Somberly, one by one, officers in uniform came to the precise center of the historic white-domed Capitol Rotunda.
Slowly, on Wednesday, each officer saluted the colleague who had fought to preserve democracy for us all. Symbolically, each officer held that salute for a freeze-framed moment.
Watching those uniformed officers saluting Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, 42, whose ashes were lying in honor in a small mahogany box, I found my mind’s eye also seeing a strikingly similar scene that occurred in that very spot.
Rewind half a century: It was very late at night on March 30, 1969, and I was staring at that same spot in the center of the Capitol Rotunda. I was a young Newsday correspondent, standing just a few feet from the flag-draped coffin of the U.S. Army general America always called just “Ike,” even when Dwight David Eisenhower became our 34th president.
Suddenly I saw history walking in through a doorway to my right. Aged but ramrod straight, in his dark overcoat and iconic cylindrical military hat, France’s austere president and forever General Charles de Gaulle somberly walked to the foot of Ike’s casket and stopped.