Clinton Leads Mourners at Brown’s Rites

Ronald H. Brown was eulogized by President Clinton as a “force of nature” and laid to rest Wednesday after a full-honors funeral procession that threaded its way through the bustling black neighborhoods and marbled monuments of Washington, symbolically retracing the path of his remarkable career.

The Commerce secretary’s funeral--the fifth official observance of his death in six days--drew 4,300 mourners to the Washington National Cathedral, from top administration aides to such prominent black Americans as retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, former New York Mayor David N. Dinkins, celebrity lawyer Johnnie Cochran Jr. and musicians Stevie Wonder and Wynton Marsalis.

But the words that drifted through the cavernous cathedral were joyous and playful, as well as melancholy, recalling a middle-class Harlem boy who came to embody African American achievement as he became top campaign aide, Democratic Party chief, lobbyist and Cabinet secretary.

“He proved you could do well and do good--he also proved you could do good and have a good time,” Clinton said of his friend, who died with 34 others April 3 when their plane crashed on a fog-swaddled Croatian hillside.

Brown’s body had laid in repose at the Commerce Department for 24 hours Tuesday atop a crepe-draped platform called a catafalque that was built for Abraham Lincoln in 1865. The line of mourners who came to see him was still snaking around the block at dawn Wednesday, despite unseasonably cold temperatures.

After Wednesday’s service, Brown’s mahogany coffin was lifted from a hearse at the gates of Arlington National Cemetery and placed on a six-horse black caisson. The onetime Army captain was interred to strains of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Clinton saluted Brown’s abilities as he thanked him for restoring the Democratic Party after the shattering 1988 election in a way that allowed Clinton to win the White House. “Thank you: If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here,” the president said.

Clinton joked about the elegant tastes of Brown, who loved expensive clothing and had his shirts tailor-made.

‘I’m telling you, folks, he would have loved this deal today,” Clinton said. “Here we are for Ron Brown, in this national cathedral, with full military honors. . . . And as I look around I see that all of us are dressed almost as well as he would be today.” The joke drew a smile from Brown’s widow, Alma.

Clinton was seated with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, his daughter, Chelsea, and Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper. Across the aisle was Powell, who is still the subject of discussion--if involuntarily--as a possible running-mate for the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.).

The mourners heard spirituals, such us the “Old Rugged Cross,” sung by Santita Jackson, daughter of Jesse Jackson.

Brown’s son, Michael, also remembered his father’s playful side and his warmth.

Anybody who said that Brown exemplified “grace under pressure,” he said, hadn’t seen his father play golf, he said. He spoke of how close the family was, recalling how some people thought father and grown son were “weird” because they still kissed each other on the lips.

At the family’s request, Brown’s funeral procession drove down Washington’s Embassy Row, then east to the historically black Shaw neighborhood--once called the “Black Broadway”--before doubling back to cross once more by the Commerce Department. The gesture was to recall Brown’s attachment to his roots.

Brown’s funeral was far from the most elaborate official funeral Washington has seen. He did not lie in state at the Capitol, or receive a 21-cannon salute at Arlington.

But the last week’s series of memorial events, most presided over by Clinton, made it one of the most prolonged observances in the capital’s history. Clinton, always comfortable in such settings, remembered Brown in successive appearances at St. John’s Episcopal Church, the Commerce Department, Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and at the Washington National Cathedral.

Brown’s meaning for his many black American admirers was evident even at the end.

Jarvis Stewart, 27, program manager at the nonprofit African American Unity Center in Los Angeles, bought himself a ticket on a red-eye flight Tuesday night in hopes of getting one of 200 free tickets that were distributed Wednesday morning at the cathedral.

“He was able to move between the Anglo and African American communities effectively and with an open heart,” Stewart said, before he entered the cathedral. “That’s a considerable achievement these days.”

Charles W. Saunders, 48, the mayor of tiny Waynesville, Ohio, admired Brown’s skill so much that he and his wife drove all night from southwest Ohio to try to make the funeral. “He was a very skilled and artful politician,,” said Saunders, who also got in. “If I could use him as a role model to rise higher than a mayor’s job, well, I would be very happy.”