George W Bush Will Deliver Eulogy At Father’s Funeral


George W. Bush will eulogize his father George H.W. Bush during a state funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral today, a national day of mourning after the death of the 41st president of the United States on December 1.

This moment will mark the first time one president eulogizes another who also happens to be his father.

Also speaking about the former president will be former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and biographer Jon Meacham, reported USA Today. Former Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, a close friend of the elder Bush, is also expected to speak.

The service is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. EST after a motorcade transports Bush’s casket to the cathedral from the United States Capitol, where he has been lying in state since Monday night, reported USA Today.

All living United States presidents will be in attendance, including President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump. This will be the first time Trump will join a gathering of ex-presidents and their spouses, which will include Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Jimmy Carter.

Biography explained George H.W. Bush fought in WWII, signing up shortly after his 18th birthday. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966. The senior Bush served as Ronald Reagan’s vice president for two terms and then won the 1988 U.S. presidential race before losing his bid for a second term to Bill Clinton.

He became the first sitting vice president to be elected president since Martin Van Buren in 1837.

USA Today reported that during his tenure in the Oval Office, Bush oversaw the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and he built a global coalition to force Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm.

On the domestic side, he signed the first of three major deficit reduction agreements in 1990 that slashed spending and raised taxes, which might have been the reason he lost his re-election bid against Bill Clinton in 1992.

He also signed the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act and clean air legislation.

The state funeral for the 41st president of the United States is the first presidential funeral since Gerald Ford died in 2006. Ronald Reagan’s funeral was held two years prior, in 2004.

After the service, Bush’s remains will be flown to Houston, where he will lie in state at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, reported USA Today. He then will be taken by train to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas, where he will be laid to rest in a family plot with his wife of 73 years, Barbara, who died in April, and daughter Pauline Robinson Bush, who died from leukemia at the age of 3 in 1953.

George H.W. Bush died Friday at the age 94 after years battling vascular parkinsonism, which left him wheelchair-bound.

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