Bush's final train ride passes less than a dozen miles from my home

Washington Post:

They stood in the rain for hours, waiting. Ranchers, retirees and Cub Scouts clutching tiny flags in the cold , waiting to see the train carrying the casket of President George H.W. Bush through the center of town.

After the pomp and circumstance of Bush’s memorial service at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston on Thursday, his casket was transferred to a windowed car in a train powered by a Union Pacific locomotive long ago painted “4141” in his honor. The train made a 70-mile journey to College Station, where Bush would be laid to rest at his presidential library, through the wintry farmland of the state Bush had grown to love.

As president, Bush had vowed to bring his message of hope and growth “to the loneliest town on the quietest street.” Now his train was passing through tiny Texas towns with only a few dozen residents.

“Is it coming?” everybody kept asking, peering down the tracks, where the residents of Navasota — population 8,000 — were lined up for blocks under their umbrellas.

Few among them remembered the last time a president’s casket had traveled by funeral train — that was 1969, with Eisenhower — but all were aware they were witnessing history.

“We’re losing the last of the Greatest Generation,” said Shane Werchan, 46, a salesman. “It really is the end of an era. We will never see a president like him again.”

The Bush train was perhaps the most exciting thing that had ever happened in Navasota, a tiny town built around the railroad and cotton farms in 1854. It’s not far from the symbolic heart of the state, Washington-on-the-Brazos, where Texas declared its independence from Mexico in 1836. Navasota’s picturesque downtown includes a hardware store selling red Radio Flyer wagons, a coffee shop owned by the mayor, antique stores and a weekly newspaper’s office.

On Thursday, Mary Fontaine, 76, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam with the WAVES — or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service — was handing out flags at the corner of Railroad Street and Washington Avenue, where locals said the cotton bales were stacked high during the town’s heyday. This week, the buildings were hung with red, white and blue bunting and a sign that read “President George H.W. Bush. Thank You For A Lifetime Of Service.”

With every flag, Fontaine cheerily asked the recipient to “pray for our country.”

“We need it now more than ever ’cause we’re very divided,” Fontaine said. “This has brought the patriotism out in all of us, and we need to embrace it and stand tall.”
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Earlier this week, Bush’s spokesman, Jim McGrath, said in a tweet that the former president had reacted with “typical humility” when briefed about the plans for his funeral in 2011, asking, “Do you think anyone will come?”

And, Thursday, they did come. In Navasota, onlookers gathered from all around. They included schoolchildren who had been let out early for the “lifetime opportunity,” as the local schools superintendent wrote in a note sent to parents.
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Navasota is a friendly town with a statue of a Spanish explorer who passed through the area.  It is near the Brazos River prospering at one time from the railroads that pass through it.  Washington, Texas where I live faltered after it refused to allow the trains to interfere with its ferry business over the river.

I am sorry I did not get a chance to join with those who came to see the train.  I had to take my wife to a doctors appointment.  I will eventually go see the burial site in College Station which is a little over 30 miles away.  It is a town that got its name from railroad stop for students going to Texas A&M.

The planning and execution of the funeral arrangements for George H.W. Bush were well done.  It was refreshing to see a funeral that celebrated a life rather than becoming a vehicle to criticize current politicians.  It is unfortunate that some in the media couldn't bury their anger for a day.