The funeral of Bobby Kennedy was on June 8th. A service was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Edward Kennedy read a touching and emotional eulogy for his brother.
Bobby's coffin was then taken to a train where it would travel to Washington, D.C. A train journey that should have taken only a couple of hours, took five hours.
As I wrote in my article The Funeral of Robert F. Kennedy
The train arrived in Washington just after 9pm; the trip took twice as long as it normally would have. After leaving the train, the funeral procession briefly stopped at the Lincoln Memorial where the Marine Corps Band played “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
The procession then moved on to the Arlington Cemetery. It was the only nighttime burial that has ever taken place there. Floodlights were placed around the grave and candles were distributed to the mourners. The coffin was carried to the grave site by 13 pallbearers; among them were Robert McNamara, Edward Kennedy, and Joseph Kennedy, the oldest son of Robert F. Kennedy.
There was a brief graveside service performed by Terence Cardinal Cooke, the Archbishop of New York. A flag was then folded and presented to his widow, Ethel, by John Glenn.
The majority of the mourners had left by midnight. Among those mourners was singer Bobby Darin, according to him he spent the night at the grave site. Darin had campaigned for Kennedy and had only met him a few weeks previously. In response to Robert F. Kenney's death he wrote the song “In Memoriam.”
