Boston Irish

'CITY ON A HILL STANDS LESS TALL' AS KENNEDY LAID TO REST

By Jim O'Sullivan
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

MISSION HILL, AUG. 29 - Mourners saluted Sen. Edward Kennedy as a
champion for the downtrodden and a deeply committed family man who
donned the duties of his slain brothers, his sons recalling a caring
father and President Barack Obama praising the longest-serving member
of the family dynasty as a "happy warrior" during a stirring funeral
Mass Saturday.

"A few scant miles from here, the city on a hill stands less tall
against the morning sky," said the Rev. J. Donald Monan, SJ, the
former president of Boston College and Saturday's principal
celebrant, at the outset of the two-hour service inside the Basilica
of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. "And the sea out toward Nantucket is a
bit more forlorn at the loss of one of its most ardent lovers."

Kennedy, who died late Tuesday night after a 15-month battle with
cancer and 47 years in the Senate, was recalled as a prayerful
Catholic, restless outdoorsman, history buff, champion of Democratic
causes, force behind a nearly unmatched legislative record, and
doting surrogate father to the Kennedy clan on road trips, sailing
expeditions, and at family dinners.

"The greatest expectations were placed on Ted Kennedy's shoulders
because of who he was, but he surpassed them all because of who he
became," Obama said during his eulogy.

Several of Kennedy's grandchildren and youngest nieces and nephews
offered the intercessions, invoking some of his most famous lines or
favored causes, including quality health care and a stop to war.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma played a Bach cello suite and accompanied tenor
Placido Domingo, who sang "Panis Angelicus." Mezzo-soprano Susan
Graham sang "Ave Maria" after Communion. All three artists brought on
tears in the standing-room-only church.

Ted Kennedy Jr., whose voice resembles his father's, recalled the
late senator as a rodeo rider, dinner table debater, conductor of
vacations that left younger family members "injured and exhausted,"
Civil War history enthusiast, Green Bay Packers recruit, "protector
of the people," an apostle of the doctrine that hard work and
determination paid dividends, and "a lover of everything French -
cheese, wine, and women."

"He was not perfect - far from it," said the younger Kennedy in an
emotional remembrance. "But my father believed in redemption. And he
never surrendered, never stopped trying to right wrongs, be they the
results of his own failings, or of ours."

As the organ boomed the recessional "God Bless America," Kennedy's
casket made its way toward the back of the church, accompanied by 11
pallbearers, all family. Kennedy's serene-looking widow, Vicki,
walked at the head of a long line of family members. There were more
than two-dozen honorary pallbearers, many of them former aides,
including Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Cardinal Sean
O'Malley offered the closing commendation.

Saturday's Mass capped four days of public mourning, with nearly
50,000 streaming past Kennedy's casket inside the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library on Thursday and Friday after the roads were
lined from Hyannis Port to Dorchester for the motorcade. Inside the
stuffy church, where Kennedy came to pray when his daughter, Kara,
was sick with cancer, mourners milled about before the service,
exchanging Kennedy stories and maintaining an upbeat mood that gave
way to emotion when the casket entered shortly before 11 a.m.

After the morning drizzle gave way to a pour, more mourners lined up
along the route Kennedy's hearse took from the Tremont Street church
to Hanscom Air Force Base, as members of Congress and other
dignitaries waited inside the church or under umbrellas for Peter Pan
buses to take them to airports, and Obama had returned to finish his
vacation on Martha's Vineyard. Kennedy was flown to Arlington
National Cemetery Saturday for his burial.

Former Presidents George W. Bush, Clinton, and Carter attended, along
with Irish Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, Vice President Joseph Biden,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, CIA
director Leon Panetta, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius, and senior presidential adviser David Axelrod.

More than a dozen sitting senators attended, including Majority
Leader Harry Reid, Sens. John McCain, Tom Harkin, Judd Gregg, John
Kerry, Orrin Hatch, Robert Casey, Al Franken, and Chris Dodd. Speaker
of the House Nancy Pelosi, and U.S. Reps. John Lewis, Stephen Lynch,
Barney Frank, Ed Markey, James McGovern, John Tierney, William
Delahunt, and Charles Rangel also came. Govs. Deval Patrick, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, and former Massachusetts Govs. Mitt Romney, Jane
Swift, and Michael Dukakis were also there, as were First Ladies
Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, and Rosalynn Carter.

The Mass also drew some of the biggest names in American life outside
politics, among them Boston Celtics great Bill Russell, actor Jack
Nicholson, "Meet the Press" host David Gregory, author and Watergate
reporter Bob Woodward, former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and actress
Lauren Bacall.

"I think he did more than all the presidents put together," the
singer Tony Bennett told the News Service after the funeral,
recalling that he and Kennedy used to sing show tunes together. "I
think the United States has to realize a big chunk of soul is gone now."

Figures from in and around Beacon Hill, where Kennedy never held
elected office but over which he has continued to hold great sway for
close to a half-century, turned out - Senate President Therese Murray
and House Speaker Robert DeLeo, Attorney General Martha Coakley,
Secretary of State William Galvin, Treasurer Timothy Cahill, Auditor
Joseph DeNucci, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, state Sens. Robert
O'Leary and Steven Tolman, state Rep. Paul Donato, former Senate
Presidents Robert Travaglini and William Bulger, former gubernatorial
candidate Chris Gabrieli, state Transportation Secretary James
Aloisi, Turnpike Authority executive director Jeffrey Mullan, state
Democratic Party chairman John Walsh, UMass president Jack Wilson,
and UMass-Boston chancellor Keith Motley.

Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray, the lone constitutional officer not to
attend, instead went to the Saturday funeral for slain Weymouth
police officer Michael Davey.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, former Sen.
Tom Daschle, former Sen. John Edwards and wife Elizabeth, and Sarah
Brown, wife of British prime minister Gordon Brown, historians David
McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, onetime Lyndon
Johnson aide Dick Goodwin, and national AFL-CIO president John
Sweeney and also attended.

Swift, the state's former acting governor, said she believed she had
something in common with a lot of the other mourners Saturday: like
them, she had received one of the first calls after the births of her
children from Kennedy. Swift said she admired Kennedy's legislative
achievements, "particularly on education, where I agreed with him"
and "admired his tenacity" on issues where they parted.

McGovern (D-Worcester) said the Mass echoed as one final Kennedy call
to public service.

"It was kind of a challenge to us, that those who loved him need to
continue fighting the good fight," said McGovern.

Kennedy's death has incited tremendous political uncertainty in the
Bay State, where no Senate seat has lain vacant since 1984. A week
before his death, Kennedy asked Patrick and legislative leaders to
rewrite state law to allow Patrick to appoint an interim senator to
serve until a replacement had been duly elected, essentially
reversing the Democratic majority's move in 2004 to strip Romney of
appointment power.

Even inside the church, Bay State politicos were asking after the
dynamics of the pending campaign, though the focus was on Kennedy
himself.

"It's a major hole," said Motley, the UMass-Boston chancellor, who
recalled volunteering for Kennedy as a 17-year-old college freshman.
"But I think he prepared a lot of people to come behind him, in the
sense that the values he espoused are the values a lot of us have
been driven by."

Kennedy's body will lie in Arlington near his brothers former
President John and former Senator Robert, both assassinated in the
1960s.

Obama's eulogy commemorated Kennedy as "the greatest legislator of
our time" and "a veritable force of nature" in the Senate, who used
canny tricks to win colleagues' favor for his causes. Kennedy, the
president said, "narrowly survived a plane crash, watched two
children struggle with cancer, buried three nephews, and experienced
personal failings and setbacks in the most public way possible."

Recalling Kennedy's record on civil rights, immigration, family
medical leave, and children's health insurance, Obama said, "Ted
Kennedy's life work was not to champion the causes of those with
wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to
those who were not heard; to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity;
to make real the dream of our founding. 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."

"May he rest in eternal peace," Obama finished.

The controversial side of Kennedy's life - his personal failings,
including the incident at Chappaquiddick that claimed the life of
Mary Jo Kopechne - received only the most oblique mentions. Speakers
remembered him as a master of bipartisan compromise.

"He was an American icon, we know that. But he was also a great and
loyal son of Massachusetts," Boston Red Sox president Larry Lucchino
told the News Service.

"We're on empty," Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Robert Haynes said
inside the church before the service began. "We lost our conscience."

The Rev. Mark Hession, Kennedy's parish priest, said the lessons of
the Gospel from the Book of Matthew - feeding the hungry, tending to
the sick, clothing the naked - were "the daily concerns of the public
life of Teddy Kennedy."

US Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the Rhode Island Democrat, recalled a loving
father. "When his light shined on me alone, there was no better
feeling in all the world," Kennedy said during remarks.

The funeral program featured a picture of a smiling Kennedy near the
ocean in a blue collared shirt with a V-neck sweater.

Outside the church hours before the service began, a riser crowded
with television cameras for national and local outlets faced the
church. People hung out of apartment windows with cameras. In
apartment and storefront windows, old-school campaign-style signs
read "Kennedy" on the top line, and "Thanks" beneath that.

"I think he was a brilliant man, a great friend," said Bacall. "The
hole that he's already left will never be filled."

Among other notables in attendance: Kennedy's ex-wife, Joan, former
NBC News anchor John Siegenthaler, NBC reporter Kelly O'Donnell,
Boston Globe editor Martin Baron, Red Sox owners John Henry and Tom
Werner, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Boston lobbyist
and former Lt. Gov. Tommy O'Neill, lobbyist John Cahill, Kennedy's
college classmate and former Harvard hockey coach and athletic
director Bill Cleary, Boston city councilor Michael Ross, former
state Sen. Warren Tolman, candidate for treasurer Steve Grossman,
lobbyist and former state Democratic Party chair Philip Johnston,
public relations executive George Regan, NECN host Jim Braude, TV
personality Mike Barnicle and his wife, Bank of America executive
Anne Finucane, Boston College president Rev. William Leahy, SJ,
Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust, businessman and civic leader
Jack Connors, and Democratic strategist Paul Begala.