The first US funeral train in almost 50 years took the body of former US president George H. W. Bush to his presidential library at Texas A&M UniversityThere he was buried alongside wife Barbara and daughter Robin, who died when she was three
Thousands waved and cheered along the route as funeral train No 4141 – for the 41st president – carried George H. W. Bush’s remains to their final resting place on Thursday, his last journey as a week of national remembrance took on a decidedly personal feel in an emotional home state farewell.
Some people laid coins along the tracks that wound through small town Texas so a 420,000-pound (190 tonne) locomotive pulling the nation’s first funeral train in nearly half a century could crunch them into souvenirs. Others snapped pictures or crowded for views so close that police helicopters overhead had to warn them back. Elementary students hoisted a banner simply reading “THANK YOU.”
The scenes reminiscent of a bygone era followed a serious and more sombre tone at an earlier funeral service at a Houston church, where Bush’s former secretary of state and confidant for decades, James Baker, addressed him as “jefe,” Spanish for “boss.” At times choking back tears, Baker praised Bush as “a beautiful human being” who had “the courage of a warrior. But when the time came for prudence, he maintained the greater courage of a peacemaker.”
Baker also provided a contrast with today’s divisive political rhetoric, saying that Bush’s “wish for a kinder, gentler nation was not a cynical political slogan. It came honest and unguarded from his soul.”
“The world became a better place because George Bush occupied the White House for four years,” said Baker.
As the post-funeral motorcade carrying Bush’s remains later sped down a closed highway from the church to the railway station, construction workers on all levels of an unfinished building paused to watch. A man sitting on a Ferris wheel near the aquarium waved.
Bush’s body was later loaded onto a special train fitted with clear sides so people could catch a glimpse of the casket as it rumbled by. The train travelled about 110km in two-plus hours – the first presidential funeral train journey since Dwight D. Eisenhower’s remains went from Washington to his native Kansas 49 years ago – to the family plot on the grounds of Bush’s presidential library at Texas A&M University. Bush’s final resting place was alongside his wife, Barbara, and Robin Bush, the daughter they lost to leukaemia at age three.
In the town of Cypress, 55-year-old Doug Allen left eight coins on the tracks before the train passed – three quarters, three dimes and two pennies.
