Kirkpatrick Memorial Service

ABC News’ Jia Zhou Reports: More than 500 friends, family members and others gathered to say goodbye to Jeane Kirkpatrick, the first American woman to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, on Tuesday at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

The service took place on former President Ronald Reagan’s birthday, the man who appointed Kirkpatrick to the post. 

Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne Cheney, attended the service and sat with members of Kirkpatrick’s family. 

Columnist and ABC News contributor George Will was one of the speakers at the service. He said he believed Ms. Kirkpatrick’s political savvy made her a unique individual.   

“She came in the critical moment in our history when there was crisis in the western world,” Will said.

Will first introduced Kirkpatrick to President Reagan at a dinner party in 1980.  Soon she became the only woman and the only Democrat in Reagan’s National Security Council, where she helped guide American military, diplomatic and covert action as a foreign policy adviser. 

John Bolton, the former US ambassador of the United Nations, shares many of the same neoconservative perspectives as Ms. Kirkpatrick.  He spoke in at the service about his admiration for Ms. Kirkpatrick and especially her belief that ideas, not institutions, shape the future.

Ms. Kirkpatrick died of congestive heart failure on Thursday, December, 7 2006 at her home in Bethesda, Md.  She was 80 years old.