Governor Edwin Edwards will lie in state at the State Capitol Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. He will be the 5th governor to lie in state, a distinction that Edwards biographer Leo Honeycutt said is decided by the speaker of the house and president of the senate.
“Governor John Bel Edwards will lead the way, leading the crowd that comes into the visitation through the rotunda of the memorial hall,” Honeycutt said.
Due to the Delta variant fueled the surge in COVID cases Sunday’s funeral service will be closed to the public but streamed live by Louisiana Public Broadcasting. Honeycutt said that Edwards would have preferred an open service.
“But he said the older I’ve got the more I’ve realized that it’s really going to be more of a determination of the weather of whether it rains as too who actually shows up to your funeral so he was always very pragmatic about these things,” Honeycutt said.
On Sunday Edwards will be escorted to the Old State Capitol by horse-drawn carriage, law enforcement motorcade, and the Southern University Marching Band. Honeycutt hopes that Louisianians will remember all the good Edwards did.
“He was certainly a lightning rod on many occasions but at the end of it I think on balance when you look at the public record and look back at historic records you’ll see that he actually did do a lot of good things for the state,” Honeycutt said.
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