As it happened: Presidents honor Ethel Kennedy at DC memorial service

President Joe Biden took the stage to speak about his admiration for Robert Kennedy and the relationship he built with Ethel Kennedy who supported him during his own personal tragedy, the accident that killed his first wife and daughter.

“Ethel helped my family find a way forward.”

He explained how Kennedy invited him and his boys to her home after the crash and how she refused to let him leave political life.

“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.”

The Kennedy memorial service was already star-studded before musical legend Stevie Wonder was announced as a special guest.

Wonder said he went on his current tour because of Ethel Kennedy, whose love, he said, was an example of "real love."

He then, accompanies by a harp, launched into a hymn, then a version of "Isn't She Lovely" that he adapted to "Ethel was lovely" and turned into a sing-along.

"Ethel was precious, giving her love to the world," Wonder sang.

There were two-and-a-half hours worth of speakers at Kennedy's memorial service — before President Biden took to the podium.

Among the speakers were Martin Luther King III, who discussed the "mutual understanding of the personal sacrifices" between his family and the Kennedys, and the visits his mother and Ethel Kennedy made to each other after their husbands' assassinations months apart.

Former President Bill Clinton shared a series of personal stories, beginning his remarks by addressing her kids, "I thought your mother was the cat's meow. She would flirt with me in the most innocent ways." He called her "an amazing fireball of continuous energy" who once, after Clinton's wife Hillary was elected to Robert F. Kennedy's old seat in the U.S. Senate, offered him some free "instruction in how to be a Senate spouse from New York."

Rory Kennedy, who made a documentary about her mother, shared how her own birth, after RFK's assassination, was bittersweet, since her father would never meet her, as well as how she Ethel gladly drove her and her brother to an anti-apartheid protest to be arrested, and looked on with "the biggest, widest smile on her face."

A litany of Kennedy grandchildren stepped up to the microphone to share sweet or funny prayers in their matriarch's honor.

Ethel Kennedy's social circle was wide, and stretched into the world of entertainment. Two big stars sang at the D.C. memorial service: Kenny Chesney and Sting.

Chesney explained that he met Kennedy through one of her kids, and that when he met her at the Kennedy compound, he felt an instantly deep connection.

"She felt like sunshine, and that's why I'm here today to sing this song," he said, before singing "You Are My Sunshine" without accompaniment.

Former President Bill Clinton later remarked, "That's the first time I ever heard Kenny Chesney sing a capella. It was beautiful."

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Kathleen Kennedy Townsend offered a series of fun stories about being raised by the Kennedy family's matriarch.

"She was competitive and generous, fierce and fun-loving, rigorously faithful and reflexively dismissive of authority," Kennedy Townsend said.

She remembered going to her father's mob hearings on Capitol Hill and joked that her first sentence was invoking the Fifth Amendment, and said that it was part of her mother's role as her husband's top supporter.

"She chose to define herself first as Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy. That meant surrounding daddy with love and fun, with athletic children who could discuss history and politics and pray regularly," Kennedy Townsend said.

Later, her mother was famously sued for taking home some starving horses the family discovered while out riding in Virginia: "I think I was in third grade and it was very odd, my father was the attorney general, and my mother was on the front page, above the fold, being portrayed as a horse thief."

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi discussed her "girlfriend," whom she met in 1960, and recalled a time the Kennedy matriarch was asked to host a dinner for the Boston Celtics' newly signed star Larry Bird at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport.

There was an uncommon lull in the conversation at the table, at which point Ethel Kennedy called out, "So Larry, tell us, what role did your mother play in your basketball success?"

The lesson, Pelosi said, is that, "As usual, she was a mother first."

Former President Barack Obama shared some funny stories about Ethel Kennedy, whose reputation for mischief was well known but always joined with , he said, with "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.

"Her life was marked by more tragedy and heartbreak than many of us could bear," Obama continued, "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."

He told a story about seeing Kennedy doing the Ice Bucket Challenge in a video, which he remembered because she tried to recruit him into doing the ALS fundraiser himself.

"I wrote a check instead," he said, adding. "It is probably the only time that I ever said no to Ethel, and I suspect she wasn't too happy about it."

Former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, one of Ethel Kennedy's many grandkids, was the first to speak at the service.

"As my grandmother would say looking around this incredible place … aren't we lucky?" he said, calling her, "our beloved matriarch, and without doubt, the world's greatest grandmother."

He also warned that the service would be long, to laughter.

His first thanks went to Kim and Anne, the two people who led care for his ailing grandmother.

He also acknowledged the presidents who came to show their respect.

President Joe Biden sat with two of his predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, in the front row.

Biden is expected to speak.

The service began with an invocation and the singing of the hymn, "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You," while Kennedy's casket was walked in by members of the Kennedy family.

The funeral of President John F. Kennedy was held at the cathedral where Ethel Kennedy's memorial service was being held Wednesday.

AFP via Getty Images, file

When Ethel Kennedy's husband was assassinated several years later, his funeral was held in New York City.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate with Ted Kennedy, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom were among the dignitaries in attendance before Kennedy's memorial service began.

Organ music was playing as guests filled out the pews.

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