WASHINGTON (AP) — When former Vice President dick cheney His funeral will be held Thursday at Washington’s National Cathedral, where he will join a bipartisan but exclusive list of notable figures being commemorated at the cathedral, which tells the history of America’s sacred sites.
From Dwight D. Eisenhower jimmy carter He received a state funeral in a Gothic cathedral. Funerals were also held here for Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, and Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who walked on the moon. The list of famous people buried in the cathedral also includes author and activist Helen Keller. Only one president, Woodrow Wilson, is buried there.
The Rev. Jean Naylor Cope, director of the Washington National Cathedral, said that given the church’s history and tradition, it sits at the “intersection of the public and the sacred.” The funerals held there shed light both on the deceased and their place in the history of this country.
Statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln stand in two separate sections near the entrance to the nave, keeping the great figures of American history watching over the cathedral. The cathedral has five chapels on the main level, four chapels and a burial chamber on the lower level, or crypt.
Washington’s original design by French-born architect Pierre L’Enfant included a church “for national purposes.” In 1893, a parliamentary charter authorized the construction of a cathedral for religious, educational, and charitable purposes.
Construction of the Protestant Episcopal church began in 1907, with President Theodore Roosevelt in attendance, allowing the foundation to be laid, but it was not fully completed until 1990. Today, it is the sixth largest cathedral in the world and the second largest cathedral in the country after the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.
Funerals help paint a picture of a nation
At Mr. Eisenhower’s funeral in 1969, the World War II general wore his wartime uniform and was placed in a simple government-issued casket for ordinary American soldiers, according to the White House Historical Society.
At former President Ronald Reagan’s funeral in 2004, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who had been Reagan’s partner in the confrontation with the Soviet Union, was among those in attendance, but her eulogy, which had been in failing health for several weeks, was shown to mourners via video. Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who negotiated nuclear weapons with President Reagan at the end of the Cold War, was also there.
For astronaut Armstrong, eulogy connected the divine with the extraterrestrial. Mr. Armstrong’s legacy is already tied to the church, where a piece of moon rock collected during the Apollo 11 mission has been housed inside a stained glass window known as the “Cosmic Window” since its dedication in 1974.
Former President George W. Bush will speak at Cheney’s funeral, the second one held at the cathedral as vice president, and Cheney’s daughter, former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, will also speak.
Final resting place in the National Cathedral
There is a select list of Americans buried on the grounds of the cathedral. President Woodrow Wilson is the only president buried here, along with his wife, Edith Wilson. The ashes of Matthew Shepard, a gay American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming, on October 6, 1998, are also interred at the cathedral.
“This is a pilgrimage,” Cope said of the visit to Shepard’s grave. “And it lives in our hopes and desires to be a house of prayer for all people, no exceptions.”
Initially, those buried within the cathedral were people associated with the building itself, such as the clergy and the cathedral’s original stone carvers. For the rest (220 people in total are buried here), it is their family’s or their own choice, and anyone interested must apply.
Some of the cathedral’s 215 ornate stained glass windows also tell the country’s story. Stained glass windows commemorating Confederate officers were permanently removed. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson announced in 2017 after a reckoning that forced leaders to ask whether the windows installed in 1953 were “an appropriate part of the sacred fabric of the nation’s spiritual home.” new window The old one will be replaced in 2023 with a racial justice theme.
Many presidents have visited the cathedral to pray. During the Iran hostage crisis, Mr. Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale gathered here to pray for prisoners being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Inaugural prayers have been held for Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, and most recently, President Donald Trump.
Mr Cope said the cathedral could be the end of a journey for some people, but a place for others to reflect on their lives.
“We hope that places like this, designed to inspire and awe like Gothic architecture and Gothic cathedrals, will continue to inspire future generations,” Cope said. “To live a meaningful life that matters, makes a difference.”
