Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 25, 1995                   TAG: 9501250072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:    BOSTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

MATRIARCH'S KIN GIVE FINAL HONOR

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, who raised a family that included three U.S. senators, an ambassador and a president, was remembered at her funeral Tuesday as a woman who tempered ambition with affection and love.

``Mother always thought her children should strive for the highest place,'' Sen. Edward Kennedy said in his eulogy. ``But inside the family, with love and laughter, she knew how to put each of us in our place. She was ambitious not only for our success, but for our soul.''

Six of her grandchildren served as pallbearers for her wooden casket at the funeral at Old St. Stephen's Church, where she had been baptized in 1890. She died Sunday at age 104.

With hundreds of mourners inside the church, hundreds of other people, some holding bouquets of roses, crowded the surrounding streets, listening on loudspeakers to the words of praise and remembrance, and to music that included Schubert's Ave Maria and the hymn ``How Great Thou Art.''

``She was the strongest woman who ever lived. She had more triumphs and tragedies than the queen of England. I just wanted to pay my respects,'' said 60-year-old Paul Kelly.

Matriarch of the nation's most prominent political family, Mrs. Kennedy lost two sons to assassination, another in World War II and a daughter in an airplane crash.

Cardinal Bernard Law touched on those tragedies in his homily, noting that ``few lives ... have been so intertwined with the joys and sorrows of a nation as has hers.''

Her sorrows, he said, have been ``epic tragedies which have moved the world.''

Sen. Kennedy's eulogy was filled with stories, and many relatives laughed aloud at the lighter moments. Throughout the service, her grandson John F. Kennedy Jr. played and mugged with one of his nieces. In more emotional moments, Kennedy broke down during his eulogy, and his sister Patricia Kennedy Lawford passed on a reading she had been expected to make.