WASHINGTON – President Gerald R. Ford returned to the Capitol yesterday evening to lie in state amid the statues of former presidents whose ranks he joined 32 years ago when the Watergate scandal propelled him into the nation's highest office.

With a 21-gun salute echoing in the night air and a military band playing “Hail to the Chief,” the casket bearing Ford's remains was delivered to Capitol Hill by a 32-vehicle motorcade on a route from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland marked with personal significance for the nation's 38th president.

A presidential jet had carried the casket and Ford's family from Palm Springs after the California portion of his state funeral. Ford died Dec. 26 in his Rancho Mirage home at age 93.

Before the doors to the Capitol Rotunda were opened to the public last night, Vice President Dick Cheney paid tribute to the president he once served as chief of staff.

With the casket resting under the Capitol dome on a pine catafalque built for President Lincoln, Cheney praised Ford for his Sept. 8, 1974, decision to pardon President Nixon, who had resigned a month earlier amid the scandal of Watergate.

Historians and political scientists say the action may well have cost Ford the presidential election two years later.

“It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely through a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe,” Cheney said. “We will never know what further unravelings, what greater malevolence might have come in that time of Furies turned loose and hearts turned cold. But we do know this: America was spared the worst, and this was the doing of an American president.”

As the ceremony closed, Ford's wife, Betty, looking frail but resolute, bowed over the casket, her hands clasped on the flag draped across its top.

Earlier in the day, President Bush, delivering his weekly radio address from his ranch in Texas, also alluded to the scandals that vaulted Ford into the Oval Office. They included the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew on Oct. 10, 1973, amid a bribery and kickback scandal, which led Nixon to nominate Ford, then the GOP floor leader in the House, as vice president.

“Providence gave us Gerald Ford's steady hand and calm leadership during a time of great division and turmoil,” Bush said. “He guided America through a crisis of confidence and helped our nation mend its wounds by restoring faith in our system of government.”

The president and first lady Laura Bush plan to pay their respects to Ford while he lies in state at the Capitol when they return to Washington tomorrow. On Tuesday, Bush will speak at a funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral before Ford's remains are taken to Grand Rapids, Mich., for the last part of his state funeral.

Following a script for presidential funerals – and adapted to account for the Ford family's wishes – Ford's casket was greeted at Andrews by a 21-gun salute and 20 honorary pallbearers, including Cheney.

The delegation, selected by Ford before his death, was to have included former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who also served as Ford's chief of staff. Rumsfeld reportedly was delayed by weather.

Among the pallbearers were Henry Kissinger, Ford's secretary of state and national security adviser, and James Baker, undersecretary of commerce in the Ford administration and later secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush.

Accompanied by her children and grandchildren, Betty Ford, 88, made her way to a waiting limousine, supported on one arm by a military escort and daughter Susan on the other.

Onlookers lined up two and three deep as the motorcade wound through Alexandria, Va., in a sentimental nod to the community where Ford and his family lived for years while he served in Congress.

In a tribute to Ford's wartime service as a Navy officer in the Pacific, the motorcade then crossed the Potomac on Memorial Bridge, draped in flags and funeral bunting, into the nation's capital and briefly stopped at the World War II Memorial. Ford nearly died in December 1944 when a typhoon struck the aircraft carrier Monterey. After nearly being swept overboard, he rallied a firefighting effort to douse a blaze caused by the storm.

As the hearse stopped in front of the memorial, the motorcade's other vehicles paused at a distance. There was a drumroll and then Navy Chief Boatswain's Mate Carlos Ribbot stepped forward and piped three long, solemn notes symbolically welcoming Ford and honoring his military service.

Looking on were a contingent of Eagle Scouts, recalling one of Ford's achievements as a youngster; a number of World War II veterans; and about 100 women who became military officers after Ford signed legislation in 1976 opening the military service academies to both genders.

The procession then continued past the White House and on to the Capitol. Before moving the casket to the Rotunda, it was carried to the door of the House of Representatives in a gesture underscoring Ford's quarter century of service there and his devotion to the institution.

Outgoing House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate President Pro Tempore Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, also delivered eulogies during last night's service that paid tribute to Ford's lack of pretense and his modest ambitions that looked no higher than a wish to become speaker of the House.

“In 1974, America didn't need a philosopher-king or a warrior-prince,” Hastert said. “We needed a healer, we needed a rock, we needed honesty and candor and courage. We needed Gerald Ford.”

During the opening hymn of the service, former Rep. William Broomfield, 84, collapsed. Broomfield, a Republican from Michigan who served in the House from 1957 to 1993, part of the time with Ford, was laid out on the floor of the Rotunda and Sen. Bill Frist, a physician, went to his aid. Broomfield later was taken out in a wheelchair. The program resumed after about five minutes.

As scripted by Ford and his family before his death, the day was defined by his preference for understatement and his uneasiness with the grand ceremonial gestures that have been embraced by other former presidents.

That was most evident in his insistence on a simple motorcade that dispensed with the horse-drawn caisson and the military flyovers that characterized the ceremonies for President Reagan in 2004 and, in 1963, for the assassinated President Kennedy.

There will be a formation of military aircraft overhead Tuesday, when Ford is laid to rest in Grand Rapids, Mich., the city he represented in Congress. He will be buried near his presidential library and a museum that bears his name.