For Reagan mortician, the 'honor of a lifetime'

[Khephra]

Simi Valley , Ventura County -- He was the last person to lay eyes on Ronald Reagan.

On Saturday night, hours after the former president was transported to a Santa Monica funeral home, Bob Boetticher went to work. He had trained for this day all his life, since deciding as a teenager that he would be a funeral director. With Secret Service agents outside the door, he began to care for a man he respected in life and was now responsible for in death.

Boetticher, stout and watchful, would do far more than prepare the president's body for burial: He organized the paperwork, helped the family select an appropriate casket, worked with a dozen security agencies, drove the hearse in a miles-long procession, even pressed the American flag that drapes the coffin.

This ordinary citizen was called on to manage an extraordinary event that will culminate Friday with the sunset burial in Simi Valley of the nation's 40th president. In interviews at the funeral home and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library earlier this week, Boetticher, 59, had tears in his eyes as he talked about "the honor of a lifetime."

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