leadership — that ineffable and sometimes magical quality that sets some men and women apart."
As they paid tribute to Reagan, they also paid tribute to his widow, who nursed the former president through a 10-year struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Reagan, who once said that his life began when he met the former Nancy Davis, didn't recognize her by the end of it.
Family members and associates say Nancy Reagan got her reward shortly before her husband's death when he opened his eyes and looked directly at his wife.
"Eyes that hadn't opened in days, did, and they weren't chalky or vague," Patti Davis, the couple's daughter wrote in a first-hand account for People magazine. "They were clear and blue and full of love." She said Nancy Reagan called that moment "the greatest gift" her husband could have given her.
The 82-year-old widow hasn't spoken publicly since her husband's death, other than to murmur thanks to admiring crowds, but she summed up her life with Reagan in a brief essay for the latest edition of Time magazine.
Her opening line said it all: "I think they broke the mold when they made Ronnie."