Crowds turn out to view Kennedy gravesite
ARLINGTON, Va. -- It was a glorious end to days of formal eulogies and prayers: Hundreds in jeans, T-shirts, shorts and sneakers taking time out to trudge up winding hills and express their thanks to an American icon.
"It's Sen. Kennedy. He did so much for so many people for so long," says Dwayne Dawson, 47. "The least I could do is pay my respects."
Sen. Edward Kennedy was buried on a sloping hill here Saturday evening and reunited with his two older brothers for the first time in more than four decades. Their three graves are within 200 feet of one another. President John F. Kennedy, whose grave is marked with an eternal flame, was assassinated in 1963, and Robert Kennedy was killed in 1968 while running for the Democratic nomination for president. Their graves are among the most visited sites at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sunday was the first day the public could come to Sen. Kennedy's grave site. And they came by the hundreds, interrupted only by a midafternoon visit by his widow, Vicki. The crowds were cleared from the area at that time.
"Ted was a senator my entire life," says Tom Walden, 47, whose age is the exact number of years Kennedy spent in the Senate. "A thousand years from now, someone will be standing here looking at the same sight I'm seeing," says Walden, waving out at the grave site. "I'm watching and observing and taking it all in for the historical significance."
A physics and astronomy high school teacher, Walden drove 300 miles from Frostburg, Md., to be here on the first day. He once wrote to Kennedy's office, requesting autographed photos for his Boy Scout troops. He got 30.
"Being older, it feels like the end of an era," says Lynette Menchero, 59. "I was a young girl who went to see President Kennedy campaigning."
She and her husband, Izzy, stayed glued to the television all day Saturday, watching funeral services that began in Boston and ended here. When her sister came to visit, they decided to come and pay tribute to "what (Sen. Kennedy) has accomplished, what he has meant to people."
