Senator John McCain to Lie in State

Senator John McCain passed away yesterday after a battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and the lawmaker with three-decades of time spent in the Senate will lie in state at the US Capitol later this week after first lies in state at the Arizona Capitol, an honor given to very few statesmen.

Lying in state, according to the Architect of the Capitol, is an honor reserved for “government officials and military officers” and involves laying the casket of the deceased in the Rotunda of the US Capitol, where the public can come and offer final respects.  Private citizens can also be placed in the Rotunda, but they are lain in honor rather than lain in state. “These occasions are either authorized by a congressional resolution or approved by the congressional leadership, when permission is granted by survivors,” the Architect of the Capitol instructs on its website. It also explains that “since 1865, most services have used the catafalque,” or support for the coffin, that was “constructed for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln.”

McCain, who served in Congress and the military as a Navy pilot and is remembered as a war hero after surviving more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, will also have memorial services at the National Cathedral and in Annapolis, Maryland, where he will be laid to rest.

See Lauren Fox, Sen. John McCain to Lie in State. Here’s What That Means, CNN, August 26, 2018.