U.S.: A real prince of a man

From early in the morning, people teemed over Constitution Avenue in the blistering heat. Old people and newborns. Teenagers too young to remember the man whose passing they mourned, holding hands with moms and praying they won't forget him.

By the thousands they came, clutching folding chairs, photographs, American flags.

So many hands waving so many flags on the street so silent, you could shut your eyes and think you were in synagogue.

They were Washington wonks and Southern Democrats, Maryland homemakers and New Jersey Marines. They came to look, maybe take a picture. But in the hours they spent standing together, here in the steamy, overwhelming quiet, they found common ground.

They shared a sudden, perhaps unexpected, sense of staggering loss — mixed with optimism, hope. Renewal. And above all, respect for one another, differences and all.

Much like Ronald Reagan himself. A man of humble beginnings who rose up, unexpectedly, to inspire a generation with his upbeat grace.

He was a good man. And there exists a truth even those who disagreed with him bitterly have come to embrace: He was a great president. Some were too young. Or on the opposite side politically. But yesterday, everyone got him.

You could hear the funeral procession even without seeing it. The clop of horse's hooves. A sweeping glimpse of a flag-draped coffin rolling up the avenue.
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I looked to my left, and was startled by the sight of a young man. He was crying.

He was just 23, too young to really know. And a Democrat, at that.

"I'm awed by the institution, more than anything else," said Parker Wiseman, who hails from Mississippi.

Nearby, Hanja Cherniak instructed her 10-year-old son Mark to remove his Yankee cap and bow his head.

"He freed the homeland of my parents, the Ukraine," Cherniak said of Reagan.

"He's responsible for bringing an end to the Cold War and for the Soviet Union falling apart. He's the greatest president of my lifetime."

"We really needed this, said her friend, Kate O'Neill.

"We freed Iraq from a despot who'd kill his own people, and you wouldn't know it from reading the papers. There's like five minutes on TV about poor Nick Berg being beheaded.

"Today, everybody's Republican, on some level," she said.

Ex-Marine Greg Siscoe drove down from New Jersey, and sat under a shade tree all day, just for the sight of the coffin coming down the avenue.

Siscoe's wife and his son, recently back from Iraq, were unable to come with him, but he met a new spiritual family on the streets of Washington.

"He did what he felt was best and it turned out to be right, in my opinion," Siscoe, 49, said. "The collapse of the Soviet Union . . . And he was great for the economy."

Michelle Spence carried a sign that read: "God Bless President Reagan." She is just 27.

"I met him in 1992 with the Girl Scouts," Spence said.

"President Reagan invited us to his Century City office and told us all about his love for jelly beans. He told us he ate them so he wouldn't smoke!"

Years later, it isn't his politics she remembers, but his common touch.

"He was very special," she said.
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Whatever our differences, yesterday on Constitution Avenue, we found our inner Ronald Reagan.

Yesterday, we were all Americans.

This is the Democrat nightmare.