Quiet Moments With A Fallen Chief

The body of President Reagan arrived at his presidential library on Monday, the first stop on a week-long journey of remembrance to the nation's capital and back.

After leaving a Santa Monica funeral home, the hearse carrying the president's body arrived at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. An honor guard of soldiers, sailors, airmen, coastguardsmen and Marines bore the flag-draped coffin into the library as a Marine Corps band played "Hail to the Chief" and "My Country 'Tis of Thee."

As former first lady Nancy Reagan looked on, the procession placed her husband's body on a platform draped with black cloth.

Rev. Michael Wenning, pastor of the Bel Air Presbyterian Church, saluted "the love and the outpouring that has begun in the nation for a great president, a great world leader and a faithful servant."

Wenning then recited the 23rd psalm: "The lord is my shepherd. I shall not want … though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil."

Mrs. Reagan and the president's children placed their hands on the coffin. Patti Davis embraced Mrs. Reagan, crying. The former first lady put her face against the casket.

The late president's body will lie in repose at the library through Tuesday night, giving Reagan's fellow Californians a chance to pay their final respects to the man who was their governor from 1967 to 1975.

The late president's body will be flown to Washington on Wednesday. It will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until Friday, and the federal government will shut down that day in Reagan's honor.

The funeral will be at Washington National Cathedral, where President Bush will be among the speakers. The body will then be returned to Reagan's library in Simi Valley for a private burial service.

Reagan, 93, died at home Saturday of pneumonia. Former first lady Nancy Reagan and the president's children, Michael, Ron and Patti were with him for the two days before he died, reports CBS News Correspondent Jerry Bowen.

Scores of people began gathering at the Santa Monica funeral home before dawn Monday to add to impromptu memorials placed on the lawn in front.

On Sunday, mourners milled around the funeral home, many leaving behind American flags, flowers and jars of jelly beans — Reagan's favorite treat.

"Thank you for changing the world," said a handwritten note among the tokens of remembrance.

People did the same at Reagan's boyhood home in Dixon, Ill.

Around the world, dignitaries, friends, politicians, and loved ones are each making their own statements about Reagan and his legacy.

Reagan's former vice president, the first President Bush, told the CBS News Early Show, "I think his greatest triumph was in his very important influence on ending the Cold War — ending it without a shot being fired."

Former President Jimmy Carter said Sunday that the death of Reagan, who defeated him in the 1980 presidential election, was "a sad day for our country."

President Clinton said Reagan "personified the optimism of the American people." President Ford called the 40th president "an excellent leader of our nation during challenging times at home and abroad."

"He had the will to make big decisions," said former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. "He had the great intuition of a politician, which served him well."

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a staunch ally and close friend of Reagan, called him simply a "truly great American hero."

CBS News Anchor Dan Rather told the Early Show, "His relationship with the press, I thought, was tremendous, particularly given that there were people in his party and forces around him who just hated the press and everybody in it."

Over two presidential terms, from 1981 to 1989, Reagan reshaped the Republican Party in his conservative image.

He declared at the outset, "Government is not the solution, it's the problem," and challenged the status quo on welfare and other programs that had put government on a growth spurt ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal strengthened the federal presence in the lives of average Americans.

In foreign affairs, he built the arsenals of war while seeking and achieving arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. Reagan's famed "Star Wars" program drew the Soviets into a costly arms race it couldn't afford.

In his second term, Reagan was dogged by revelations that he authorized secret arms sales to Iran while seeking Iranian aid to gain release of American hostages held in Lebanon. Some of the money was used to aid rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.

For all the glowing talk of Reagan's folksy appeal and infectious optimism, his presidency was a time of growing division between rich and poor. Now, as then, critics point to Reaganomics in lamenting big defense spending at the expense of domestic needs and a growing national debt.

Still, Reagan left office in 1989 with the highest popularity rating of any retiring president in the history of modern-day public opinion polls.

"He made a career out of being underestimated," biographer Edmund Morris told the Early Show. "He was a bright man with an infallible instinct."

Five years after leaving office, the nation's 40th president told the world in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer's, an incurable illness that destroys brain cells. He said he had begun "the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life."

In a piece written for Time magazine before Reagan's death, Mrs. Reagan remembered her husband as "a man of strong principles and integrity" who felt his greatest accomplishment was finding a safe end to the Cold War.

"I think they broke the mold when they made Ronnie," she wrote.

Reagan will be buried in a crypt beneath a memorial site at the library some 45 miles north of Los Angeles.

A wall there bears an inscription from Reagan: "I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."