Kennedy laid to rest near his brothers

Democratic lion Edward Kennedy has been reunited with his slain brothers - laid to rest in a Virginia cemetery as a lone bugle player brought the curtain down on a US political dynasty. Surrounded by his tight-knit family which has dominated US politics for half a century, Kennedy's body was brought to Arlington National Cemetery Saturday, to rest on a hillside overlooking the nation's capital.
The late senator was buried 100 feet (30 meters) from the grave of his brother, Robert Kennedy, assassinated in 1968, and close to the eternal flame marking the last resting place of president John F. Kennedy, shot dead in 1963. Three days of high emotion drew to a close as the nation bid a final farewell to the man who had the Kennedy mantle thrust on him and who spent 47 years tirelessly working in the US senate to improve the lives of others.
At a Catholic mass earlier in the Kennedy fiefdom of Boston, President Barack Obama, who won key support from the Kennedys in his race for the White House, eulogised him as "the lion of the Senate." Obama, three former presidents and the nation's elite gathered at Boston's Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to say farewell to the Kennedy family patriarch, who on Tuesday lost his fight with brain cancer. He was 77.
Obama hailed Kennedy as a "champion for those who had none, the soul of the Democratic Party, and the lion of the US Senate." "He was a product of an age when the joy and nobility of politics prevented differences of party, of platform and philosophy from becoming barriers of co-operation and mutual respect, a time when adversaries still saw each other as patriots," the president said.
Even though rain soaked Boston Saturday, hundreds gathered outside the basilica to say goodbye. "I want to tell him 'Thank you, we love you, and we appreciate your sacrifice,'" said Patricia Bell, 53, who took a bus from New York to Boston to pay her last respects to the late senator. An estimated 60,000 people waited from Thursday night until Saturday morning at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum to pay their last respects before Kennedy's coffin.
After the mass, Kennedy's flag-draped coffin was flown to Washington on the last leg of his final journey which had begun Thursday when it was placed in a hearse outside his Cape Cod home.