Thousands salute as funeral train 4141 carries George H.W. Bush on final journey, to be buried alongside wife and daughter in Texas
- 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 University
- There 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.”
George W Bush weeps for his father, George H.W. Bush, amid grandeur of former US president’s state funeral
“The world became a better place because George Bush occupied the White House for four years,” said Baker.
