President Biden, two former presidents, and legendary entertainers paid tribute Wednesday to Ethel Kennedy, the human rights activist and matriarch of the Democratic political family who died last week at the age of 96, during a memorial service at a Washington, D.C., cathedral.
Kennedy, widow of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was remembered in emotional recollections and tributes for the integral, supporting role she played in her family’s political fortunes, as well as her decades-long activism for human rights.
Her grandson, Joseph P. Kennedy III, US special envoy to Northern Ireland and a former Massachusetts congressman, called her “without doubt, the world’s greatest grandma” and said she had “dedicated herself to a long list of righteous causes and campaigns.”
“Her lessons were bountiful,” he said. “Triscuits should be fried. Bacon goes with everything. If you want to get to 96, you should eat deviled eggs, fried chicken, and clam chowder for lunch every day.
“She taught us that size was no match for courage — especially when playing chicken with a Nantucket ferry while in a 26-foot sailboat with 18 passengers, three dogs, and guests who were scarred for life — that life is best enjoyed in the company of others.”
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About 100 members of the Kennedy family attended, with many of Ethel Kennedy’s children and grandchildren paying her tribute, as roughly 1,000 mourners filled the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, the same church where the funeral of her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, was held in 1963.
Three Democratic presidents shared their memories , and singers Stevie Wonder, Kenny Chesney, and Sting performed during the roughly three-hour service that was live-streamed.
Former president Barack Obama said Kennedy was “a spitfire from a young age.”
“Some of you have heard the stories of a school yearbook describing her as, quote, ‘alive with mischief,’ in college demerits for a long list of infractions, including chewing gum and, quote, ‘disorder in the tea room,’ ” he said. “And that irrepressible spirit did not end once she left school, or after she was married, or had children, or became a grandmother.”
Former president Bill Clinton said he was grateful for Kennedy’s “energy and her brain power” through her 96 years. He remarked that she “was an amazing fireball of continuous energy” and said Kennedy embodied the biblical definition of “agape,” or love for fellow human beings.
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”She did it naturally, you think, but when you get hit as many times by life’s blows as she did, it’s a discipline,” Clinton said. “You have to decide whether you will keep your heart open or shut it down. Or whether you’ll still keep reaching out to people or clench your fist. Whether you dare trust and dare love one more time. For almost a full century, she kept giving it a try.”
President Biden closed the service with memories that went back to his first Senate race in 1972, when he was “a 29-year-old kid,” and the deaths of his wife and daughter in a car crash that December. After the tragedy, Biden said, Ethel Kennedy invited him and his sons to her home, and she and her brother-in-law, the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, helped him pick up the pieces of his life.
“Along with Teddy, she got me through a time when I didn’t want to stick around, wanted no part of being in the Congress, the Senate,” the president said. “I mean it. I spoke to my governor . . . to find a replacement for me. But Teddy and Ethel would hear none of it. . . . Like she did for the country, Ethel helped my family find a way forward with principle and purpose.”
Biden also spoke of her sense of humor, saying she was a “practical joker” like his wife, Jill Biden. The president recalled a Valentine’s Day card she sent a few years ago.
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“It was a picture of me and Ethel surrounded by hearts,” he said. “In the printed language of the card, it said, ‘I’m not Biden my time waiting for you, Valentine.’ And then in her handwriting, she says, ‘Because he’s no ordinary Joe.’ ”
Kennedy, who was at her husband’s side when he was assassinated in 1968 in Los Angeles as he was running for president, died from complications of a stroke she suffered earlier this month. A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she marched with labor activists, joined picket lines, and demonstrated outside embassies.
A private funeral Mass was said for Kennedy on Monday at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville. Kennedy and her late husband were the parents of 11 children, nine of whom survive her.
“Mummy was all I ever had,” said Rory Kennedy, her youngest child who was born six months after Robert F. Kennedy’s death. “But I have to say to me, she was more, so much more than I could ever have hoped for. As her youngest child, the eleventh, I know that for her my birth into this world was bittersweet. She told me this.
“Mixed into the joy, the sweetness, was her awareness that my father would not get to meet me, to hold me, that he was truly gone,” she said. “It must have been a lot, I imagine, for a 40-year-old widow to carry, a lot for anyone. Yet here today looking back, what a thrilling, fun, funny, meaningful, what a deeply loving journey it has been.”
Burial arrangements have not been announced; a family spokesperson said that planning for the burial is under way. Her late husband is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
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Nick Stoico of the Globe staff contributed reporting.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him @jeremycfox.