the time since he held it by a democrat starting in this new congress. part of the seismic shift in our politics since george h.w. bush was our president. the city of houston will get a good chance to say good-bye to the former president as will the rest of the country. the official funeral plans have not been released down to the particular detailed level, but here s what we know. he will lie in state in the u.s. capitol and there will be a service for him in washington, d.c. but then he ll come back to texas and there will be a funeral here in houston at st. martin s church. that s the same church where the former first lady barbara bush was honored when she passed away. this then the former president will go to texas a&m university, that s where his presidential library is. he ll be laid to rest there beside his beloved life. 73 years married. they will lay side by side after what will be essentially a week long opportunity for the nation
to after the first part of the state funeral ceremonies begin in earnest this week. we re getting details about what that will entail. the president s remains will arrive at the capitol monday evening. members of the public will be invited to see the former president lie in state until wednesday morning. that s when the state funeral will take place, wednesday during the day. president trump has said he will attend, along with first lady melania trump. then things will move back down here to texas for a final funeral mass at st. martin s church here, the family s long-time church here in the houston area before things will head out to college station, where the president will be buried beside his long-time wife barbara bush who passed away this spring. tammy, you are at college station right now.
basically, over the years, and so a lot of v.i.p. guests early this hour, former president george w. bush held a reception, and we ve seen guests coming in, actor chuck norris, former congresswoman gabby gifford. karl rove, our former colleagues at fox and tight security at st. martin s church and everything has been orderly in terms of bringing people in on buses and people seem to be respectfully rolling with it and getting to the church and getting to their pews. yesterday, of course, was a very public portion of this honoring of mrs. bush and a lot of people told us they loved her because she thought she exuded class. as a tribute, many folks wore mrs. bush s favorite color blue or perhaps some pearls and we ve seen pearls on tomorrow women going into the church today.
american people. it s good for the opioid crisis, responding to that. it s good for so many different issues, for infrastructure in this country, for funding our agencies. we did the right thing. neil: senator cardin, thank you very much very good seeing you again. thank you, neil. neil: meantime we had looking live in houston guests are arriving for former first lady barbara bush s formal funeral. mike emmanuel is there with the very very latest. hi, mike. reporter: neil good morning to you we are seeing early arrivals for first lady barbara bush s funeral including actor chuck no rris, trying to identify some of the other folks we re here but with security extremely tight and 1,500 guests obviously it takes time to get them all here to st. martin s church. among the dignitaries former secretary of state condoleeza rice, chelsea clinton, caroline kennedy, daughters of former president johnson, richard nixon and of course gerald ford and texas governor greg abbott. there was a touchi
a thousand other ways barbara pierce bush was real and that s why people admired her and loved her so. jeb bush made reference that his mother did not want the funeral to be too long or too weepy, it was scheduled to be about 90 minutes or so, wrapped a few minutes early and he and the others did a really good job of keeping their emotions from overcoming them, arthel. arthel: of course, it was so very, very touching, mike, tell us what everything was like after the funeral service was over? well, it was really a celebration of first lady barbara bush s life so there definitely was some joy, when the casket left st. martin s church, it was appropriately solemn and peaceful and afterwards when the casket made way to college station, texas, some of the guests were reflective of what they saw today. it was a great tribute to an outstanding, amazing lady. i think she would have been very pleased. well done, everybody participated, the kids, the