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Jeb Bush to eulogise mother, Barbara

Mourners have lined up at St Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston to pay their final respects to former first lady Barbara Bush who died on

People line up at the church in Houston
People have lined up to pay their respects to former first lady Barbara Bush in repose at a church. (AAP)

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Source: AAP


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Some 1500 guests are expected at a private funeral in the US for Barbara Bush, wife of the nation's 41st president and mother of the nation's 43rd, in Houston, Texas.

First lady Melania Trump, former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, and former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are among those expected to attend the by-invitation-only service on Saturday at St Martin's Episcopal Church.

Burial will follow at the Bush Library at Texas A&M University, about 100 miles (161km) northwest of Houston.

The burial site is in a gated plot surrounded by trees and near a creek where the couple's three-year-old daughter, Robin, who died of leukemia in 1953, is buried.

In a statement released on Friday, the family said Barbara Bush had selected son Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, to deliver a eulogy along with her longtime friend Susan Baker, wife of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, and historian Jon Meacham, who wrote a 2015 biography of her husband.

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Thousands of people on Friday paid respects to Bush, who died on Tuesday at her Houston home. She was 92.

A spray of flowers covered the closed silver casket in the sanctuary of a Houston church as hundreds of mourners began arriving to pay their final respects.

People waited in line hours early for security screening before boarding shuttle buses to attend a public viewing at the church where Bush and her husband, former President George HW Bush, regularly attended services.


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