UNITED STATED.
With public tributes having poured in since Tuesday's announcement that Senator Edward Kennedy had died, 15 months after he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, Saturday brought his burial at Arlington National Cemetery after a private funeral Mass at Boston's Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston's Mission Hill section.
Later in the day, the body of Kennedy, who was 77, was to be flown to Virginia, where he would be laid to rest near the graves of his brothers John, who was assassinated in 1963, and Robert, who was killed in 1968. Their eldest brother, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., was killed at age 29 in 1944, while on a flying mission over England during World War II.
Former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush attended the funeral, with Kennedy's friend, President Barack Obama, scheduled to deliver a eulogy. A spokesman for former President George H.W. Bush said that the 85-year-old was not able to attend the service had earlier extended his condolences over the phone to Kennedy's widow, Victoria.
The senator's first wife, Joan Kennedy (they were divorced in 1982 after 24 years of marriage and three children), also attended the service, and had an extended conversation outside the church with former President and Laura Bush.
The secretary of state of Ireland, the ancestral home of the Boston-based Kennedy dynasty, and a representative of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who earlier this year announced Kennedy's honorary knighthood, also attended.
On Friday evening, a three-hour wake was held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, where the senator's flag-draped casket had remained in state since Thursday. Literally thousands of mourners from all walks of life had filed past, and estimates of the crowd by Thursday night alone had been placed at 25,000 people.
"For what he has done for the underprivileged, the downtrodden, I think I owe him this, to pay this respect," Juana Gayle-Flores, 56, of Roxbury, Mass., who was born in Panama and came to Boston in 1975, told The New York Times. "I feel honored and grateful to be at this memorial, this is an experience that has touched me."
At the wake, which concluded with a group rendition of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling," niece Caroline Kennedy said, "Now Teddy has become part of history." She said her generation must now do all the things he would have done.
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