BOSTON — With flags flying at half-staff and the mournful song of a solitary bagpipe, Joe Moakley came home one last time.
The beloved, 15-term Democratic congressman from South Boston died Sunday in Washington, D.C. He was 74 years old and had been suffering from leukemia. A three-day memorial tribute to John Joseph Moakley--known universally in his home district as "Joe"--began Wednesday with a vigil at the parish church in his working-class, mostly Irish neighborhood.
Moakley called the South Boston constituents who kept him in local, state and national office for almost 50 years "bread and butter Democrats." The protege of the late House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill often would remark: "These people out there, they're my boss. I work for them."
The congressman's body will lie in state today at the Capitol on Beacon Hill. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) will deliver a eulogy tonight to his longtime Democratic colleague. Funeral services, planned for Friday, are expected to draw such political dignitaries as President and Mrs. Bush and former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
"His was a selfless life," Kennedy said of Moakley. "All of us already miss him very much."
While his district grieved, the death of the burly, bearded ex-boxer triggered a polite stampede for his job.
Most prominent among the half-dozen hopefuls bent on inheriting the rare Massachusetts congressional vacancy is Matthew Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, a son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, and a nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Max Kennedy, a 36-year-old environmental lawyer, recently purchased a home in West Roxbury, a middle-class area in Moakley's old district that is not known as a Kennedy family stomping ground. As the founder of the nonprofit Watershed Institute, Max Kennedy never has held elective office. In the last 10 years, he has lived in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Cambridge, Mass. He claims the family compound in Hyannis Port as his permanent address.
Despite his famous family name, Kennedy faces competition from his own party. Democratic state Sen. Marc R. Pacheco has expressed interest in the Moakley seat. Two other Democrats from the state Senate, Stephen F. Lynch and Brian A. Joyce, also are eyeing the congressional slot that stretches through suburban Boston.
