A week of events to mourn Reagan

WASHINGTON -- Ronald Reagan, the president who charmed much of the nation with his populist conservatism, will be remembered this week in the way his family said he wanted: a bicoastal week of mourning allowing both world leaders and regular Americans to pay their respects.

Following a private memorial service today, mourners will be permitted to say their final goodbyes at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., where the body of the former president will lay in repose until 9 p.m. EDT tomorrow, a spokesman for the Reagan family said. On Wednesday, Reagan's casket will be flown on Air Force One to the nation's capital, where the public will have the opportunity to pay tribute as Reagan's body lies in state in the US Capitol rotunda.

On Friday, a funeral will be held for the two-term president at the Washington National Cathedral. President Bush will speak at the service and former US senator John Danforth, a minister who was recently nominated US ambassador to the United Nations, will officiate. In addition, the federal government, except for agencies involved in national security, defense, or essential public business, will be closed Friday in honor of Reagan, the White House announced yesterday.

Joanne Drake, who served as the Reagan family's spokeswoman, said Reagan had been working on his own funeral arrangements since 1981 -- a practice she said is normal for a president -- and that Reagan was determined that admirers be given ample opportunity to acknowledge his passing.

"It was important to the president that the public be offered opportunities, so we worked very carefully with all these entities [such as local law enforcement and the Secret Service] to make sure there would be opportunities on both coasts," Drake told reporters outside a Santa Monica, Calif., funeral home.

Choking with emotion, Drake, who was Reagan's chief of staff in retirement, called it "an honor" to know Reagan, who died Saturday at 93 after battling Alzheimer's disease for a decade.

President Bush, speaking yesterday at a D-day commemoration in Normandy, France, inserted a brief tribute to the man for whom Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, once served as vice president. "He was a courageous man himself and a gallant leader in the cause of freedom," Bush told the assemblage of world leaders and World War II veterans.

Reagan's political foes offered words of praise yesterday for the former president, who combined a fiercely ideological attack on communism and big government with a folksy style that drew admiration even from his critics. The man who referred to the former Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire" also formed a partnership with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to reduce the threat of nuclear war.

"I take the death of Ronald Reagan very hard," Gorbachev told reporters yesterday in Moscow. "He was a man whom fate set by me in perhaps the most difficult years at the end of the 20th century. In terms of human qualities, he and I had, you would say, communicativeness, and this helped us carry on normally."

Senator John F. Kerry, the presumed Democratic nominee for president, said he would suspend "overtly political" campaigning during the coming week out of respect for the former president.

Former vice president Walter Mondale, whom Reagan trounced in the 1984 presidential race when he carried 49 states and nearly 60 percent of the vote, lauded the "civilized" campaign Reagan conducted, and he said Reagan's upbeat persona was a factor in his victory.

Former president Jimmy Carter, whom Reagan defeated in 1980, said before teaching Sunday school in his hometown of Plains, Ga.: "This is a sad day for our country. I probably know as well as anybody what a formidable communicator and campaigner that President Reagan was."

Words of condolence poured in from across the nation and around the world, Drake said. Nancy Reagan, the former president's wife of 53 years, received calls from President Bush; former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara; and actor Charlton Heston, a family friend. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, was one of the first to call Nancy Reagan to express his sympathies, Drake said.

Kennedy declined to discuss his private conversation with Nancy Reagan, but a spokesman for the senator said Kennedy is grateful for the respect and regard the Reagans showed his family. In 1981, Reagan hosted matriarch Rose Kennedy at the White House, an event that marked her first time in the building since her son, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Reagan also visited Edward M. Kennedy at the senator's Virginia home to discuss fund-raising for the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston.

"Over the years, Senator Kennedy has been deeply moved by the great acts of personal kindness that President and Mrs. Reagan have shown the Kennedy family," said David Smith, a Kennedy spokesman.

The week will be filled with public and private tributes to Reagan. The family will accompany the hearse in a motorcade this morning in Simi Valley, Calif., to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where the Reagans will hold a private memorial service.

From about noon today West Coast time, Reagan's body will lie in repose at the library

On Wednesday morning, Reagan's body will be flown to Washington, where the former president will be honored with a traditional state funeral -- the first in the nation's capitol for a president since Lyndon Johnson's in 1973. At 6 p.m. Wednesday, the casket will be transported by a traditional, horse-drawn caisson to the US Capitol. In an echo of John F. Kennedy's funeral, a lone drummer, his drum covered in black, will accompany the procession, Drake said.

After an evening state funeral service in the Capitol Rotunda, Reagan's body will lie in state through Thursday. Only 28 other times has someone lain in state in the rotunda.

At 10:45 Friday morning, a motorcade will proceed, with the former president's body, to Washington National Cathedral for a national funeral service.

Drake said that the guest list for the cathedral service is still being drawn up but said that the family would try to accommodate any world leaders who might want to attend. Many heads of state will be in Georgia this week for the Group of Eight summit.

After the Washington National Cathedral service, Reagan's body will be flown back to California and interred at the Reagan library in a private ceremony.

Drake said Reagan picked his own burial site at the library, a "pristine spot" overlooking the ocean and under oak trees.

"He always intended to have the state funeral in Washington and then to return home to California for burial," she said.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.