RALEIGH, N.C. — Elizabeth Edwards, in a funeral attended by hundreds of mourners, was praised Saturday for her love, courage, optimism, generosity and friendship.
Speakers reflected on a multi-faceted personality: Edwards, 61, was an intellectual who frequented discount clothing stores like T.J. Maxx, she was a fiery competitor without an ego, and she was a public figure who won the private confidence of virtually everyone she met.
“There aren’t words that are good enough,” said daughter Cate Edwards, whose eulogy contained a passage from a letter her mother spent years preparing to leave to her children after she was gone.
“I’ve loved you in the best ways I’ve known how,” the letter said. “All I ever really needed was you, your love, your presence, to make my life complete.”
Cate recounted moments near the end when her mom could no longer speak but still, with gestures, comforted her family.
“She was way more worried about us than we were about her,” she said.
Former Sen. John Edwards, her estranged husband, did not speak. The couple had four children together. John Edwards sat alongside 28-year-old Cate, 12-year-old Emma Claire and 10-year-old Jack. They held hands as they followed the casket into the sanctuary of the Edenton Street United Methodist Church in downtown Raleigh.
John Edwards embraced his 2004 running mate on the Democratic national ticket, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and also North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue before Elizabeth Edwards’ casket, draped in white, was brought to the front of the church.
Hargrave McElroy, Elizabeth Edwards’ close friend for the past 29 years, praised her optimism, her competitiveness, her generous friendship and her “embrace of all that is possible” in her opening eulogy.
Longtime friend Glenn Bergenfield brought laughter from the mourners with stories of his friendship with “sweet, sweet Elizabeth,” which began in law school in 1974 and has “sustained me in times both good and wretched.”
Down the street, members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., known for picketing outside military funerals, brought a small group to picket near Edwards’ service. The church members have picketed at the funerals of Coretta Scott King and Jerry Falwell, among many others. A much larger local group, “Line of Love,” organized a counterprotest in support of “promoting proper respect for funerals.”
Elizabeth Edwards was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, a day after the Kerry-Edwards ticket lost to George W. Bush in that year’s presidential election. Doctors declared her cancer-free after grueling treatments, but the disease returned in an incurable form in 2007. She died Tuesday.
Her husband was the Democrats’ 2004 vice presidential candidate and made a failed bid for the presidency in 2008.
