US Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, along with a host of celebrities, paid their final respects on Wednesday in Washington to Ethel Kennedy, widow of Bobby Kennedy and human rights activist.
• Also read: “An American icon”: Ethel Kennedy, widow of “Bobby” Kennedy, dies
“We saw how she took up Bobby’s torch and left her own mark on the country,” Mr. Biden said in his eulogy for the matriarch, pillar of the Kennedy clan, who died at age 96 on October 10.
Barack Obama and Bill Clinton also took the floor to pay tribute to the memory of Ethel Kennedy, sister-in-law of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, and widow of Bobby Kennedy, assassinated on June 6, 1968 in Los Angeles. .
AFP
Among the personalities who visited the National Cathedral in the American capital were musicians Stevie Wonder and Sting.
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Another notable presence was that of former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. The Democratic tenor therefore crossed paths with Joe Biden for the first time since she pressured him to withdraw from the presidential race three months ago.
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Founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization following the death of her husband, Ethel Kennedy also raised 11 children, including Robert Kennedy Jr, an independent presidential candidate in 2024 before he supported Donald Trump, to the great dismay of the majority of the Kennedy clan.
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She was an inspiration to many Americans for her resilience in a life marked by tragedy, in addition to the murder of her husband: Ethel Kennedy lost both of her parents in a plane crash and two of her sons were died suddenly, one from an overdose, the other from a fall while skiing.