With Americans mourning Edward Kennedy and the end of a dynasty that dominated United States politics for a generation, the liberal lion’s family on Thursday prepared to accompany his body on its final journey.
All government buildings lowered the Stars and Stripes to half-mast, as did private homes in the Massachusetts seaside resort of Hyannis Port, where the veteran senator died late on Tuesday at his family compound aged 77.
President Barack Obama led tributes from across the US political spectrum and around the world, saying ”the outpouring of love, gratitude and fond memories which we have all witnessed is a testimony to the way this singular figure in American history touched so many lives.”
On Thursday, family members were to escort the coffin of Kennedy — whose elder brothers, former president John Kennedy and senator Robert Kennedy, were both assassinated — in a cortege to his home city of Boston, passing along the way landmarks that played a key role in his life.
The senator’s body was to lie in state at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library ahead of a Catholic funeral Mass on Saturday during which Obama was scheduled to deliver a eulogy.
Later that day, the Democratic Party giant’s remains were to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on a Virginia hillside overlooking Washington, alongside his slain brothers. Obama was not expected to attend the burial.
Kennedy, who served 47 years in the Senate, died after a long battle with brain cancer.
His disappearance ended his family’s half-century-long dominance of the Democratic Party and robbed Obama of a crucial ally in an increasingly uphill battle to reform the US healthcare system.
Although long hated by the right, Kennedy came to be respected on both sides of the political divide as a larger-than-life figure whose tragedy-filled career was the stuff of American history.
Many thought Kennedy was destined for the highest office after the murders of his brothers — first John in 1963, then Robert, as he campaigned for the presidency in 1968.
Personal scandal got in the way of the youngest Kennedy brother’s White House ambitions, particularly the 1969 death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a female passenger who was riding with him when he drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, near Cape Cod, Massachusetts and fled the scene.
Yet by the end, the man dubbed the liberal lion for his championing of progressive causes earned the respect even of former foes.
‘A man who helped so many people’
Praise poured in from across the world, while US television outlets and newspapers were flooded with retrospectives on his eventful, if controversial, life.
In Hyannis Port, police closed access to the compound, a sprawling beachfront residence that served as Cape Cod headquarters for the Kennedy clan.
More than 100 journalists and ranks of trucks with huge satellite dishes besieged the residence as strong winds whipped through the moored yachts.
An emotional Ana Lages, a chemical engineer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, placed flowers at the police line.
Kennedy, who long fought for immigrants’ rights, had helped her get a green card 30 years ago, she said, sobbing.
”I’m very grateful to him,” she said. While not sharing his left-leaning politics, she admired ”a man who helped so many people”.
Kennedy neighbour James Quinn called his death ”the end of an era. There’s no one really to pass the torch to.”
Obama, whose presidency is becoming mired in a battle over reforming healthcare, in part owed his meteoric rise to the White House last year to Kennedy’s stunning endorsement.
Interrupting his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, just across the Nantucket Sound from Hyannis Port, Obama said that ”even though we knew this day was coming for some time now, we awaited it with no small amount of dread.”
A healthy Kennedy would have been a valuable ally to Obama today. He was renowned for his legislative skills and had just described bringing health coverage to 47-million uninsured Americans as ”the cause of my life”.
But there was also praise from political rivals.
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch lamented the loss of a ”treasured friend”.
This ”giant of a man,” he said, ”with all his ideological verbosity and idealism, was a rare person who at times could put aside differences and look for common solutions.”
World leaders also lauded Kennedy as ”a great American” and paid tribute to his campaigning for peace and social welfare.
”He is admired around the world as the senator of senators,” Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
South African President Jacob Zuma on Wednesday sent condolences to the family Kennedy, lauding him for supporting the country’s fight against apartheid.
”For South Africa, he became a comrade and a friend in the fight for liberation,” said a statement from the Foreign Ministry, issued on Zuma’s behalf.
”This was because of his strong belief that all people are born equal and his nature, which did not allow him to rest in the face of injustice,” the statement said.
Irish leaders called Kennedy a ”great friend” and trumpeted his role in helping Catholics and Protestants achieve peace in Northern Ireland.
Kennedy, who had eight siblings, died just two weeks after his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, passed away at the age of 88. That leaves Jean Kennedy Smith (81) as the last surviving member of her generation of the Kennedy clan. — AFP
