Sir Winston Churchill Dies at 90; Johnson Hopes to Attend Funeral

President Johnson said yesterday that he wants "very, very much" to fly to London later this week to attend the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. He said that whether he will make the trip depends on "how I feel in the next day or two."

Sir Winston Churchill died at 2:18 a.m. EST Sunday at the age of 90. He had been in a coma almost continuously since he suffered a stroke Jan. 15.

His body will remain in his Hyde Park Gate home in London until it is taken to Westminster Hall to lie in state Wednesday.

Churchill, Great Britain's Prime Minister during the Second World War, led the British people through what he called "their finest hour" after the fall of France left Britain standing alone against Hitler's Germany. Churchill's speeches inspired and at the same time embodied his nation's spirit and will to fight.

After the war was won, Churchill was voted out of office and became Leader of the Opposition. He became Prime Minister again when the Conservative Party was returned to power in 1951, and retired from that office in 1955 at the age of 80.

When he was called upon to lead Britain in 1940, Churchill felt that his "past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial." In fact, he was already 65 and had led a full life as a politician, historian, biographer, journalist, painter, and soldier.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was the son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a prominent and controversial Tory politician, and his American-born bride, Jennie Jerome of New York, Churchill was an erratic scholar as a boy, but he was finally graduated from Harrow and from Sandhurst, England's military academy.

He first received public notice as a war correspondent during the Boer War. In 1900, when Queen Victoria was still on the throne, he was elected to the House of Commons, where he served--except for the years 1922-1924--until October, 1964. His Parliamentary career was the longest in British history.

Like his father, Churchill thrived on controversy and had little use for party discipline. Originally a Tory, he became a Liberal in 1904 and rejoined the Conservative Party 20 years later. He was a Cabinet minister both as a Liberal and a Conservative, and during both world wars.

In the 1930's he broke with the Tory leaders over colonial and foreign policy and spent most of the decade in lonely, futile opposition to the appeasement policies of the government. Most observers considered his career ended. But when Neville Chamberlain's government collapsed in the face of Germany's conquests of Poland, Norway, Denmark, and the Low Countries, Churchill was the inevitable choice for the Prime Ministership.

Churchill quickly formed a National Government, including such men as Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, and Lord Beaverbrook. But it was Churchill him- self who told the world: "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

Churchill was one of the "Big Three" who directed the Allies' war efforts. He and President Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 signed the Atlantic Charter in 1941. Later Churchill met with other Allied leaders at Casablanca, Tehran, Quebec, and Yalta, and urged them to demand the unconditional surrender of Germany and to set up a United Nations Organization.

Churchill wrote histories of both world wars and of the English-speaking peoples, as well as biographies of his father and of his ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough. After his retirement from active politics, Sir Winston spent his time writing, painting, and travelling. In 1963, he became the first honorary American citizen.

During a wartime visit to the United States, Churchill received an honorary degree from the University in 1943. Thirty-three years earlier he had been made an honorary member of the Lampoon.

Churchill is survived by his wife, the former Clementine Hozier, whom he married in 1908, and by several children and grandchildren.

Churchill will receive a state funeral Saturday at St. Paul's Cathedral. The services will be conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. No British statesman has been honored with a state funeral in the last 67 years.

He will be buried near his father and mother in a small rural churchyard in Bladon, 70 miles northwest of London, on the Blenheim estate where he was born