By Mike McCarthy Aug 30, 2009, 1:42 GMT
Washington - US President Barack Obama was among the hundreds of mourners who attended Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy's funeral Saturday in a final farewell to the last brother of the celebrated political dynasty.
Obama and predecessors Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W Bush as well as Kennedy's family, friends, colleagues and political adversaries gathered at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston for the Roman Catholic funeral.
Obama delivered the main eulogy during the services on a gloomy, overcast day in one of America's oldest cities and birthplace of the uprising that became the War of Independence more than 200 years ago.
'We do not weep for him today because of the prestige attached to his name or his office. We weep because we loved this kind and tender hero who persevered through pain and tragedy, not for the sake of ambition or vanity, not for wealth or power, but only for the people and the country he loved,' Obama said.
The three former presidents sat in a second row. Clinton leaned forward to chat with Obama before the services, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton engaged in conversation with Bush.
Kennedy's widow, Vicki Reggie, watched solemnly from her front row aisle seat directly across from Obama as the service got underway. Those in attendance sang and wiped their eyes while occasionally laughing as friends and family related stories about the youngest of the Kennedy brothers.
Father J Donald Monan, a longtime friend of the Kennedy family, presided over the funeral. Kennedy's nephews, nieces and other younger generations of Kennedys paid tribute to the family patriarch. Monan praised Kennedy for his record of helping the less fortunate.
'Senator Kennedy was a towering strength to his family and a towering presence on the American landscape,' Monan said.
Kennedy died Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after suffering brain cancer for more than year. His death at age 77 was marked with great sadness in the United States and generated an outpouring of condolences from around the world. The funeral was aired live on all the major US television networks.
Despite the personal scandals that sometimes dogged Kennedy and his family, he was remembered for his tireless fights against poverty and for health system reforms during his decades in the Senate and as senior statesman of the centre-left Democratic Party.
'He was not perfect - far from it,' said son Teddy, wiping away tears. 'But my father believed in redemption.'
Obama praised Kennedy as the 'greatest legislator of our time' who helped pass thousands of pieces of legislation and authored more than 300 measures himself, addressing critical issues like civil rights, education, immigration, health care and voting rights.
'He was a product of an age when the joy and nobility of politics prevented differences of party and platform and philosophy from becoming barriers to cooperation and mutual respect - a time when adversaries still saw each other as patriots,' Obama said.
'And that's how Ted Kennedy became the greatest legislator of our time. He did it by hewing to principle, yes, but also by seeking compromise and common cause - not through deal-making and horse- trading alone but through friendship and kindness and humour.'
Following the mass, Kennedy's body was taken to Washington, where hundreds of Congressional colleagues and staff members and a crowd of easily 2,000 spectators met his casket on the east side of the Capitol building.
The sun slipped behind the seat of Congress while the senator's son, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, delivered a brief eulogy.
The motorcade continued along the long, grassy Washington Mall and over the Potomac River to Arlington National Cemetery, the vast graveyard near the Pentagon that is the final resting place of many of America's war dead.
His grave, dug Saturday morning, was marked with a white cross of oak and a marble footstone inscribed: Edward Moore Kennedy 1932-2009.
In the graveside service, which ended only after sunset on the hillside cemetery overlooking the capital, Washington Cardinal emeritus Theodore McCarrick read a letter that Kennedy wrote to Pope Benedict XVI. Obama delivered the document by hand on July 10 during a Vatican audience.
Gravely ill, the senator asked Benedict to pray for him and wrote: 'I know that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my path.'
In a letter in response, a Vatican correspondent wrote to Kennedy that the pope had seen the document: 'His Holiness prays that in the days ahead you may be sustained in faith and hope.'
Kennedy's final resting place is steps from the graves of his assassinated brothers - president John F Kennedy, who was shot in 1963, and Robert Kennedy, who was felled by a gunman while campaigning for the presidency in 1968.
'He was given the gift of time that his brothers were not, and he used that gift to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow,' Obama said.
Saturday's services followed two days of mourning in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts - the state Kennedy represented in the Senate for more than 47 years.
His US flag-draped casket had been placed in the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for public viewing. More than 50,000 people filed past the remains, watched over by a US military honour guard.
A private service was held Friday night. Sharing anecdotes from decades past and recent weeks, Kennedy's relatives and colleagues recalled his passion for public service, his optimism in the possible, dignity, generosity and refusal to quit.
Among the speakers were Vice President Joe Biden and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Both spent decades as Kennedy's Senate colleagues.
In the eulogy Saturday, Obama urged onlookers to use their time on Earth to advance Kennedy's legacy by making a difference in people's lives.
'We can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well, that we made a difference, that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of others,' Obama said.
'This is how Ted Kennedy lived. This is his legacy.'
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