State Funeral for Reagan Brings a Soaring Farewell: "Ronald Reagan belongs to the ages now. But we preferred it when he belonged to us," President Bush told mourners. (TODD S. PURDUM, 6/12/04, NY Times)

In a country without an official creed, the service in the Episcopal cathedral was filled with symbols, unblushing and inclusive in its religiosity. At Mrs. Reagan's request, the Irish tenor Ronan Tynan sang both Schubert's "Ave Maria" and "Amazing Grace." Jewish, Greek Orthodox and Muslim clerics participated, and Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, read from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew: "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid."

Former Senator John C. Danforth of Missouri, an ordained Episcopal priest chosen by Mrs. Reagan to conduct the service after illness sidelined the Rev. Billy Graham, said in his homily: "If ever we have known a child of light, it was Ronald Reagan. He was aglow with it. He had no dark side, no scary hidden agenda. What you saw was what you got, and what you saw was that sure sign of inner light, the twinkle in the eye."

-For a Frail Mrs. Reagan, a Week of Great Resolve: This past week has been a testimony to Nancy Reagan's endurance and to the attention she always paid to the details of her husband's life. (ADAM NAGOURNEY and BERNARD WEINRAUB, 6/12/04, NY Times)

For Mrs. Reagan, it was an exhausting and emotional test of endurance, all the more so for an 82-year-old woman who, as friends noted, for 10 years has barely been able to step out for lunch as she cared for her ailing husband. It ended at dusk in California as she wept softly over her husband's coffin with her children at her side. It was also the climax of a meticulously planned week of pageantry and tribute that Mrs. Reagan was, characteristically, intimately involved in arranging, right down to the selection of the tenor who sang "Ave Maria" at the cathedral on this rainy morning.

Mrs. Reagan's friends said she was, to no small extent, shielded from the emotion of her loss as she watched, with evident pride and sorrow, as every motorcade, eulogy, and snap of a salute that made up a memorial unlike any Washington had seen in 50 years unfolded almost precisely as planned.

"She looks a little frail," said Betsy Bloomingdale, a close friend of Mrs. Reagan, speaking from her home in California as she prepared to attend the burial there Friday night. "But she is very strong inside. She is. She has the strength. She is doing her last thing for Ronnie. And she is going to get it right."

Mrs. Reagan's friends were not alone in talking of her composure and resolve this week, on display from the intimate first service at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Monday, where the former first lady brushed the coffin with her cheek, through a state funeral that drew every living president and leaders from around the globe. But they said it, like everything else involving the former first lady this week, was testimony to Mrs. Reagan's fastidiousness and the attention she had always paid to the details of her husband's life.

There were, as she intended, no surprises here.

"She was determined to get through this," said another friend of the family's, who asked not to be identified. "It's the role she's been given to play. It's her last thing for him."

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 11, 2004 10:40 PM