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Ronald Reagan's Funeral
Commentary by Todd W. Van Beck, president of Commonwealth Institute of Funeral Service in Houston, Texas. Van Beck has written and spoken about a wide variety of funeral topics, including the historical role of the funeral and funeral director. He talked to ICFM about the funeral for President Reagan. Van Beck is a licensed funeral director and embalmer and is dean of ICFA University's College of Funeral Home Management. He can be reached at (281) 873-0262 and at tvanbeck@yahoo.com.
ICFM: There has been a huge amount of attention focused on the funeral and related ceremonies.
Van Beck: It's the frenzy of a presidential funeral. There has not been one since 1973, when two presidents, Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman, died. Truman's body did not lie in state in Washington.
ICFM: How does Reagan's funeral fit in the tradition of the presidential funerals?
Van Beck: I think Reagan's funeral really reflected Reagan. We were watching a very traditional, Midwestern, 1950s kind of a presidential sendoff. It was, to be sure, a state funeral, but was very traditional in format. Harry Truman's funeral in 1973 was much more contemporary than Reagan's. Reagan's really followed the book to a "T."
Technically, for years nobody knew what a state funeral was, even though most presidents have skirted death one way or the other while still in office—it's a risky job. Even for Lincoln's funeral, they made it up as they went. It was only after Lincoln that they started to come up with issues of protocol.
Today the Military District of Washington, not a funeral director or funeral home, conducts state funerals. There is a protocol, a long document, but it's flexible. So, for example, Nancy Reagan as next of kin was able to make the changes she wanted to make in the plan for her husband's funeral.
When Harry Truman reviewed the plan for his funeral, he had the best line. He said, "It looks like a damn fine show; too bad I'm not going to be there to enjoy it." Then, when he closed the folder, her took his pen out and wrote on it: "Operation Hope Not."
ICFM: What did you think as you watched the Reagan coverage on television?
Van Beck: I thought the horse-drawn caisson was very impressive, as always. It didn't seem to me as solemn an occasion as we've seen in past presidential funerals. There were people applauding and cheering as the caisson went by. This is partly because he was an actor and entertainer as well as a politician and people just enjoyed being around him. He made it to 93, beating the records of John Adams and Herbert Hoover, who made it to 90, and he lived an extraordinary life. It wasn't like when Kennedy was shot, or even when Johnson died. Johnson just dropped dead and the nation was stunned.
Reagan also did not lead the country during a war. The funerals of war presidents have had a different atmosphere. When Truman died, the fact that he was the man who ordered the dropping of the atomic bomb and ended World War II brought a sense of solemnity to the occasion. When Eisenhower died in 1969, there was this patriotic fervor for the man who liberated Europe.
At the other end of the spectrum was the case of Martin Van Buren. He had been out of the public eye for 22 years, and when he died in 1862, it hardly made a ripple in this country. There were newspapers that didn't even run his obituary, because he just faded off into the sunset after leaving office.
ICFM: How does a presidential funeral relate to the services for the average person?
Van Beck: The elements of a funeral—all funerals—are fairly consistent, whether a child is burying a pet or the nation is burying the chief executive. All funerals will have a sense of notification about them, where people are notified what has happened and mobilized to get ready for it. There's always going to be some type of group activity—a parade, a processional, a recessional. There is the religious/spiritual aspect. Then there is the confrontation with reality. That was what was going on in the Capitol Rotunda, where people were allowed to walk by the casket and pay their respects. Then you have the final recessional and disposition.
There is no explanation necessary in a lot of funeral activity—they're cultural universals, everybody understands what's going on. Even children with a dead pet do a parade, a procession.
In my opinion, funerals have a mystical purpose. What they ought to do—and I think they do this very well—is give people peace of mind, and that was what was happening in the country as people watched Reagan's funeral. People, including those who were critical when he was president, had a chance to get up and speak well of him. The second thing they do is make people feel they've done the right thing. The right thing in this sort of situation is to show the world that we're civilized, we're a nation of conviction. It makes us feel right to watch that caisson.
The power of Reagan's funeral was in the lines of regular citizens who came to the Rotunda, not the "players" who were invited to the funeral service. Can you imagine the outcry if Nancy Reagan had said, "I'm going to have my husband immediately cremated and the people in this country are going to be frozen out of this occasion."
ICFM: Does that mean you think the saturation coverage for this very traditional funeral will have an impact on funeral practices by the average person in this country?
Van Beck: The country's going to move on quickly. It isn't going to be like when John F. Kennedy died, where to this very day people say "How could that have happened?"
I know all the funeral director organizations will seize on this and say, "What a learning experience," but I can assure you that my mother and father, i.e., average people, are not watching Reagan's funeral for a learning experience. Every funeral director in the country knows what kind of casket it is, but my parents don't. They can't even see the casket, with the flag draped over it, and they don't care.
I think sometimes funeral professionals are so beat up by the press that they misinterpret the media's interest in something like this as an endorsement of the funeral, but it's not. After the funeral, the media is going to go right back to the way it's always been about covering our profession.
ICFM: Do you think that all the publicity for such a traditional service and disposition will have any effect on people's attitude toward cremation?
Van Beck: This is going to have no effect on the general attitude about cremation. The average person didn't look at these services the way funeral professionals did. The question itself, "Don't you think that when people see Reagan buried it will affect their view on cremation?" is disturbing. Turn it around and you can see that what's implied is, "We sure hope it turns their attitude toward cremation around, because we still hate it, we still see cremation as the bogeyman." As long as that mentality is there, we are pushing wet noodles up a hill.
Really, what difference should it make if people choose cremation? If the people in charge of Reagan's funeral had said, "We're going to have a state funeral, the body's going to lie in state in the Rotunda, then we are going to sing and pray until we feel we've done the right thing, and then we're taking the body back to California, where it will be cremated and the ashes interred in the presidential library," I would have said, "Great; go for it." What difference would it make? What you've got in the grave in six years, you've got in the crematory in six hours. One is rapid oxidation of the body and one is slow oxidation of the body.
However, if they had said, "It's none of the public's business what we do, and there will be no ceremony, no involvement of the people who elected him president; he's just going to be cremated," I would have said, "That's not fair. He was the president and we all have the right to say goodbye to him."
As long as there's a funeral, a chance for people to say goodbye, it's OK. And the same principle applies whether it's a state funeral or the smallest little village service. When a family decides "direct cremation, no funeral," it robs other people of the opportunity to say goodbye. It's risky business to decide who you're going to include or exclude in funerals. Nobody knows how many lives a person has affected.
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Copyright ICFA 2004
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