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Ronald Reagan is buried in this tomb bearing the presidential seal

From California, Nancy Reagan accompanied her husband’s casket on a flight to Washington, D.C., for the first state funeral held since Lyndon Johnson’s in 1973. In the Capitol rotunda, Reagan’s casket was displayed on a catafalque built in 1865 for the funeral of Abraham Lincoln. Mourners waited in line for hours to file past the coffin. President George W. Bush declared Friday, June 11, a day of mourning as Reagan’s cortege proceeded from the Capitol along a five-mile route to the National Cathedral. Thousands of onlookers lined the D.C. streets. The service drew notable statesmen and-women from around the world, including all living former presidents and first ladies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev. The coffin was flown back to California, where Ronald Reagan was buried at his presidential library during a sunset service for 700 guests.

Touring the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum

The Ronald Reagan Library and Museum, in Simi Valley, California, is open daily, excluding Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is $12.00 for adults, $9.00 for senior citizens, $3.00 for children ages eleven to seventeen, and free for children ages ten and under.

From Los Angeles and points south: Take I-405 North toward Sacramento to 118 West. Exit at Madera Road South, then turn right on Madera and proceed three miles to Presidential Drive.

From Santa Barbara and points north: Take 101 South to 23 North and exit at Olsen Road. Turn right on Olsen and proceed two miles to Presidential Drive.

Follow Presidential Drive up the hill to the library and look for parking signs.

For additional information

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum

40 Presidential Drive

Simi Valley, CA 93065

Phone: (800) 410-8354

www.reagan.utexas.edu

“ . . . . . . Reagan himself had often likened politics to show business.”

—Richard Norton Smith

Though ill with Alzheimer’s disease for nearly a decade at the time of his death in June 2004, Ronald Reagan had enjoyed a renaissance of popular and scholarly approval. Against the twilight of Reagan’s slow fade, many a journalist and academic—some more grudgingly than others—came to reconsider dismissive assessments made at the end of the Reagan presidency. This was not without irony, since Reagan himself had often likened politics to show business. In both occupations, he liked to say, success required a big opening and an equally dramatic close. As good as his word, when he slipped away on June 5, it was not before a stunning moment of emotional connection with the woman who had shared his life for nearly half a century. As Nancy Reagan looked on, her husband opened his eyes before he closed them for the last time. He saw her. His wordless gesture communicated volumes to those by his bedside.

While the circumstances surrounding this president’s passing could not have differed more from the horror and convulsive grief of November 1963, there was in both deaths a sense of history transcending mere headlines, of legends in the making. For millions of admirers, Ronald Reagan had become an iconic figure. Sensing the climax of a decisive chapter in the national story, they lined up for hours to ride buses to the mountaintop Reagan Library in Simi Valley, forty miles northwest of Los Angeles. They stood five-and six-deep on the streets of Washington, a town not generally seen as a hotbed of Reaganesque politics. At such times presidential historians find themselves much in demand. As a former director of the Reagan Presidential Library, I returned my share of press calls that week. But I also wanted to get out of the television studio, to experience for myself the street level response generated by Reagan’s passing.

So a little after 8 o’clock on a warm June evening I joined the shuffling line outside the Capitol waiting to pay its respects. It snaked down the Hill, past