Former Alabama governor mourned

Wednesday, September 16, 1998

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - The body of former Gov. George C. Wallace arrived at Alabama's Capitol today, borne in a flag-draped casket as hundreds gathered to pay last respects.

Eight state troopers carried the casket up the south steps and into the white-domed building, where the firebrand segregationist served four terms as governor and launched runs for the presidency.

Several Wallace family members, along with Gov. Fob James and his wife, Bobbie, made their way into the Capitol. They were followed by hundreds of mourners, both black and white, who began filing past the open casket to view Wallace's body, clad in a dark suit and tie.

''I thought he was a courageous man,'' said Virginia Shearin, a Montgomery woman who first saw Wallace in 1964 as he campaigned on a flatbed truck. ''If he had been president, he would have been one of the greatest presidents, because he was for the common man, the working man, the underprivileged, the underdog.''

The casket, draped with Alabama's state flag and with a wreath of roses beside it, rested in front of a marble bust of his first wife, Gov. Lurleen Wallace, who died in office 30 years ago.

A funeral procession was planned for Wednesday to the First United Methodist Church for a service that will include a eulogy by the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham.

Wallace will be buried, with a 21-gun salute, at Montgomery's Greenwood Cemetery, in a plot next to his first wife's. Billy Graham declined an invitation to the funeral because of ill health.

In a letter to George Wallace Jr., the Rev. Jesse Jackson called the late governor ''a figure who represented both tragedy and triumph.''

''The triumph is that Gov. Wallace lived long enough to be repentant of his sins and to be earnest in reaching out to people he had rejected and endangered,'' Jackson said.

The funeral arrangements recall the observance for Lurleen Wallace, whose body drew emotional throngs to the Capitol in 1968.

Mrs. Wallace succeeded her husband in office when state law barred him from running for re-election in 1966.

As details of Wallace's funeral were worked out Monday, historians and political experts were measuring Wallace's legacy.

Along with proclaiming ''segregation forever'' at his first inaugural in 1963, he tried without success later that year to block two blacks from enrolling at the all-white University of Alabama, a confrontation known as his ''stand in the schoolhouse door.''