GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The nation remembered President Ford yesterday for what he didn’t have — pretensions, a scheming agenda, a great golf game — as much as for the small-town authenticity he brought to the presidency.

In an elaborate national funeral service in Washington and then more simply at his final homecoming in Grand Rapids, the 38th president was celebrated for treating politics as a calling rather than blood sport.

The last act of Ford’s state funeral was playing out at his presidential museum, open throughout the night and this morning for the public to pay final respects. Thousands waited in line yesterday night to file past Ford’s casket.

Scouts came forward three-by-three and saluted by his casket to open 18 hours of visitation, before a final church service and Ford’s hillside burial this afternoon.

The marching band from the University of Michigan, the school where he played football, greeted the White House jet carrying his casket, members of his family, and others in the funeral party.

The service in Washington unfolded in the spirit of one of its musical selections — “Fanfare for the Common Man” — as powerful people celebrated the modesty and humility of a leader propelled to the presidency by the Watergate crisis that drove predecessor Richard Nixon from office.

“In President Ford, the world saw the best of America, and America found a man whose character and leadership would bring calm and healing to one of the most divisive moments in our nation’s history,” President Bush said in his eulogy.

President George H.W. Bush called Ford a “Norman Rockwell painting come to life” and pierced the solemnity of the occasion by cracking gentle jokes about Ford’s reputation as an errant golfer. He said Ford knew his golf game was getting better when he began hitting fewer spectators.

Ford’s athletic interest was honored, too, in the capital and in Michigan. At the Grand Rapids airport that bears Ford’s name, the Michigan band played the school’s famous fight song, “The Victors,” as Ford’s flag-draped casket was transferred to a hearse.

He had played center for the Wolverines in their undefeated, national championship seasons in 1932 and 1933 and turned down several pro football offers to go to law school at Yale instead.

President Carter, the Democrat who defeated Ford in 1976 and became his friend, not only attended the Washington service with the two other living ex-presidents, the elder Mr. Bush and President Clinton, but came to Grand Rapids on the plane with Ford’s family and his remains.

Governor Granholm of Michigan, delivering one of the most emotional tributes of the day, spoke as if addressing Ford directly, in remarks at the museum. “You were a paradoxical gift of remarkable intellect and achievement wrapped in a plain brown wrapper,” Ms. Granholm, a Democrat, said.

Under towering arches of the cathedral in the morning, Ford’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, paid tribute to his leadership in achieving nuclear arms control with the Soviets, pushing for the first political agreement between Israel and Egypt and helping to bring majority rule to southern Africa.

“In his understated way he did his duty as a leader, not as a performer playing to the gallery,” Mr. Kissinger said.

Another eulogist, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw, said Ford brought to office “no demons, no hidden agenda, no hit list or acts of vengeance,” an oblique reference to the air of subterfuge that surrounded Nixon in his final days.

Ford died at 93 on December 26 at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was appointed vice president by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew, who resigned in a bribery scandal stemming from his days as Maryland governor. After Nixon resigned, Ford assumed the presidency for two and a half years.