From the archives: Yorba Linda prepares for Nixon funeral

This story was originally published in Newsday on April 25, 1994

On Aug. 9, 1974, on his last day as president, Richard M. Nixon boarded a Boeing 707 jet and headed home to San Clemente, Calif.

Tomorrow morning, that same airplane will carry his body to its final resting place in Yorba Linda, Calif.

Last June, when his wife, Pat, died, the same airplane, bearing the tail number 27000, transported her body from the couple's New Jersey home to the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, according to Maj. Mark Tolbert, a spokesman for the military's Joint Information Bureau at the Stewart Air National Guard Base. The Yorba Linda site is where Pat Nixon was buried and her husband will be interred beside her.

Services for Nixon, who died Friday at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center from a massive stroke suffered earlier in the week, will be held at the library on Wednesday. The service for Nixon, the first American president to die in 20 years, will draw President Bill Clinton, four former presidents and hundreds of national and international dignitaries.

Yesterday, the grounds of the spacious library bustled with construction crews racing to erect grandstands for the state funeral.

A steady stream of visitors scribbled their condolences on a giant card laid out on a table just outside the doors of the library, which is closed to the public until Thursday. Flags flew at half-staff as workers completed bleachers in the parking lot.

Hundreds of mourners placed notes,bouquets and burning candles in an ever-growing makeshift memorial to the former president.

Most visitors chose to remember him kindly.

"He was the greatest peacemaker in world history," said Ed Veen, a 73-year-old Redondo Beach, Calif., retiree, his voice choked with emotion. "If people had listened to him, maybe we'd have peace in the world. Maybe now somebody will listen."

Throughout Orange County - a staunchly conservative Republican stronghold where Nixon was born and will be buried - church services resounded with praise for the nation's 37th president.

"We pray for the legacy of President Nixon," the Rev. Todd Ehrenborg told his congregation at the United Methodist Church, only a few blocks from the library.

Nixon's body will arrive by motorcade at the Stewart Air National Guard Base tomorrow at 9:45 a.m. After a 21-gun salute by members of Army national guard, his body will be flown to El Toro Marine Air Station near Los Angeles.

He will lie in state in a closed casket in the library's main lobby until 11 a.m. Wednesday. The funeral service, to be televised live on the major networks, is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

The State Department sent invitations to all heads of state Saturday and officials said they were awaiting responses. As they did for Pat Nixon's funeral, a number of Watergate figures were all but certain to attend as well, one library official said.