Ordinary citizens pay their respects to Ford

By Anne K Walters Jan 1, 2007, 3:17 GMT

Washington - Thousands of mourners passed through the US Capitol Sunday to pay their respects to former president Gerald R Ford and witness history firsthand.

A line snaked along the lawn leading up to the seat of the US Congress, where Ford's flag-draped coffin was to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until Tuesday.

Ford, 93, died last Tuesday in California, where he and his wife Betty had lived in retirement after the nation's only unelected president was defeated in the 1976 presidential poll.

He was a long-serving member of Congress and leader of the centre- right Republican minority in the House of Representatives, before being appointed in late 1973 to fill a vacancy in the vice presidency.

Less than a year later, then-president Richard Nixon resigned to avoid a looming impeachment over the so-called Watergate scandal, and Ford was elevated to the presidency.

'I think about when he became president and what a difficult situation the country was in at the time,' Bee Gill, 72, of Richmond, Virginia, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa before queuing to view his casket. She said she came to remember a president she described as a healer and a 'gentle man.'

A formal service was held in the Rotunda Saturday, attended by Ford's family, colleagues from his time in the White House and Congress and current politicians.

But those gathered Sunday to view the casket were ordinary people - retired workers, school teachers and parents wanting to show their children part of history.

Joe Fergueson, 37, brought his two sons from the nearby Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia.

'He bound our country up at a time when we needed somebody strong,' he said after passing through the Capitol.

His 7-year-old son John wore his Cub Scout uniform in recognition of Ford, who was an Eagle Scout, the highest rank in Boy Scouts.

Kevin Young, 39, and Carolyn Taoka, 38, were in the area from Hawaii for the holidays and decided to participate in the historic event.

'Even though he made an unpopular decision in pardoning Nixon, he helped to heal our nation,' said Young, who waited about an hour in the midafternoon to see the president.

During Ford's brief stint as president, he was credited with uniting a nation bitterly divided over the Watergate scandal and the war in Vietnam, but he lost a subsequent bid for the presidency in 1976 to Democrat Jimmy Carter. Many political scientists have attributed Ford's defeat to his controversial decision to pardon Nixon.

Crowds were significantly smaller than those that came to view Ronald Reagan lying in state in June 2004. Waits to get into the Capitol for the more-popular Reagan stretched for six to eight hours.

Frank Enter, 76, who was selling political campaign buttons to those gathered outside the Capitol, said the smaller crowds may be partially due to the time of year. Many people were out of town for the holidays and far fewer tourists visit Washington in the winter, he said.

Temperatures were around 10 degrees Celsius throughout the afternoon. Park police said they could not estimate the size of the crowd, but CNN reported about 2,000 people passed through the building each hour. The Capitol was open to viewers for nine hours Sunday and three hours Saturday.

The public will continue to view the casket Monday.

A state funeral service will be held Tuesday at the Washington National Cathedral. The body will be flown later Tuesday to Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ford's hometown, for a private burial service Wednesday at the Gerald R Ford Presidential Museum.

Events for Ford's state funeral began Friday in California, where a memorial service was held at the couple's church in Palm Desert, California. Thousands of people paid their respects before the casket was flown Saturday morning to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, outside Washington.