WASHINGTON — Thousands of people bade farewell to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in Washington on Saturday as his body was borne over the same route taken by the remains of two of his brothers — along the same broad boulevards — and was mourned as they were by tearful citizens a generation before.
Along a path made famous by the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the senator’s funeral cortege drove in the footsteps of history, this time without the anguish of past Kennedy tragedies.
As well-wishers sang and cheered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and his motorcade passed the towering stone eagles that watch over the drive to Arlington National Cemetery, there was a bittersweet sense of something passing, a rich and tragic era finally coming to an end.
Few who bade Kennedy farewell Saturday had watched his brothers’ funerals pass four decades ago.
This time, without tragedy
On Nov. 25, 1963, Lynnette Wynn, a 21-year-old government employee in the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army, watched from a hillside on Constitution Avenue as President Kennedy’s coffin passed.
Wynn said she remembers how beautiful the scene was: the black horse, the throngs of people, the sound of portable transistor radios and televisions broadcasting the funeral in the background. The sidewalks were narrower back then.
In 1960s Washington, people were more polite, Wynn said, and those who came to watch the Kennedy services wore their Sunday best, prepared to wait hours to mourn and see history being made.
“It was just different,” Wynn said. “To have their lives cut short so early. There was so much promise before then.”
Five years later, again with her mother and, this time, her oldest daughter, Wynn watched Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s coffin come out of Union Station. It was a warm June evening. She was studying fashion at Prince George’s Community College. She remembers thinking how good a president Bobby would have been.
“We just couldn’t believe we were there again,” Wynn said.
On Saturday, Wynn was alone. Her mother and eldest daughter are dead. Wynn, now 67, is retired after years of making jewelry for her small business. She wanted to pay tribute to Teddy, a man she said did remarkable things as a senator even as he juggled personal tragedy with professional duty.
An “icon of liberal values”
Others also had vivid memories of the Kennedy assassinations or had heard about those sad days from their parents.
President Kennedy’s assassination was “the first time I saw my mother cry,” said Susan Orochena, 53, of Potomac, Md., as she waited outside the Capitol on Saturday.
But the senator’s Washington farewell seemed less wrenching and more celebratory as hundreds thronged the Capitol, Constitution Avenue, Memorial Bridge and the drive leading up to the black-and-gold gates of the cemetery.
The motorcade entered, passed along Sheridan Drive and stopped just beyond the ancient oak tree that stands before President Kennedy’s grave. The senator’s grave is 100 feet south of Robert Kennedy’s and 200 feet south of the president’s.
Hundreds of onlookers began gathering around the Capitol and along the funeral route hours before the hearse carrying Kennedy’s body arrived. Outside the cemetery, people lined both sides of Memorial Drive.
Demory Martin, 17, and his mother, Claire Green, came from Woodbridge, Va., and sat on the grass drawing posters with colored markers.
“Thank you Teddy,” Demory’s sign read. He wore an Obama T-shirt and said he admired Kennedy.
To his mother, an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts, Kennedy was an “icon of liberal values” who “spent a lot of time getting a lot of things done.”
