HOUSTON (Reuters) – A plane carrying the body of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush touched down in Houston on Wednesday following a state funeral in Washington where he was remembered as a statesman of uncommon personal kindness.
Bush, the 41st U.S. president, died last week at the age of 94, and will be laid to rest at his presidential library in College Station, Texas, following a funeral service in Houston.
He occupied the White House from 1989 to 1993, navigating the collapse of the Soviet Union and expelling former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces from oil-rich Kuwait.
“George H.W. Bush was America’s last great soldier-statesman,” Jon Meacham, a presidential biographer, said in a eulogy at the service in Washington. “He stood in the breach in the Cold War against totalitarianism. He stood in the breach in Washington against unthinking partisanship.”
(Reporting by Steve Holland, Richard Cowan, Susan Heavey and Jeff Mason in Washington, Gary McWilliams in Houston and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Frances Kerry and Peter Cooney)
