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Farewell Ted

February 17, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Senator Kennedy was laid to rest in the cemetery’s sacred ground last Saturday after an extraordinary day of national mourning and reflection that began under rainy skies in Boston and ended in the steamy heat of a late summer’s day in the nation’s capital, a town where Ted Kennedy, 77 when he died last week after a fifteen month battle against cancer, forged a political career virtually unparalleled in Capitol Hill legislative history.
The funeral Mass, at Our Lady of Perpetual Help basilica in Boston, was concelebrated in part by Cardinal Sean O’Malley and attended by President Obama, three former U.S. presidents, and many from the front ranks of American political life.
Leading the gathering in mourning was Senator Kennedy’s wife Vicki and his sister Jean Kennedy Smith, former U.S. ambassador to Ireland and now the sole survivor of Joseph and Rose Kennedy’s nine children.
For Ambassador Kennedy Smith, it was the second time in just days that she mourned a sibling, her sister Eunice having died earlier in the month.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen was in the congregation representing Ireland as was Ireland’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Collins.
From Northern Ireland came Nobel Laureate John Hume, with whom Kennedy had worked over many years to bring an end to the Troubles, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
North political party leaders, Gerry Adams of Sinn F

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