Paying respects

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — They waited through the night in a chilly community college parking lot for the chance to shuffle in silence past the casket of former President Ronald Reagan at his hilltop library here on Tuesday.

One by one by one they came, perhaps 100,000 Americans by the end of the evening, offering tribute to a president they felt they knew.

"Reagan has always been a large part of my life in California," said Mary Hunt, 54, of Cypress. "I thought this was history in my back yard and I wanted to be here."

She left her home in Orange County at 9 p.m. Monday for a drive that should have taken 90 minutes but consumed nearly six hours because of the heavy traffic on roads approaching the library. After spending the night waiting in line for a shuttle bus, Hunt arrived shortly after 8 a.m. on Tuesday at the rotunda of the presidential library where the former president's body lay.

"It was worth it," she said of the 60 seconds she spent in the presence of Reagan's remains.

After filing past the casket, Caryn Fate, 52, of Simi Valley offered a different sort of admiration. "Ronald Reagan was not the finest president I've known, but he was a human being and showed it," she said. "He was not a role model, but a public figure. I didn't agree with him all the time, but I have major respect for him as a man."

Because of the large crowds and the traffic, officials extended the planned viewing hours to 10 p.m. from 6 p.m. on Tuesday. Officers began turning away cars arriving at the Moorpark Community College staging area at 6 p.m. because of the hours-long wait for shuttle buses to the library.

"For the small amount of time that we had to execute and launch this, it has really gone smoothly," said Gary Foster, who served in the Reagan White House in the communications department and is acting as a volunteer press officer at the library this week. "It has been really almost flawless, considering that we're bringing 100,000 people up to a mountaintop with almost no parking."

The Ronald Reagan Freeway, which leads to Simi Valley, was clogged on Monday afternoon and evening, with delays of up to four hours. On Tuesday morning, freeway signs and radio traffic reports warned of eight-hour delays in reaching the library. Possibly because of that, traffic on the freeway had diminished by midday and was moving smoothly, although there were still significant backups to reach the college parking lot.

Steve McElliott, 60, of Los Angeles spent the night in the parking lot line, but said the 12-hour trip from his home was no hardship.

"I did it out of respect for the man," McElliott said. "I voted for him four times" — twice for California governor and twice for president.