Cheney, Rumsfeld to come to Thurmond funeral
By The Associated PressSunday, June 29, 20035 comment(s) | Default | Large
COLUMBIA -- Vice President Dick Cheney will represent President Bush at Tuesday's funeral for former Sen. Strom Thurmond, the White House says.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also will come to Columbia's First Baptist Church to pay his respects to the 100-year-old former Republican senator, said state Sen. John Courson, who is planning the funeral.
Courson referred questions about the funeral's program, including who might speak, to Shellhouse Funeral Home in Aiken. The funeral home refused to give out details Saturday afternoon.
The public tributes for Thurmond, who died Thursday night at the Edgefield County Hospital, begin Sunday at the Statehouse with visitation for friends and family from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Thurmond will then lie in state on the second floor of the Statehouse on Monday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Thurmond's body will then be loaded on a caisson for the four-block trip from the Statehouse to First Baptist Church, where the funeral is set to begin at 1 p.m.
Organizers say portions of Sumter, Gervais and Hampton streets in downtown Columbia will be blocked for parts of Tuesday.
A funeral procession will then take Thurmond the 60 or so miles to his hometown of Edgefield, where he will be buried in a family plot at the Willowbrook Cemetery.
All events are open to the public, because that's the way Thurmond would have wanted them, said Courson, R-Columbia.
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