A MATTER-OF-FACT BUSH TAKES HIS NEW PLACE IN NATION'S HISTORY

If he felt any sense of his new place in history, of burdens descending, George Bush, who woke up as vice president yesterday and went to sleep as president, showed little of it.

"History?" asked Bush's eldest son, George, enjoying his first feel of the White House hours after the swearing-in of his father. "I don't think so. I didn't feel it. He's up. He's really in good spirits. He's relaxed. He's not any different, except he's president."

Bush may end up having some of those days of lonely solitude in the Oval Office that Jimmy Carter once spoke of, but this day would not be one. When he awoke before 6 at Blair House to watch the morning news shows, read the papers and drink coffee with his wife, Barbara, the remnants of his 10 grandchildren -- toys, coloring books, Bigwheels, computer games and more -- were already being scooped up for shipping across the street into the White House.

"There were people charging all over the place," son George said of the morning scene at Blair House, as bags were packed for the trip across the street, children were readied for the morning church service that officially began the day and others in the huge Bush clan streamed in and out.

Before 8:30 a.m., Bush was sticking his head out the door of Blair House to kid photographers and reporters and invite them -- 28 of them -- in for a relaxed cup of coffee.

As they were coming in, Bush children and grandchildren were trickling out to take their places in St. John's Church on Lafayette Square, across from the White House for a short prayer service of hymns and readings.

As the Rev. John C. Harper, rector of St. John's, was invoking Bush's language in calling for a "kinder and gentler" nation, President Reagan, across the park, was taking one, final look at the Oval Office stripped of all the signs of his eight years of residence. Into the top drawer of the historic desk, he slipped a note for his successor that he described later as "Very good wishes and so forth." Another note to his successor was left in the family quarters, in what will be Bush's dressing room.

Marlin Fitzwater, who was Reagan's spokesman and is now Bush's, said Reagan was handed his last daily schedule by his secretary, Kathy Osborne, and noted aloud that it listed the plane he would board to leave Washington that day as Plane 27000, not Air Force One. Whichever of several planes the president is in is called Air Force One and Reagan, by then, would no longer be president. Reagan was told by national security adviser Colin L. Powell he was leaving Bush a world that was mostly quiet.

Slightly after 10 a.m., Reagan left the Oval Office to George Bush.

As the Bushes drove up to the north portico of the White House from the church a few minutes later, the Reagans, coatless in a brisk breeze, were waiting to greet them. Bush waved from the window of the new $600,000 presidential limousine, and leaped from the car. He kissed Nancy Reagan and shook the president's hands.

Inside the White House, the Reagans and Bushes and the congressional delegation to escort them down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol sipped coffee. Outside, Secret Service agents were changing the license plates on the presidential limo to USA 1, Bush's official inaugural plate.

As the Reagans and Bushes and their congressional escorts headed toward the swearing-in ceremonies, an army of workers began the changes that will turn the Reagan White House into the Bush White House. "We made sure he had left the complex first," said White House official Frank Posey, noting the respect the staff had for Reagan.

In an hour's time, some 70 pictures of Ronald and Nancy Reagan were stripped from the walls and replaced with pictures of George and Barbara Bush, their children and grandchildren.

In the Cabinet Room, the chairs, except for those belonging to holdover Cabinet members, were gone, purchased by those officials who left the government as of noon. From the Cabinet Room wall, the pictures of Coolidge and Taft were taken down. Bush asked that the picture of Theodore Roosevelt join those of Eisenhower, Jefferson and Lincoln on that wall.

At the Capitol, Bush, shaking hands, chatting, grasping the arms of well-wishers, made his way through the labyrinthine building to the West Front for his swearing-in and inaugural address. Planners had boasted that the ceremony was scheduled to the second so that at exactly noon Bush would finish the final "so help me God" words of his oath of office and the cannons would boom. They were three minutes off.

As some of the 200,000 gathered for the ceremonies swarmed down Pennsylvania Avenue for the parade, or into the Capitol for a luncheon, President Bush, his wife Barbara holding his hand, emerged on the other side of the Capitol, the East Front, where a sparkling carpet reached 30 yards from an Army helicopter to the steps. The president and the former president and their wives descended the steps; the Reagans headed across the ceremonial carpeting.

Far behind them, off to one corner, James A. Baker III, who had joined with Bush 10 years before in his first, failed quest for the presidency against Ronald Reagan, watched the former president he had first battled and then served for eight years, salute the new president he helped put in office and will serve as secretary of state. From a distance it appeared that Baker and his wife, Susan, brushed tears from their eyes.

On the steps of the helicopter, Reagan looked across to Bush and saluted, then waved. Bush saluted, waved back and the helicopter was gone. Asked later of that moment, Bush said, "I tried to keep the tears from flowing down my face. After eight years of friendship, it's pretty tough."

Inside the Capitol again, Bush, working his way through well-wishers to a luncheon before the parade, was moved on his way by the sergeant-at-arms, who said, "Mr. President, this way, Mr. President."

Bush joked later that he stood there, waiting for the president, Ronald Reagan, until "I feel something that was between an affectionate hug and a kidney punch." It was Barbara Bush, nudging him to get moving, and he realized that Mr. President was not Reagan but himself.

When the luncheon was over, a huge, blue bus pulled up closer to the Capitol, and the Bush brood, free from officialdom at last, poured out the doors and into the bus. Son George Bush gleefully chomped a huge cigar and shouted to reporters that he felt kind and gentle and ecstatic.

Down Pennsylvania Avenue on the mile to the White House, Bush sprang from his limousine three times, waving huge waves to spectators, grabbing Barbara Bush's hands to virtually pull her along in a near run. Then the Bushes watched the parade from the reviewing stand in front of their new home.

Inside the White House, the parade still going by, son George, who had served as one of his father's political advisers, had never tired of saying his father would become president and seemed never to have doubted this day would come, slipped into the family quarters to take his first look around.

It did not look like a Bush family home yet. "But, God," said Junior, as he is often called, "it is so beautiful. It is just beautiful."

Scratch One Promise

Sorry, New Hampshire.

In his primary campaign there last year, George Bush vowed that if elected, he would include "four simple words" in his inaugural address:

"Thank You, New Hampshire."

But the words were not in Bush's speech yesterday.

An aide said Bush fulfilled his promise on election night in Houston, when he thanked Granite State voters.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.