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ARLINGTON, Virginia - Democratic lion Edward Kennedy was Saturday laid to rest near his slain brothers in a Virginia cemetery as the setting sun drew the curtain on an emotional day of sad farewells.
Surrounded by his tight-knit family which has dominated the nation's political life for half a century, Kennedy's coffin was placed on his grave site in Arlington National Cemetery on a hillside overlooking the nation's capital.
The late senator was being buried 100 feet (30 metres) from the grave of
his brother Robert Kennedy - assassinated in 1968 - and close to the eternal flame marking the last resting place of slain president John F. Kennedy.
It ended a day of high emotion as the nation bid farewell to the man who had the Kennedy mantle thrust on him and who spent 47 years tirelessly working in the US Senate to improve the lives of others.
At a Catholic mass earlier in the Kennedy fiefdom of Boston, President Barack Obama, who won key support from the Kennedy's in his race for the White House, eulogized him as "the lion of the Senate".
Obama, three former presidents and the nation's elite gathered at Boston's Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to say farewell to the Kennedy family patriarch who died Tuesday, aged 77, from brain cancer.
Obama hailed Kennedy as a "champion for those who had none, the soul of the Democratic Party, and the lion of the US Senate".
Kennedy -- whose elder brothers John F. Kennedy and Robert were assassinated in the 1960s -- had triumphed over "more pain and tragedy than most of us will ever know," the president said.
After the mass, presided over by Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley, Kennedy's flag-draped coffin was flown to Washington on the last leg of his final journey which began Thursday when it was placed in a hearse outside his Cape Cod home.
Thousands outside the US Capitol Saturday broke into loud applause as Kennedy's funeral procession halted briefly next to the building, for the senator's final visit.
In unprecedented scenes at the nation's top assembly, thousands of other ordinary by-passers had gathered solemnly on the lawns and roadsides nearby to bid farewell to Kennedy.
Outside the Senate where Kennedy's voice was heard booming for almost five decades, his widow, Vicki, and other members of the political family stepped out of their cars to greet hundreds of Congress staffers and lawmakers.
The members of the Irish-American clan had earlier struggled to contain their emotions at the Boston mass.
But the tears flowed freely when Kennedy's son, Ted Kennedy Jr, gave a moving address about his father's tenderness to him during childhood when he had a leg amputated because of cancer.
"He taught us that even our most profound losses are survivable," Kennedy Jr said.
Recounting how his father helped him climb an icy hill with his new prosthetic leg, Kennedy Jr said: "He taught me that nothing is impossible."
"He was not perfect, far from it. But my father believed in redemption and he never surrendered, never stopped trying to right wrongs -- be they his own failings, or ours," Kennedy Jr said.
Although many Americans disliked his leftist politics, the senator's passing has been a national event, signalling the end of a half-century era in which his legendary family was a highly influential force in the Democratic Party.
In uncanny echoes of JFK's funeral more than four decades ago, thousands of people lined the route from Washington's Lincoln Memorial over the Arlington Memorial Bridge, clapping as they paid their last respects.
Guests at the earlier mass included almost 50 senators and 100 members of Congress, as well as former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Also present was a range of celebrities including movie actor Jack Nicholson, and figures from the sporting and media worlds.
Renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and opera great Placido Domingo provided music.
- AFP/ir
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