WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. Senator and Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Friday was expected to draw President Joe Biden and senior members of both parties.
His body laid in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol beginning on Thursday, a tribute similar to those afforded U.S. presidents upon their deaths. Hundreds of people were filing into the cathedral on Friday.
Dole died on Sunday night at age 98, after a lung cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
Dole represented his home state of Kansas for a combined 36 years in the House of Representatives and Senate, including stints as Republican Senate Majority Leader and chair of the Republican National Committee.
Dole was awarded two Purple Hearts from the U.S. military during World War Two for wounds suffered in combat.
He sought the presidency three times and was his party’s nominee in 1996, when he lost to Democratic President Bill Clinton. He was also President Gerald Ford’s running mate in the 1976 election won by Democrat Jimmy Carter.
“Throughout his life, Senator Dole exemplified the highest virtues we as a nation can ask of our public servants: heroism in the face of danger, the courage of his convictions, and the willingness to do what is right, even when it isn’t easy,” the Very Reverend Randolph Marshall Hollerith, dean of Washington National Cathedral, said in a statement ahead of the funeral.
Dole is survived by his wife, former Senator Elizabeth Dole, and their daughter, Robin.
Dole, known for referring to himself in the third person, made a classic American journey from the poverty of the Great Depression of the 1930s, through World War Two battlefields to the corridors of power with a stoic Midwestern dignity.
Dole, who described himself as “a Trumper” in support of former President Donald Trump, in July voiced impatience with Trump’s ongoing allegation that the 2020 election had been stolen from him because of massive voter fraud — a claim that has been rejected by several court challenges and Trump’s own Justice Department.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton; Editing by Scott Malone and Mark Porter)
