Obituary
Timeline
Appreciation
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE SPECIAL REPORT | Return to Reagan start | E-mail feedback
|
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, June 8 Chance to glimpse Reagan casket keeps mourners patiently waitingBy Mike Lopresti | GNS
By 9 p.m. Monday, the line was five hours long. They had come in ties and Los Angeles Lakers T-shirts. Suits and shorts. Dresses and Dodgers caps. High heels and tennis shoes. Wheelchairs and walkers. A Boy Scout troop. A legally blind woman with her guide dog. All of them in line to take the shuttle buses for the four-mile bus ride down one hill and up another to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the brief and personal walk through the room with the flag-draped coffin. There were so many children, the twisting, turning line might just as well have been for Space Mountain at Disneyland. While their parents stood in line, two young boys had a sword fight with their American flags. Another family huddled in blankets. A father carried his 5-year-old son on his shoulders. Waiting, waiting, waiting. One day, the little boy would be a man, and he could say he was here this night. ``That is why we are here,'' Tom Apalanek, the father, said. ``This is once in a lifetime.'' An aunt held the hands of her 6-year-old niece from the Philippines. Waiting, waiting, waiting. ``She does not know President Reagan, but she will learn in school,'' Lilia Moore said. ``She would like to see him before he goes.'' A man with a Navy cap that said ``USS Ronald Reagan'' had been here since 1 p.m. By 6 o'clock, he had been to the library and back. But he could not leave. Would not leave. ``If I had to wait for 24 hours, it'd be worth it,'' Doug Cogan said. ``I am in awe of what is going on here. I want to keep this moment forever.'' The line started by doubling back and forth in the parking lot of a community college, where firefighters once set up a command post to fight one of California's raging grass infernos. Then down steps, around buildings, across campus and off into the darkness. More than a mile of patient people. From the end, you could see Simi Valley and the freeway and still more mourners coming. A line of headlights that stretched unbroken for miles, like the last scene from ``Field of Dreams.'' By midnight, it took three hours just to get off the freeway. The people inching along in that traffic would not get to the library before 8 Tuesday morning. Toward the end of their wait, at tables set up near the security checkpoints and the bus stops, were countless items of honor left by those who had come and gone. Flowers. Pictures. Cards. Bags of jellybeans. And a letter from a woman named Elena that began, ``From Russia with love ... ``Being a little girl in the Soviet Union, I was afraid of America to bomb us. Today I'm here to tell you that my fears were just a product of the cold war, that you ended.'' Standing on the curb in the parking lot was a man in an old Army jacket, with his 10-year-old son. Robert Cedano was explaining to Robert Cedano Jr. that if they got in line, and waited all night, the boy might be tardy for school the next morning. ``I don't want to lose my perfect attendance award,'' said the son. ``But it'd be worth it,'' said the father. Eventually, they left for home. ``We'll try to come back around 5 a.m.,'' Robert Sr. said. ``Maybe the line will be shorter then.'' But by 5 a.m. in the first light of Tuesday, the cars and people in them were still coming. The line was said to be nearly six hours long. All of them waiting, waiting, waiting ... to honor a president and visit a casket on a hill.
© 2004, Gannett News Service |
Story indexInspirational music graces Reagan funeralFriday, June 11, 2004 Reagan's funeral filled with soaring tributes, touching memoriesFriday, June 11, 2004 Reagan's funeral mirrored his presidency in its precision, pageantryFriday, June 11, 2004 Seeing Reagan up close was like seeing him from a distanceFriday, June 11, 2004 Reagan transformed presidency into iconic place in American cultureThursday, June 10, 2004 Mourners from near and far bid farewell to ReaganThursday, June 10, 2004 Ky. governor's plane causes evacuation on Capitol HillWednesday, June 9, 2004 Reagan's leadership attributes were lived, not learnedWednesday, June 9, 2004 Chance to glimpse Reagan casket keeps mourners patiently waitingTuesday, June 8, 2004 State funeral meets post-9/11 security needsTuesday, June 8, 2004 |
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. - A gray California day had turned into a chilly night and still the people came to see Ronald Reagan.