RICHARD NIXON: 1913-1994 : Ordinary Folks Rise to Occasion

No doubt the names of Bill Clinton, George Bush and Henry Kissinger will dominate the nation’s collective memory as the towering figures who gave Richard Nixon a properly historic burial.

But let’s face it, all they really had to do was say a few words and sit down.

Nobody is going to remember that it was Carlos Vega Lopez who showed up at 7 a.m. to start setting up 2,400 padded, white folding chairs so that Clinton, Bush and Kissinger would have a place to sit down.

Or Dennis Jones, who gave up a good golf game (OK, it rained, but he would have given it up) to chauffeur one of a zillion dignitaries to Wednesday’s splendid tribute to the 37th President of the United States.

This was truly one of American history’s great displays of patriotic pomp, but as behind all great events, it took a soldiery of faceless people to make it happen. And on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, they scampered around the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace like nervous brides on their wedding day, making sure the table skirts were straight, the band instruments tuned and the hors d’oeuvres hot.

“The little people make it convenient for the big people,” said Jones, standing by his limousine under one of two umbrellas he brought along, figuring his important passenger would likely forget his own, which he did. “It’s the little people who set up, so the top people can drive up. We just make their lives easier.”

On television screens across America, this presidential funeral was the sadly elegant image of a shiny black hearse rolling to a final resting place in a quiet rose garden, a half-circle of soldiers in starched uniforms guarding a fallen leader in flag-draped repose.

But behind the scene was Gary Baker, vice president of the Whittier mortuary that has taken care of 10 Nixon family funerals since 1919. After 25 years in the business, Baker is a suit-and-tie executive who runs a staff of 60. On Tuesday, however, he was in a chauffeur’s uniform behind the wheel of Nixon’s hearse.

“We wanted to make sure that we had someone there who would provide the type of service that was worthy of a presidential funeral,” explained Sandy Durko of Rose Hills Mortuary. “We wanted to have our most senior person take care of that.”

From the nation’s capital, 63 trim, uniformed soldiers flew across the country to spend Tuesday night standing guard over the mahogany casket on 12-hour shifts--30 minutes on their feet, two hours at rest--as thousands of mourners filed past.

They were the honor guard, a special detail of enlisted men from all five branches of the military, men who must pass tests and look the part to get in, then once in, to spend hours standing at ramrod attention, scarcely blinking.

Death has a way of giving little advance notice, which made Wednesday’s ceremony all the more challenging. The resulting rain-swept pageantry had been a harried dance only hours before as the band tuned up, the chairs were wiped dry and the volunteers struggled to memorize their parts.

“One other thing you need to remember,” a nervous man instructed a group of volunteers assigned to point the limos in the right direction. “If they have a purple button on already, this is the right place. If they have a yellow button on, they need to go there. If they have a red button on, they need to go over there.”

“What color button does Clinton have?” a bystander asked.

“He doesn’t need a button.”

Some estimated that as many as 300 volunteers turned out. Dave Wulbrecht, general manager of a wholesale lumber company in Irvine, spent Wednesday wiping raindrops off chairs.

Even those who were just doing their jobs seemed to be struggling to do them that much better on such an illustrious occasion.

Gabriel Lara, banquet captain for the post-funeral VIP spread, trotted across the library grounds, a clothes-hanger filled with forest green table skirts draped across his back. He was wearing a tuxedo and a worried look. Soon he would be in the presence of some of the nation’s most powerful men.

“I’m excited,” he said breathlessly, ripping the plastic from the table skirts. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”