President of the United States Donald Trump and First Lady Melania yesterday paid their respects to late president George H.W. Bush whose remains lay in state in the US Capitol. Trump and Melania visited the Capitol rotunda, where Bush’s flag-draped coffin was resting as part of tributes to honour the 41st US president.
Bush, who is the 12th US president to lie inside the state rotunda, died at the age of 94 in his home in Houston, Texas in what is said to have been a peaceful death. The late Bush is being honoured with four-days long commemoration and services in Washington and Texas before he is buried on Thursday.
President Donald Trump designated Wednesday as a national day of mourning with the New York Stock Exchange markets expected to close, in keeping with the Big Board’s long-standing tradition. A state funeral is being arranged at the Washington National Cathedral with the President and First Lady Melania Trump expected to be in attendance.
On Thursday, Bush will be interred at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library Centre in College Station, Texas, next to his wife Barbara, who died in April, and their daughter Robin who died of leukaemia at age three.
The state funeral service will be the first presidential funeral since Gerald Ford died in 2006.
George H.W. Bush served the country as President from 1989-1993 and is remembered by many as a World War II combat pilot, a Cold War politician, and a compassionate family man.
What do you remember the late President Bush for?