Thousands Will Be Waiting as Nixon Comes Back Home : Services: Crowds will greet ex-President today at his library, where funeral planning continues. Speculation continues regarding which world dignitaries will attend.

Richard Nixon makes his final trip home today, back to the town of his humble beginnings and far from the city that he felt had turned on him during his deepest political crisis.

Thousands are expected to line up outside the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace this afternoon as the former President is returned to be mourned by friends, eulogized by his peers, and buried beside his wife, Pat, at the library built to celebrate his greatest triumphs.

As confirmations for this week’s state funeral came in Monday from around the world, organizers at the Nixon library prepared for today’s public viewing of the former President’s casket. Nixon died in a New York City hospital Friday after suffering a stroke four days earlier in his New Jersey home.

For those not invited to Wednesday’s funeral at the library, this will be the only chance to take part in one of the biggest international events ever in Orange County.

Although Presidents often lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Nixon had specifically rejected that idea, opting for Yorba Linda instead.

“I think President Nixon was a deeply private man, and on the eve of his death, I think he wanted to be here next to Pat, in this place,” Dimitri K. Simes, Nixon’s top adviser on Russia in the years after his presidency, said at the library in Yorba Linda on Monday.

“Clearly, it’s a deeply personal, emotional decision--where your coffin is going to be and what people are going to come. He wanted these people to come,” he said, gesturing to those huddled in the library’s rain-swept portico, waiting to sign condolence cards for the Nixon family.

As Wednesday’s funeral approaches, speculation continues over who will attend.

President Clinton and his four living predecessors--Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush--are all confirmed for the event.

And while organizers have still not released a full list of foreign dignitaries, officials at the White House said that three prominent former foreign leaders were also expected to attend: former Prime Minister Edward Heath of Great Britain, former President Chaim Herzog of Israel and former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa of Japan.

Other confirmed guests cover the political spectrum, from George McGovern--the liberal ex-senator who was swamped by Nixon in the 1972 presidential race--to such onetime Nixon stalwarts as Spiro Agnew, Patrick Buchanan, Charles Colson and Alexander Haig.

Nixon’s daughters, Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, and their families are accompanying the casket from Newburgh, N.Y., to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. From there, a motorcade will take the body to the library. It is there, possibly enduring a predicted drizzle, that mourners--rich and poor, old friends and new admirers--will bid farewell.

“It’s a day of paying respects to the man and his memory, and I think history is going to view him a little more kindly than people do today,” said Doy Henley, president of the conservative Republican Lincoln Club. “He’s a man who had a lot of respect and a lot of personal friends here in Orange County.”

Henley, an aerospace manufacturer, said many Lincoln Club members will be in the crowd today. Many members have been asking him if he can get them an invitation to the funeral itself--but most will be out of luck, he said. “It’s going to be a real crowd out there.”

The outpouring of sympathy and support has not gone unnoticed by the Nixons’ daughters, library spokesman Kevin Cartwright said.

“They have been very moved by all the tributes here, people leaving these beautiful flowers and coming here to sing and pray and remember him throughout the day and night,” Cartwright said. “They said they’ve been comforted by that.”

Organizers said they expect more than 2,000 people in all for Wednesday’s private funeral at the library. But some of the most persistent questions center on who will not be attending.

Some state lawmakers, for instance, were said to be miffed that they hadn’t received invitations to the funeral. Aside from Gov. Pete Wilson, who will deliver a eulogy, the only California lawmakers attending are Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, GOP Assembly leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, Senate Democratic leader Bill Lockyer of Hayward and Sen. Ken Maddy, the Senate’s Republican chief from Fresno.

None of the Orange County delegation in Sacramento had been invited by Monday, including Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who knew several members of the Nixon family during their post-Watergate days in San Clemente. Others included Sen. John F. Lewis (R-Orange) and Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-Placentia), whose districts include the Nixon library.

Also missing will be current heads of state from many nations, who are sending former diplomats to represent them.

Simes, the Nixon adviser, said the announcement that the funeral would be in Yorba Linda, not in Washington, had undoubtedly signaled foreign governments that the event would not provide a chance for world leaders to meet with President Clinton or each other.

“The family did not want to turn this into a global conference,” he said. “If you are a head of state and your presence was desired at President Nixon’s funeral, they would have held this in Washington.”

The funeral service is to begin at 4 p.m. Wednesday, and a program released Monday showed that the Rev. Billy Graham will be the first dignitary to speak, followed by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.), Wilson and President Clinton.

If Nixon had chosen to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his flag-draped casket would have been carried to the grave site on a black artillery caisson pulled by six black or gray horses. Following the caisson would have been a riderless horse, wearing an empty saddle with boots reversed in the stirrups in honor of a fallen warrior.

Because the former President chose to be buried at the library next to his wife, the occasion will have a less ceremonial air. His casket will be transported to Yorba Linda by motorized hearse in a motorcade from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

For those not invited to the funeral, there will be no shortage of television coverage. All the major networks are planning to interrupt regular programming to broadcast the funeral live.

At the library Monday, signs of the coming media storm were everywhere as television employees busily erected tents to shelter network anchors Connie Chung and Tom Brokaw, and frenzied reporters paced the grounds in search of press credentials.

The first presidential funeral since Lyndon B. Johnson was buried 21 years ago will be covered to the hilt, television producers promised.

“We’re giving coverage just like we do the Academy Awards,” said one producer who asked not to be identified. “It’s a major event out here, and I know there are a lot of people who are going to want to watch it who aren’t going to go anywhere near the library.”

Meanwhile, harried officials at the library, many of whom have been staying there around the clock, tried to cope with the magnitude of planning a state funeral. With the White House, the State Department and the military each handling certain aspects of the arrangements, coordination has been one of the more difficult challenges, a spokesman said.

By midday, nearly 50 people from the White House--including communications and advance staff--had arrived to assist the library’s staff of about 25, and some 70 volunteers had called in to help during the last few days, Cartwright, the library spokesman, said.

“The White House has been phenomenal, offering any and all assistance we need,” Cartwright said, adding that President Clinton personally called the library at least twice over the weekend to ask whether any additional help was required.

Throughout the cold, wet morning and afternoon, a steady, sodden stream of onlookers continued to arrive outside the library’s closed front doors to leave floral tributes to the former President and sign the condolence cards for his family.

Diana Beavor, 56, said she drove all night Sunday from her home in Nevada City, drawn by a desire to leave her condolences and express her admiration for Nixon and his policies.

“I just really respected him and liked him,” she said, huddled against the cold in the library’s portico. “I liked what he did in Vietnam and just really wanted to be here today.”

Not far away, a large American flag, one of several set up by the library staff to frame the doorway, was sent toppling by the fierce winds.

John Medford, 52, of Los Angeles sat quietly at the library, trying to interest passersby in buying old Nixon campaign posters.

“I don’t want to be irreverent by selling these here, but Richard Nixon stood for this: free enterprise,” Medford said.

Times staff writers Eric Bailey, Lynn Franey, Anne Michaud, Mark I. Pinsky, H.G. Reza and Lee Romney contributed to this report.

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