Father Bush's coffin returns to Texas for a last and familiar goodbye
The coffin with the mortal remains of the ex-president of the United States George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) returned today to the military base of Ellington Field in Houston (Texas), to receive tomorrow a final tribute from his family and friends.
The Mass will take place at 10.00 local time (1600 GMT) at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, where he and his wife, former first lady Barbara Bush, who died in April of this year, attended regularly.
After the private office, the former president number 41 of the United States. he will be transferred to his final resting place aboard a train whose locomotive was named "Bush4141", specifically to honor his life.
The journey of this train will end in the town of College Station (Texas), 160 kilometers from Houston, where he will be buried in his presidential library with his wife and daughter Robin, who died at only 3 years of age sick with leukemia. .
The coffin flew to Texas from Washington, where a state funeral took place this morning with an emotional ceremony held at the National Cathedral, attended by political leaders and royals from different parts of the world.
US President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, sat in the front row of the temple with former Democratic presidents Barack Obama (2009-2017), Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and Jimmy Carter (1977- 1981), who attended the homily with their respective wives, Michelle, Hillary and Rosalynn.
The also ex-president George W. Bush (2001-2009), visibly moved, defined his father as a man of "optimistic character" and said that what he liked to do most was to laugh, "especially about himself".
"In the victory, he shared the merit, when he lost, he took the blame, he accepted that the failure is part of a full life," said the Republican in an apparent nod to the defeat suffered by his father in the 1992 elections, which it prevented him from exercising a second term.
The patriarch of the Bush family was a war pilot during World War II, congressman, ambassador to the UN, director of the CIA, vice president in the administration of Ronald Reagan between 1981 and 1989 and ended his four decades of political career as president (1989-1993), from where he led the end of the Cold War.
