LOS ANGELES -- Ronald Reagan was remembered with jelly beans, flowers and American flags on Sunday at memorials in his hometown and outside the mortuary where the former president's body lay.

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"Thank you for changing the world," said a handwritten note among the tokens of remembrance left in Santa Monica for the nation's 40th president, who was 93 when he died Saturday of pneumonia, as a complication of Alzheimer's.

Political friends and foes reminisced about Reagan Sunday as a president with boundless optimism and a fervent belief in the prosperity of democracy.

President George W. Bush led the accolades, as he mourned the nation's 40th president during a D-Day commemoration at Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

"Twenty summers ago, another American president came here to Normandy to pay tribute to the men of D-Day. He was a courageous man himself and a gallant leader in the cause of freedom. And today we honor the memory of Ronald Reagan," Bush said to applause.

Bush will speak at the funeral, which will take place Friday at 11:30 a.m. EST at the National Cathedral in Washington. Friday has been declared a national day of mourning and federal government officers will be closed.

The family's spokeswoman said Nancy Reagan was thankful for thousands of expressions of sympathy over the death of her husband, and despite her sadness was relieved he was no longer suffering.

"I can tell you most certainly that while it is an extremely sad time for Mrs. Reagan, there is definitely a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering, and that he has gone to a better place," Joanne Drake told a news conference outside the mortuary where Reagan's body lay.

"It's been a really hard 10 years for her," Drake said of Nancy Reagan, as nearly a week of tribute to the former president was detailed.

In a piece written for Time magazine before Reagan's death, Nancy Reagan remembered her husband as "a man of strong principles and integrity" who felt his greatest accomplishment was finding a safe end to the Cold War.

"I think they broke the mold when they made Ronnie," she wrote in the article appearing Monday. "He had absolutely no ego, and he was very comfortable in his own skin; therefore, he didn't feel he ever had to prove anything to anyone."

Former President Jimmy Carter said Sunday that the death of Reagan, who defeated him in the 1980 presidential election, was "a sad day for our country."

"I probably know as well as anybody what a formidable communicator and campaigner that President Reagan was. It was because of him that I was retired from my last job," Carter said before teaching Sunday school in his hometown of Plains, Ga.

Carter added: "He presented some very concise, very clear messages that appealed to the American people. I think throughout his term in office he was very worthy of the moniker that was put on him as the 'Great Communicator."'

On Monday, the Reagan family was to travel in a motorcade with the body to the presidential library in Simi Valley, northwest of Los Angeles. After a private ceremony, the body was to lie in repose for public visitation through Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the body will be flown to Washington, D.C. The family accepted an offer from President Bush to use one of his jets, normally used as Air Force One, for the trip. The body will then be driven to the U.S. Capitol for a state funeral. Reagan's body will then lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda through Thursday.

Friday morning, a motorcade will take the casket to the National Cathedral for a national funeral service. It will then be flown back to California for a motorcade to the library for a private interment service.

Reagan will be buried in a crypt beneath a memorial site at the library, a library spokeswoman said. A curved wall adorned with shrubbery and ivy lines the memorial and is inscribed with a three-line quote from Reagan.

"I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life," the inscription reads.

At Reagan's boyhood home in Dixon, Ill., mourners left flowers, flags and packets of Jelly Belly jelly beans -- his favorite -- at the feet of a life-sized statue of Reagan in the front yard. Ken Dunwoody, 82, who grew up outside Dixon, said the Republican icon transcends partisan politics.

"I just think of him as being an American," Dunwoody said. "I wish we all could get back to that."

At Bel Air Presbyterian Church, which Reagan attended during and after his presidency, worshipper Rose McNally recalled how members of the congregation would react to his arrival.

"As soon as he'd start up the ramp, people would pick up a piece of paper, any piece of paper, to get him to sign," she said. "He was a great man."

The Rev. Mark Brewer opened Sunday's first service with a remembrance, saying, "As a nation, we grieve this week."

"He brought with him not only a love for the nation but also a sense of humor," Brewer told about 500 people. He lauded Reagan's leadership in the Cold War, calling it the "third great war" of the century.

Reagan's "Star Wars" program drew the Soviet Union into an unaffordable arms race, and his 1987 declaration to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall -- "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" - was the ultimate challenge of the Cold War. Gorbachev on Sunday looked back on those tensions with equanimity and forgiveness.

"I take the death of Ronald Reagan very hard," Gorbachev told reporters. "He was a man whom fate set by me in perhaps the most difficult years at the end of the 20th century."

"It was his goal and his dream to end his term and enter history as a peacemaker," he said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, Reagan's national security adviser, said Sunday Reagan took a principled stand against communism and never strayed.

"The president always believed that the Soviet people deserved a better system than the system they had. And he was going to make it happen not by war, but by peace, by showing the power of democracy," said Powell, speaking on CNN.

He also reflected on Reagan's optimism. He recalled an Oval Office debate among administration officials in 1988 over a dispute about whether Japanese investments were giving Japan too much leverage in the United States. Some questioned if something needed to be done, Powell said, as Reagan sat and listened.

As Powell remembers it, Reagan "smiled and said, `No, I am not going to do anything about it. I'm glad they know a good investment when they see one."'

"That just blew us away," Powell said.

Reagan's political opponents also offered praise.

Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale hearkened back to a day when campaigns were more civilized. In the 1984 contest for the White House, challenger Mondale remembered Reagan as someone who aimed to "get elected with a strong majority of Americans that would allow him to unite the country and go in the direction he wanted to go."

Still, Mondale said, "In the campaign, there was no meanness. There was no viciousness. There was no kind of personal attacks or that sort of thing."

Reagan won 49 of the 50 states, the largest landslide since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first re-election, in 1936 over Kansan Alf Landon.

"Ronald Reagan was an excellent leader of our nation during challenging times at home and abroad." Gerald Ford "He could take a stand ... and do it without creating bitterness or creating enmity on the part of other people." George H.W. Bush " ... He personified the indomitable optimism of the American people, and for keeping America at the forefront of the fight for freedom for people everywhere." Bill Clinton

Tributes also came from ordinary Americans.

"Ninety-eight percent will say he was a great communicator -- we greatly miss that these days," said Cal Mathieu of Aberdeen, S.D., at the White House visitors center.

Reagan, the oldest man ever elected to the presidency, "proved that age does not deteriorate the ability to govern wisely," Mathieu said.

Although fiercely protective of Reagan's privacy, the former first lady let people know his mental condition had deteriorated terribly. Last month, she said: "Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him."

He lived longer than any U.S. president, spending his last decade in the shrouded seclusion wrought by his disease, tended by his wife, Nancy, whom he called Mommy, and the few closest to him. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton are the surviving ex-presidents.

Across the nation, people took pause upon learning of Reagan's passing. The U.S. flag over the White House was lowered to half-staff within an hour and there were moments of silence at ballparks and at the Belmont Stakes.

From his home in Rancho Mirage, former President Ford said, "Ronald Reagan was an excellent leader of our nation during challenging times at home and abroad. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to Nancy and his family."

Reagan began his life in a four-room apartment over the general store in Tampico, Ill. Before he was elected president, Reagan racked up an impressive resume working first as a radio sports announcer, then as an actor and a two-term governor of California.

At 69, Reagan was the oldest man ever elected president when he was chosen on Nov. 4, 1980, by an unexpectedly large margin over incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Near-tragedy struck on his 70th day as president. On March 30, 1981, Reagan was leaving a Washington hotel after addressing labor leaders when a young drifter, John Hinckley, fired six shots at him. A bullet lodged an inch from Reagan's heart, but he recovered.

Over two terms, from 1981 to 1989, Reagan retooled the Republican Party in his conservative image, fixed his eye on the demise of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism and tripled the national debt to $3 trillion in his single-minded competition with the other superpower.

"Reagan was a statesman who, despite all disagreements that existed between our countries at the time, displayed foresight and determination to meet our proposals halfway and change our relations for the better, stop the nuclear race, start scrapping nuclear weapons, and arrange normal relations between our countries," Gorbachev said.

"Ronald Reagan had a higher claim than any other leader to have won the Cold War for liberty and he did it without a shot being fired," former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said Saturday.

At the time of his retirement, his very name suggested a populist brand of conservative politics that still inspires the Republican Party.

In his second term, Reagan was dogged by revelations that he authorized secret arms sales to Iran while seeking Iranian aid to gain release of American hostages held in Lebanon. Some of the money was used to aid rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.

Despite the ensuing investigations, he left office in 1989 with the highest popularity rating of any retiring president in the history of modern-day public opinion polls.

Reagan died at 1 p.m. Saturday and his body was taken to a Santa Monica funeral home. A shrine that sprouted outside grew to include a cowboy hat, personal letters, flags, candles and jelly beans.

Hand-written cardboard signs read: "Because of you, we are proud Americans," "God bless you, Ron, and God bless America" and "Good night, Mr. President.