Friends, relatives celebrate Kennedy's life

BOSTON -- Friends, relatives and political comrades celebrated Sen. Edward Kennedy in an all-star Irish wake Friday that highlighted the veteran Massachusetts Democrat's gift for friendship, his love of music and practical jokes, and the storied family that supported him in his final illness.

Kennedy died Tuesday of brain cancer at the age of 77.

The last of a band of brothers whose father pointed them for political power and whose tragedies and triumphs are intertwined with five decades of the nation's history, Kennedy never became president but he is exiting the national stage like one.

Mourners at his funeral Saturday will include former presidents of both parties and more than 86 current and former members of Congress. President Obama will deliver a eulogy.

Afterward, there will be a flight to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and one last stately, sentimental procession to the U.S. Capitol where members of the public and Kennedy's staff will line up to bid him farewell. Then comes a hero's burial in Arlington National Cemetery next to the slain siblings whose mantle he inherited, former president John Kennedy and Sen. Robert Kennedy.

Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee and Kennedy's longtime Massachusetts colleague, argued that the youngest of the Kennedy brothers may have left the most impressive legacy.

"For 1,000 days in the White House, John Kennedy inspired us. For 80 days on the presidential campaign trail, Robert Kennedy gave us reason to believe and hope again," Kerry said. "And for more than 17,000 days in the United States Senate, Ted Kennedy changed the course of history as only few others ever have."

More than 50,000 people stood in line to pay their last respects to Kennedy before Friday's memorial at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, "this library which Teddy built," a quivery-voiced Caroline Kennedy, the senator's niece, said.

The three-hour celebration before 600 invited guests took its lighthearted theme from Kennedy's infectiously optimistic personality.

"Ted Kennedy was fun. He loved to laugh and he loved to make us laugh," said Paul Kirk, a former Democratic Party chairman and longtime Kennedy friend as he opened a three-hour long memorial that featured songs, jokes, funny stories about Kennedy's personal foibles and fond, tear-choked remembrances of his kindnesses.

"He crept into my heart and before I knew it, he owned a piece of it," said Vice President Biden, recalling how Kennedy encouraged him to stay in the Senate after his wife and child were killed in an accident and coaxed him out of depression when he was recuperating from an aneurysm.

"Every single one of my brothers and sisters needed a father and we gained one in Uncle Teddy," said former representative Joe Kennedy, the eldest child of Robert F. Kennedy, one of two brothers the late senator lost to assassins' bullets.

Caroline Kennedy, whose father, John Kennedy, was gunned down three years into his presidency, talked about the history lessons her uncle would disguise as fun. There were family history trips, "and no visit to grandma's house was complete without Teddy's recitation of 'The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,'" she said.

Kennedy choked up as she said she realized she was on "our last history trip" with her Uncle Teddy.

"Now Teddy has become a part of history and we have become the ones who have to do all the things that he would have done, for us and for each other and for our country," she said.

It was one of the more poignant notes in an evening that was often full of hilarity.

Before an audience that included California's Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the husband of Kennedy's niece, and Kennedy family members including his widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, Republicans and Democrats regaled the crowd with stories of the senator's impish sense of humor and competitive drive.

"We all know how much fun Ted has making friends uncomfortable," said former senator John Culver, who had tears of laughter rolling down his listeners' eyes as he described a 24-hour sailboat race that Kennedy insisted on making in the midst of a dangerous gale. "I thought I was with Captain Ahab or something," said Culver, an Iowa Democrat.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said that as he emerged from prostate cancer surgery two weeks ago, a dying Kennedy was on the phone and "had me howling with laughter in the recovery room as he made a few choice comments, which I cannot repeat, about catheters."

Other speakers said Kennedy's better angels ultimately triumphed over the darker spirits that dogged him.

"He had nightmares but yet he dreamed," said priest Gerry Creedon in his opening prayer.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, described the unusual political partnership that blossomed between himself, "a teetotalling Mormon," and Kennedy who "was politically liberal and liberal in his lifestyle, at least until he married Vickie."

Hatch recounted one night when he ran into Kennedy and Dodd, "feeling no pain," and persuaded Kennedy to speak to a group of Mormon missionaries in Boston and get the storied Faneuil Hall for their meeting.

Hatch said Kennedy asked him the next day, "Orrin, what else did I agree to?" But Kennedy kept the date and "gave a beautiful speech" to the young Mormons about public service, Hatch said, adding: "They will never forget it."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., his party's presidential candidate last year, savored the memories of his titanic floor fights with his friend, followed by "that infectious laugh of his that could wake the dead and cheer up the most beleaguered soul."

McCain's voice grew husky as he talked about going back to a Senate without his friend. "The place won't be the same without him," he said.