1,500 Mourners Share Memories of Ron Brown

WASHINGTON — About 1,500 colleagues and other mourners gathered Tuesday night to share their remembrances of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown before his funeral today.

“This, my friends, was a man of great honor who proved anew my brothers’ ideal that public service is a great and honorable profession,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

“His warmth was genuine and you could feel it. It radiated,” Transportation Secretary Federico Pena told the overflowing crowd at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington for the “Celebration of Life.”

A full-honors funeral is scheduled for today for Brown at Arlington National Cemetery after President Clinton delivers a eulogy at the National Cathedral. Brown, 54, died with 32 other Americans and two other people in a plane crash in Croatia last week while on a trade mission to the former Yugoslavia.

Brown’s body rested Tuesday in the ornate lobby of the Commerce Department in a mahogany coffin atop a black-velvet-draped catafalque built in 1865 to bear the body of Abraham Lincoln.

Throughout the day, hundreds of mourners, sharing a rainbow of umbrellas and torrent of public sorrow, stood for hours in a cold driving rain outside the Commerce Department to pay their respects.