Barack Obama attends Ethel Kennedy’s memorial service – see all the moving photos

Ethel’s extended family, including her children, grandkids and great-grandkids, walked behind her casket as it was carried into the cathedral on Wednesday. 

The Kennedy matriarch lost her husband after he was assassinated in 1968 and went on to create the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights in his honor.  

Biden joined Obama and Clinton in the front row for the memorial as all three men greeted Kennedy family members and prepared to make speeches in Ethel’s honor. 

Obama warmly embraced Rory Kennedy, Ethel’s youngest daughter, who was born after her father’s assassination and said in her speech that “Mummy was all I had, but she was more than I could have ever hoped for.”

President Joe Biden fondly recalled how Ethel supported his family during the tragic time after the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident in 1972. 

“Ethel helped my family find a way forward,” he said in his speech. He continued to say that the matriarch refused to let him quit politics and encouraged him to pursue his dreams.

“Ethel was a hero in her own right. Full of character, full of integrity and empathy. Genuine empathy. She was full of laughter and joy and light,” he said. 

Ethel’s seventh child warmly greeted Obama, Clinton and Biden before the ceremony. 

In her speech, she spoke of her mother’s courage, recalling that she taught her children “how to survive, how to summon the courage to overcome your fear for the sake of someone else, for the sake of a greater cause, and to do it with a loving heart.”

In his speech, Obama remembered Ethel’s “kindness and generosity and perspective and fortitude, in the same way that her joy, her zest for life, her love for people helped feed in her a righteous anger toward the many injustices in our world.”

He continued: “Her life was marked by more tragedy and heartbreak than many of us could bear, and she would have been forgiven if at any point she had stepped away from public life or allowed bitterness to fester after all she had been through. But that’s not what she did because that’s not who she was.”

Clinton highlighted Ethel’s mischievous nature in his speech, recalling that she would “flirt with [him] in the most innocent ways”. 

He described her as “an amazing fireball of continuous energy” and “the cat’s meow”.

The legendary activist’s son attended Ethel’s memorial, where he recalled the support that his family received after his father’s assassination, just months apart from Robert F. Kennedy’s death. 

He recalled the “mutual understanding of personal sacrifices” the two families bonded over.

The legendary singer paid tribute to Ethel with a rendition of his classic song “Isn’t She Lovely” and changed the words to honor her by singing “Ethel Was Lovely” instead.

Patrick Kennedy III, one of Ethel’s 34 grandchildren, called Ethel “the world’s greatest grandmother” in a moving speech at the memorial. 

“As my grandmother would say, looking around this incredible place … aren’t we lucky?” he said as he referred to the large crowd supporting the Kennedy family.

The former Police singer paid tribute to Ethel in his moving performance at the memorial on Wednesday.

Ethel and Robert’s eldest child, Kathleen, described her mother as “competitive and generous, fierce and fun-loving, rigorously faithful and reflexively dismissive of authority” in a moving speech.