Long Live The King

Usually with the passing of a famous person I can get the essence of what that individual accomplished from 3 or 4 articles. Not so with President Ronald Reagan. The number of articles and the amount of information about President Reagan this week have been staggering. Just keeping up with the photographs and coverage of the ceremonies has taken an incredible amount of time. Even now that he is buried and the official tributes are over, the outpouring from the hearts of those who loved the President continues.

Over the course of this week I have heard various people criticizing the extravagance of a week of mourning for the President. By any account both the response to the President's death and the amount of activity surrounding the event have been overwhelming: lying in repose in his California library, followed by the funeral procession to the Capitol building, then lying in state in the Capitol, followed by the state funeral and concluded with the private funeral. Many are criticizing this response as somehow inappropriate.

I beg to differ with this assessment. The ceremony was entirely fitting, considering the greatness of his life, and I believe that we will see that a week of mourning for President Reagan will not nearly be enough.

There is certainly precedent for extended periods of national mourning. Jacob, the patriarch of the nation Israel, was mourned by his descendants and the Egyptians for an amazing 77 days. Moses was mourned for 30 days and, depending on the account, President Lincoln was mourned from 20 to 24 days.

I am not suggesting that there should be more ceremony surrounding the President’s passing. I am sure that everyone is ready for all of the public ceremonies to come to an end. There is something exhausting and overwhelming about the scale of what is happening. However, the private mourning for this great leader will continue. It really says something about the man. Hundreds of thousands of people are mourning his passing as if he were a close relative. That in and of itself is an amazing tribute. It is astounding that so many people could love someone that they never met so dearly.

I think that outpouring is a direct result of the realness of President Reagan. There was never the feeling that he was pretending to be something that he wasn't. Numerous articles and interviews that I have seen indicate that he was the same in private that he was in public, and I believe that people pick up on that. President Reagan was also very down to earth and approachable. He was like a member of the family.

I must admit, that I have felt the grief of his loss very deeply, and, to a point, it doesn't seem logical. I never personally knew him. In fact, I never even had the pleasure of meeting him. I suppose that in a way he represented a very happy era in my life - a time that it was easy to be proud to be an American. It was an era where America was safe from her enemies, largely because he was at the helm. But I am sad too, because an icon of what it means to be an American has departed. He was a man of great vision driven by principle. He was a man of compassion. He was a man of humor. He was a man of strength. He was a man of faith. And he was a man of kindness.

I hope that when he is finally gone, President George W. Bush will be similarly honored. I hope that time will have proven by then that he is right. He has within him so much of the strength of character that made President Reagan great. My greatest hope is that our country will continue to produce men like Presidents Reagan and Bush. The world will be a much better place if it does. God bless Ronald Reagan and bring comfort to all of us who are sad to see him go.