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A Three-Day Journey Of Remembrances For Sen. Kennedy

The official mourning of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy begins Thursday with a procession from his home in Hyannisport that culminates in his funeral Saturday with a eulogy from the president.

Interactive Google Map: The Procession Route

Kennedy died Tuesday after battling brain cancer for 15 months.

The body of Sen. Kennedy will be driven in a motorcade accompanied by his family from Cape Cod to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Dorchester, where the public is invited to pay their respects as he lies in repose. Kennedy will be celebrated with a memorial service at the museum Friday night.

Kennedy's funeral mass will be Saturday at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston. President Obama will delivery the eulogy.

A church official said former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush also are expected to attend the Mass at the cavernous basilica, built in 1878.

Kennedy prayed there every day in 2003 as his daughter, Kara, was successfully treated for lung cancer at a nearby hospital. The church eventually became a place of hope and optimism for the senator, especially during his yearlong battle with brain cancer before he died Tuesday at age 77.

Kennedy will be buried Saturday evening near his slain brothers — former President Kennedy and former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — at Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia. Other family members buried on the famous hillside include former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and the former president's baby son, Patrick, who died after two days.

Kennedy is eligible for burial at Arlington because of his service in Congress, as well as his two years in the Army from 1951 to 1953. He was a private first class and served in the military police at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, located at that time in Paris.

On Wednesday night, the Lightship Nantucket — the vessel that marked limits of the dangerous Nantucket Shoals in Massachusetts for more than 150 years — pulled up outside the Kennedy compound as dusk fell and illuminated the late senator's schooner as a tribute.

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