Among those visiting the Capitol were a group of disabled people, accompanied by Sully, Mr. Bush’s service dog, and mourners from across the country.
WASHINGTON — One by one they came. Parents hoisting toddlers on their hips. Two women from St. Louis, in town for a neonatology conference. A doctor from Washington whose grandmother had worked in housekeeping in the White House complex. And Sully the service dog.
As the body of Former President George Bush lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday, mourners from across the country poured into the Capitol to pay tribute to a man whose inaugural vision of a “kinder” and “gentler” Republicanism has become a relic of another era.
Some, like William Knox of Austin, Tex., came out of simple curiosity. He was in town for a wedding, and decided to drop by. Others, like Sue Ameiss and Patricia Nash of St. Louis, who were attending the neonatology conference, considered it “an honor,” as Ms. Ameiss said, “to be able to come and pay our respects.”
And some, like Wyatt Glennon, a seventh grader from Northwest Washington, came because their parents thought they should. Accompanied by his mother, Wyatt left a note in the condolence book for the former president, thanking him for “taking this great nation to new heights.”
“I don’t know much about his individual acts,” he said in an interview, “but I know that he was president of the United States, and that’s enough for me.”
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, former Bush aides were planning to have a memorial of their own Tuesday evening: At 6:41 p.m., they planned to gather at Lafayette Park across the street from the White House to shine electric candles or their cellphone flashlights into the night sky — a recreation of the “thousand points of light” that Mr.
