Memorial site, library to open to visitors Monday in California

LOS ANGELES -- Ronald Reagan's body was sealed inside a tomb Saturday at his hilltop presidential library following a week of mourning and remembrance by world leaders and regular Americans.\nWorkers closed the underground crypt shortly before 3 a.m. while a handful of Secret Service agents, library personnel and mortuary representatives watched, said Duke Blackwood, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.\nReagan's widow, Nancy, and his three surviving children had left hours earlier following a Friday night sunset ceremony.\nA headstone of Georgian gray granite was to be set up at the memorial site above the crypt, where an inscription from Reagan himself is set into a curved wall adorned with shrubbery and ivy.\n"I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life," the inscription reads.\nReagan first used the words while opening the library in 1991.\nThe solid mahogany casket was sealed within a bronze-lined vault, seven feet underground inside the crypt, which also includes space for Nancy Reagan.\nWorkers covered the crypt Saturday with earth and a concrete pathway.\nThe memorial site will open to visitors at 10 a.m. Monday along with the rest of the 100-acre presidential library and museum, and Blackwood said big crowds are expected.\nMore than 200,000 people on both coasts paid their respects to the nation's 40th president last week, filing silently past his coffin, first at the library and then in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.\nThousands more lined streets in Washington and Southern California to watch the hearse and motorcade pass.\nReagan died June 5 at the age of 93 from pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer's disease. In 1994, five years after concluding his two-term presidency, he told the world he had Alzheimer's.\nAt a Friday evening service at the library, Reagan's children -- Michael Reagan, Patti Davis and Ron Reagan -- shared memories of their father along with a host of foreign dignitaries, politicians and movie stars. Reagan's daughter Maureen, from his first marriage, died from cancer in 2001.\n"He is home now. He is free," Ron Reagan said.\nNancy Reagan, 82, clutched a folded American flag and cried as she placed her head on the lid of the casket holding her husband of 52 years. "I love you," she said quietly.