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SIMI VALLEY, Calif., March 10 (UPI) -- The casket carrying Nancy Reagan was brought to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., to lie in repose for days of mourning before the former first lady's funeral. The public will be allowed to view the casket between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time on Thursday. She will be buried Friday morning next to former President Ronald Reagan, her husband of 52 years who died in 2004 from Alzheimer's disease.
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Nancy Reagan died Sunday of congestive heart failure. She was 94.
A small private service was held Wednesday upon the casket's arrival, attended by her children, Ron Reagan and Patti Davis, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. About 1,000 people have been invited to her funeral including former President George W. Bush and his wife, former first lady Laura Bush; and former first lady and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and first lady Michelle Obama.
President Barack Obama will not attend the service as he was scheduled to be in Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest festival that day.
"The most important of her special requests was that she be laid to rest right next to the president, as close as possible," John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library, said Wednesday.
A Los Angeles Times photographer, Ricardo DeAratanha, 65, was arrested on Wednesday while transmitting photographs of the funeral motorcade. He faces misdemeanor charges of resisting and obstructing a law enforcement officer.
The incident occurred when police responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle parked in the side of the road nearly a mile away from the library. DeAratanha allegedly refused to identify himself to police and was eventually arrested.
"They resented that he would question their motives," DeAratanha's lawyer Mark Werksman said. "They swarmed him and threw him to the ground and cuffed him."
