"... at about midnight on June 29, 1941, he died of pneumonia–died as he would have wished, in harness, working almost to his last day.  He had to drop that work before he knew when and how Poland would again be freed, but his faith that she would be was unbroken. On July fourth, press and radio accounts of the funeral service sped across continents. The New York Times headlined its story: "Saint Patrick's Cathedral crowded with more than 4,500 at services for Paderewski. 35, 000 outside Cathedral pay tribute as cortege proceeds down Fifth Avenue.  Favorite music heard at Mass. Statesmen and leaders in music world present."
[…] Then came a message from Washington: President Roosevelt, in an action that had been taken only once before by the United States, had ordered that Paderewski be buried at Arlington Cemetery. As soon as radio and press spread the news which "steeped the civilized world in mourning," white and red wreaths and sheaves poured into the hotel room chapel where the glass-covered casket rested before the upright piano, with its Chopin volume open at the Nocturne the master had so recently played. Day and night a continuous line of people passed silently before it. For two hours [it continued], the Cathedral echoed the quiet voice of Archbishop Spellman, choir singing, and organ music which included Paderewski's favorite pieces and his own Nocturne. Flickering lights of six large candles fell across the white and red of the Polish flag and the design of the white eagle woven on its center, which draped the casket near the altar rail. As the coffin was borne through the big doors on Fifth Avenue, about noon, a military band from Fort Jay gave four flourishes of drums and trumpets, the highest honor possible, and truck up the Polish national anthem, while four hundred soldiers of the American guard of honor stood at attention on Fifth Avenue.  The coffin was placed upon the caisson drawn by six horses, with three outriders and the funeral procession of nearly two thousand started for Pennsylvania Station, soldiers marching with massed colors. About ten thousand persons crowded into the streets around the Cathedral; another fifteen thousand watched reverently as the cortege turned west; another ten thousand gathered at the station. Three automobiles at the end of the procession were filled with flowers. During the march the army band played the Dead March from Saul by Handel, and Chopin's Funeral March. At the station the coffin and flowers were placed aboard the private car in which Paderewski had made his farewell concert tour in the United States-another carried the mourners-and attached to the Washington-bound Colonial Express. In the national capital the body will lie in state at the Polish Embassy until tomorrow when the burial at Arlington will take place.There were like headlines in Washington: "Paderewski rests with heroes of the U.S. Temporary burial under mast of battleship Maine, at Arlington.  Notables pay homage.  Mrs. Woodrow Wilson present. Throngs of plain Americans also at funeral." When the caisson bearing the body of Paderewski passed the marble entrance of the cemetery a battery of cannon boomed a nineteen-gun salute, the highest honor' possible except for a chief of state. After a solemn service in the amphitheater, the United States Army Band played Chopin's Funeral March and the cortege, preceded by a detachment of soldiers, sailors, and Marines, marched slowly up the hillside road. They were accompanied by a squad of Polish soldiers in the uniform of Canada. These had received special permission from the Canadian Government to go to Washington, and bore on a velvet cushion the Polish Military Cross awarded to Paderewski by the Polish government in exile.  Antonina (Paderewski's sister), her life-long mission from the Polish village to Arlington ended (she lived but a few months longer), walked behind the flag-covered coffin, the "family," the Polish ambassador, and many others with her. Under the mast of the battleship Maine, which stands in the center of the cemetery, the body was placed in a vault. There it will remain until it can be transported to a free Poland for burial.  The service was over, but people were slow to go. They stood recalling glorious hours, glad that he had come back to his loved America in time, that Americans would guard his dust. Many thought of his last Washington concert, when in a transcendent moment the hearts of thousands seemed to beat as one, as he lifted men to an overwhelming sense of the unity of being.  It had been as if a part of each listener would go when he left. […]  A group still stood inside the door.  Someone had asked, "Why do we wait?" Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, later chief justice, said, "It is hard to face again a divided world. We linger not only because Paderewski was the world's greatest pianist, but because he was perhaps the greatest living man."