Bob Dole will lie in state at U.S. Capitol
SARAHBETH MANEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES
People pay their respects to Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington as he lies in state. Dole died on Dec. 5, at the age of 98.
WASHINGTON >> Robert J. Dole, the son of the Kansas Dust Bowl, World War II hero and Republican presidential nominee, will lie in state in the Capitol’s rotunda today, returning to the building he revered as a congressman and senator for more than three decades for an honor accorded to about only 30 people before him.
A formal arrival ceremony honoring Dole, who died Sunday at 98, will begin at 9:45 a.m., to be followed by a tribute that will include an address by President Joe Biden. Dole will lie in state from noon until 8 p.m., although because of the coronavirus pandemic, there will be no public viewing.
His body will depart the Capitol at 9:30 a.m. Friday.
The honor of lying in state under the Capitol’s dome has been bestowed on presidents and generals, senators and admirals. Only one woman, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has lain in state in the Capitol, but her coffin was placed in National Statuary Hall, adjacent to the rotunda.
The ceremony in all its solemnity was known well to Dole, who served as Senate majority leader and, in one of his last public appearances, rose from his wheelchair in December 2018 to pay his respects to former President George H.W. Bush, as he lay in state.
One of the most durable political figures of the past century, Dole was nominated for vice president in 1976 and then for president 20 years later. He spent four terms in the House, then a quarter-century in the Senate, where he was his party’s longest-serving leader until Mitch McConnell of Kentucky surpassed that record in June 2018.
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He was grievously wounded in Italy during World War II, and his military record shaped his service in and out of government. His death Sunday marked the passing of the Senate’s Greatest Generation; his friend and fellow senator, Daniel K. Inouye, once convalesced with him in the same military hospital and lay in state under the same dome nine years ago this month.
“All of us who served in Congress at the same time as he did take great pride” in welcoming his body back to the Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Wednesday. “He was a person who taught everyone here about dignity, duty, integrity and patriotism.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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