Reagan's funeral procession

Not to detract from the fun of Tawnia posting pictures of our family's sports memories (hee hee!!), but both Eric and Nathan asked me on the phone last night to describe being at Reagan's funeral procession through Washington DC. So I thought I'd tell everyone here ...

Adam came downtown when he got off work, met me at my office, and we walked over to Constitution Ave. We were at the end of the procession route, just below the capitol. The crowds along Constitution Ave. were 10 to 20 people deep. We were probably 10 or so back and where we were, the crowd stretched back up the hill so there were lots more behind us. The street was lined with military in dress uniform, one every 30 feet or so, standing at attention. The first thing to come up the street was a row of police motorcycles - they made quite a bit of noise, but once they were past, nobody said a word. If they did, it was whispered and was mostly "Can you see?" It was odd, and pretty neat, that so many people could be so quiet.

The procession was all military. There were units from all the branches and all of the military academies. 2 of the bands were in the mix. About halfway through came the fighter jets - we were directly under the flight path. 7 groups of 4 jets, and the last one did the Missing Man formation. When the last set was over the capitol, the back plane shot straight up into the sky instead of continuing straight forward with the rest. We could hear it long after we could see it. After the last unit, a line of cars turned off to go across the front of the capitol instead of coming all the way up the hill. We assumed that was the dignitaries like Margaret Thatcher and Gorbechev. Then came the caisson with flags and horses and all, and I doubt we got a very good picture of it - we were shooting through tons of people, also with all of their cameras raised over their heads. Then 5 more cars, likely with the family. The applause, after everything had gone by, came at us as a really interesting wave of sound. It was honestly like a wave, with ebb and flow, and it sounded like rain, and kept getting louder - I couldn't tell what it was until it almost got to us.

Someone at work commented about going home to watch it on TV so they didn't have to fight the crowds. My thought is, crowd or no crowd - anyone can watch it on TV. It's better to BE there, even if we couldn't see much (and for me, I could only see clearly when Adam literally picked me up.) We were PART of it instead of just a TV-spectator.