Four Former Presidents Will Be on Hand as Barbara Bush Is Laid to Rest in Texas
April 21, 2018 by admin
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Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady, were unable to attend; a spokeswoman said that Mr. Carter would be on a private trip overseas and that Mrs. Carter was recovering from recent surgery.
The 90-minute service, set to begin at 11 a.m. local time, has been in the works for years. Mrs. Bush herself selected the three eulogists: her son Jeb Bush, the former two-term governor of Florida; Susan Baker, a longtime friend and the wife of James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state; and Jon Meacham, a presidential historian who published a biography of her husband in 2015.
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Pool photo by Richard Carson
The funeral capped a weeklong period of mourning in Houston. There were formal gatherings and impromptu tributes at City Hall, the police headquarters, the elder Mr. Bush’s office, and Barbara Bush Elementary School in the city’s Energy Corridor.
At the school on Wednesday, the principal, Theresa Rose, wore pearls in honor of Mrs. Bush, who had been a regular presence there since the school opened in 1992. Mrs. Bush came to the school a couple of years ago to read to the students, a day Rahul Sanklecha, 10, still remembers. He was in the third grade, and she read a children’s book about Abraham Lincoln called “Abe Lincoln: The Boy Who Loved Books.”
“Her schedule is busy, but she came out to read to us,” said Rahul, now a fifth grader. “I’m really proud that I represent a school named after her.”
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The funeral on Saturday was to be a private, invitation-only service for 1,500 relatives, friends and dignitaries, but will be nationally televised. The viewing on Friday was for everyone else: ordinary men, women and children, many of them from Houston and other parts of Texas.
They came in suits and dresses, nurses’ scrubs and football jerseys, jeans and school uniforms. They were young and they were old. They were white, black, Asian, Latino. Inside the red-brick church, on the candlelit chancel in front of the altar, Mrs. Bush lay in a closed silver coffin adorned with a multitude of bright flowers. About halfway through the viewing, roughly 3,000 visitors flowed past throughout the afternoon, pausing to bow their heads or make the sign of the cross.
“I just wanted to be there to honor her,” said Barbara McMahon, 78, a retired librarian who lives in Houston and who wore her pearl earrings to St. Martin’s on Friday. “It does make me sad, because she’s such an incredible example, and I don’t know how many more people there are to be that kind of example.”
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Parts of the neighborhood surrounding the church were effectively shut down to most traffic on Friday. Members of the public were barred from approaching the church on foot or in personal vehicles. Instead, they gathered at the nearby Second Baptist Church, passed through security and then boarded buses that took them to and from St. Martin’s.
After the funeral, a motorcade was to proceed through Memorial Park and travel more than 90 miles northwest to College Station, where Mrs. Bush was to be buried in a private service at Texas AM University, on the grounds of the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. Mrs. Bush was to be buried beside her daughter Robin, who died of leukemia at the age of 3 in 1953.
Before arriving at the library grounds, the motorcade in College Station will turn left on George Bush Drive and then right on Barbara Bush Drive.
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