Nixon’s Body Is Returned to California

On a sodden Tuesday afternoon, the remains of Richard Nixon were returned to California for burial today in a plot beside his boyhood home.

After simple ceremonies at El Toro Marine Air Station and at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, a slow-moving line of mourners--the people the former President called the Silent Majority, filed past the flag-draped mahogany coffin.

It was 19 years, eight months and 17 days ago that Nixon, aboard the same blue-and-white presidential jet bearing the tail number 27000, crossed the continent to return in disgrace from the shambles of Watergate to the sheltering shores of the Pacific Ocean.

On Tuesday, the ceremonial presidency that the Nixon White House used so effectively as a political tool was returned to the 37th President of the United States for one last time: “Ruffles and Flourishes,” “Hail to the Chief,” 21-gun salutes and military honor guards dressed up the nation’s farewell to the only chief executive to resign his office.

President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose roles in the national political arena were born in the angry heat of the 1972 presidential campaign and the impeachment proceedings against Nixon, will lead the mourners at the 4 p.m. state funeral, to which 1,800 people have been invited. Afterward, Nixon will be interred next to his wife, Pat, who died last June. Nixon died Friday of complications from a stroke, at the age of 81.

If today’s ceremony belongs to the dignitaries, Tuesday’s brought the solemnity of the presidency--and the death of a President--to the people who put Nixon in office, first as a young member of Congress, then as a senator, then twice as vice president and twice as President before the Watergate scandal forced him into political retirement.

Thunderclaps rang out, then the rain began to fall, a drizzle at first and then a steady drenching rain, just before the short motorcade bearing the former President’s body arrived at the library about 1:30 p.m.

The Rev. Billy Graham, long a friend of the Nixon family, and Ron Walker, a personnel executive who worked as a chief advance man for the Nixon White House, emerged from the library’s portico at the arrival of the motorcade: a California Highway Patrol car, two black sedans, a hearse flying U.S. flags from both front fenders, and two more limousines, the first bearing Nixon’s daughters, their husbands and their children.

Solemn-faced, Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower greeted Graham and then stood quietly as an honor guard from the five military services eased the coffin from the hearse. Eight members of the guard unit carried it up the steps to the library’s glass front doors, past scores of reporters and photographers in an area cordoned off with velvet ropes.

Members of the public stood to the side, in near silence as the procession moved, measured step by measured step, into the library. The coffin was followed by Mrs. Cox and her husband, Edward, accompanied by Graham. Behind them walked David and Mrs. Eisenhower, followed by Nixon’s two grandsons and two granddaughters.

One hundred yards to the east, workers had set up grandstands for the funeral. On Tuesday, they prepared the speaker’s platform, covered in green all-weather carpeting. The backdrop is the small, white clapboard house in which Nixon was born on Jan. 9, 1913.

Thousands of people had stood in line for several hours to view the coffin. Just as the line began to inch forward, hail started to fall. Lively chatter tapered off into silence as the mourners moved closer to the coffin, a large photograph of the smiling former President looking down on the scene, just above a large display of red roses. Scores of other flower arrangements of every color decorated the lobby, where the coffin was placed.

The mourners, behind a velvet cordon, paused no more than a second or two and then moved along. A five-member honor guard, from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard, stood guard, three on one side of the coffin, two on the other.

As evening set in, the line outside grew to several miles in length and moved at such a slow pace it was taking about six hours to arrive at the library entrance.

Together, the mourners and troops formed an American tableau, a Norman Rockwell-like scene not painted in this country since the death of Lyndon B. Johnson in January, 1973: Troops in crisp uniforms, parents with children in scout uniforms, grandparents, mourners in dark suits, others dressed in jeans, babies in strollers and elderly people in wheelchairs.

“It’s sad to see him coming back to California in a casket. Just a year ago he was here for his wife’s funeral. It’s an emotional thing for us,” said Jerry Woudenberg, 63, manager of a food bank in Whittier. He brought his 14-year-old son, Kees, who wore a Boy Scout uniform and called Nixon “my favorite President.”

Margret Howard, 61, of Baldwin Park, came with her daughter, Cindy Howard, 23, and granddaughter, Stephanie Bailey, 4. Margret Howard cast her first national vote for the Dwight D. Eisenhower-Richard Nixon presidential ticket.

“I thought he was an honest man, and I didn’t like the raw deal he got in Watergate,” she said.

Each visitor was given a cream-colored card, bearing in green ink the presidential seal and the message: “The Nixon family thanks you for visiting and for expressing your affection and respect for the President.”

Three times Nixon had left California: first in victory, as a freshman member of Congress in 1947, then in defeat after losing his race for the California governorship to Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr. in 1962, and finally in 1980, after more than five years of self-imposed post-Watergate exile, when he moved to New York and eventually New Jersey so he and his wife could be closer to their children and grandchildren, who live in New York and Pennsylvania.

Throughout his presidency, Nixon would return to the state, landing at El Toro and then flying by helicopter to the “Western White House” in San Clemente. And it was to El Toro that he returned on Aug. 9, 1974, after his emotional departure from the White House he had turned over to Gerald R. Ford.

A large, sad crowd softly sang “God Bless America” that day as the same airplane arrived with private citizen Nixon aboard. On Tuesday, civilians were kept off the base, and only several dozen members of Marine families who live there were allowed to stand in a fenced-off area to watch.

The Nixon family members, who flew to California with the former President’s remains, emerged from the front door of the aircraft that had taken Nixon to Moscow, Beijing and other corners of the globe. The coffin, maneuvered at a 45-degree angle from the aircraft’s blue-carpeted floor, was removed from the back door, near the galley.

Howitzers brought in from Camp Pendleton boomed a 21-gun salute, a Marine band played “Hail to the Chief,” and within minutes, the cortege began the 20-mile trip to Yorba Linda.

Along the route, thousands of people tried to catch a glimpse of the procession, many giving the two-fingered “V for victory” signal that Nixon adopted from Winston Churchill. On overpasses, ramps and front lawns, they put up with the downpour--the same sort of dreary weather that often greeted Nixon when he tried to escape the tumult of Washington in the throes of Watergate in the summer of 1974.

For the funeral today, Clinton has declared a national day of mourning. Federal offices will be closed, Congress will be in recess and many financial markets will be closed.

The four remaining former Presidents--Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush--plan to attend the service. So, too, do representatives of nearly 90 countries, including some, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, that did not exist as independent entities during the Nixon presidency. But other than Clinton, no heads of state were expected.

* NIXON AND BUSINESS: A look at the economic legacies of Richard Nixon. D1

Funeral Begins at 4 p.m.

Former President Richard Nixon will be laid to rest today in an elaborate funeral televised nationwide. It will be attended by President Clinton and all four living former presidents.

TODAY

* Public viewing: The body will lie in state, coffin closed, for public viewing in the library lobby until 11 a.m.

* The funeral: The service will begin at 4 p.m. It will not be open to the public. The Rev. Billy Graham will preside, and eulogies will be delivered by President Clinton, Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Gov. Pete Wilson.

* TV coverage: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, cable’s CNN and C-SPAN plan live coverage.

* Street closures: On the day of the funeral, all streets around the library, including Yorba Linda Boulevard, will be closed.

* Library closure: The Nixon Library will remain closed until 10 a.m. Thursday.