Mourners pay respect to 'last of Camelot'

HYANNIS PORT, Mass. -- Ana Lages never voted for Sen. Edward Kennedy. She says she is not in favor of dynastic politics. But on Wednesday, she drove 90 miles from her Cambridge, Mass., home to lay flowers in his honor.

Thirty years ago, as she struggled to get a green card to pursue her profession as an MIT-trained chemical engineer, Lages turned to Kennedy's office. A week later, she had the document allowing her to work.

"It's personal," Lages, a native of Brazil who has since become a citizen, said through tears as she lay a yellow-and-red bouquet. "He helped me. … I think one should recognize those who helped change your life."

At the peak of tourist season, on a hot day so sunny it made the water of Nantucket Sound look bright blue, this town that has been the political clan's summer headquarters since 1926 paid its respects to the last of the Kennedy brothers.

Across the sound on Martha's Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing, mourners also paid homage to Kennedy's legacy and his 47-year career in the Senate.

"He's the last patriarchal figure," said John Neuhoff, a Newtown, Conn., painting conservator whose Oak Bluffs home on the Vineyard was formerly a church. "He's the last of Camelot."

Some of the mourners had a personal connection to Kennedy. Julia Braithwaite of Boston brought her husband and children to the John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum to honor the family that helped hers emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1987, when she was 14.

Some simply felt they did. "I've always loved the Kennedys for everything they've done for our country. They didn't have to, but they did," said Joan Colosi, a retired teacher from South Dennis on Cape Cod.

Police blocked roads around the Kennedy home, allowing in only residents, landscapers and florist trucks. Lages' bouquet joined a few other floral tributes and cards by a fence around a house once owned by President John F. Kennedy. Nearby was a red-and-blue plastic buoy with a painted message: "RIP Teddy."