Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's body is carried into the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Thursday afternoon. The Providence Journal / Glenn OsmundsonBy Cynthia Needham
Journal Staff Writer
BOSTON -- The hearse eased up to the JFK Library under a blazing late afternoon sun.
It was just before 5 o'clock.
Throngs of people waiting in line craned their necks to see.
The crowd fell silent but for the sounds of camera shutters capturing the moment and news helicopters hovering overhead.
Members of the Kennedy family watch as the casket is taken out of the hearse. Providence Journal photo / Glenn OsmundsonMoments later, the Kennedy family began pouring out of a fleet of black town cars. Victoria Reggie Kennedy in pearls, Maria Shriver grasping at her children's shoulders. Behind them, Patrick Kennedy emerged in a sport coat, his shoulders slumped. A family so used to mourning in public seemed unfazed by the hordes of television cameras that followed their every move.
A military honor guard stepped up to meet the flag-draped casket, sliding it out of the hearse. And then, in synchronized steps, the men, representing all branches of the military, whisked the coffin inside the library. The family followed steps behind. It was over in less than 5 minutes.
While awaiting the motorcade's arrival, visitors wound their way through the exhibits, paying special attention to those featuring the youngest Kennedy brother.
Tourists in flip-flops and professionals on lunch breaks said they came to revisit decades of Camelot memories.
Buried deep in the line that inched through the parking lot toward the library were former Rhode Island union leader Dennis Grilli and his wife, Carol.
Dennis, left, and Carol Grilli, center, of Smithfield, wait in line to pay their respects to Senator Ted Kennedy this afternoon at the JFK Library in Boston. Providence Journal photo / Glenn Osmundson"For all he's done for American working families, a short drive to Boston is nothing," said Grilli,
former Council 94 executive director, who hails from Smithfield.
"To call him a lion is appropriate because he was a fighter," Grilli said. "He was the heart and soul of the Democratic Party."
The Grillis met Ted Kennedy several times through Kennedy's son, Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy.
The senator's body will lie in repose this evening from 6 to 11, and again Friday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Your turn: If you or a family member are in Boston today to remember Senator Kennedy, we want to hear from you.
E-mail us or call (401) 277.8100.
Visitors leave remarks and sign a condolences book at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. AP photo / Charles KrupaWaiting for the motorcade, a crowd formed early, some resting in lawn chairs others with picnic lunches, taking pictures with the likes of Katie Couric, under a cloudless sky.
"He's a political icon. We're not going to see someone like him again. He fought hard for the people of Massachusetts," said Irene Fortin, 54, Quincy, who is fourth in line to view the senator in repose.
Hours before the motorcade was scheduled to arrive, the grounds of the Kennedy Library were filled with national media and visitors who wanted to pay their respects.
People brought flowers, American flags and their favorite memories -- moments that spanned the decades of the senator's lengthy political career. On a day like today, they said, they couldn't stay away.
Among them was Yvonne Eider, who had been a secretary for North Dakota Sen. Quentin N. Burdick during the 1970s. She said she still remembered Kennedy's kindness, especially the day that a group of disabled students from North Dakota arrived in Washington, D.C.
The children's one wish was to meet Senator Kennedy, Eider said. She assumed he would be too busy, but she called his office anyway. Not only did Kennedy agree, she said, he sat with the students for nearly an hour, answering all of their questions.
"He was an amazing man. There wasn't any one of those children who could have done anything for him, but he stayed and stayed," Eider said.
Susan Jackson and her husband, Patrick, took the day off from work and drove from their home in Millbury, Mass. Jackson said her late father would have wanted it that way.
Her father was a bricklayer and a stalwart fan of Kennedy, through good times and bad, she said. As a little girl, Jackson, now 44, heard her father's oft-repeated phrase, "With Teddy, you'll always be safe."
Acey Neel said she walks to the Kennedy Library every afternoon with her infant daughter, Maggie, but today's walk took on a new significance. "I felt compelled to come, because as a gay woman raising a child, I feel so appreciative of Kennedy's push for gay rights years before it was popular to do so," Neel said.
Inside the museum, beside a family portrait, a father explained the Kennedy legacy to his son, who knew more about President Barack Obama than the famous family from Massachusetts.
A middle-aged woman stood before the footage of John F. Kennedy's assassination with tears in her eyes.
At the final exhibit, where a silver-haired Teddy Kennedy read in his trademark booming voice from his brother's book, slain President John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, a group of visits from Tallahassee, Fla., stood riveted.
In a glass atrium overlooking Boston Harbor, a long line snaked across the bright space, well-wishers queued to sign a memorial book and to offer their condolences.
"Ciao Ted!" they wrote.
"Thank you Teddy."
And this entry, from Christine Lamb of northern Virginia, "To the Kennedy family, America has lost a brother, and one of the greatest senators of modern times."
The motorcade was to travel down Hanover Street into the North End and past St. Stephen's Church, where his mother, Rose, was baptized and her funeral Mass celebrated. It was to cross over the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, land that the senator's mother had enjoyed as a child and which is now a park that the senator and community leaders created to give families green space in the heart of the city.
The motorcade was to pass Faneuil Hall, where Boston Mayor Menino was to ring the bell 47 times, and onto Bowdoin Street, past 122 Bowdoin, where the senator opened his first office as an assistant district attorney and where President Kennedy lived while running for Congress in 1946.
The motorcade was to continue by the JFK Federal Building, where Kennedy's office has been for decades, and then travel onto Dorchester Street into South Boston.