CNN
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President Joe Biden on Wednesday praised Ethel Kennedy, the human rights activist and widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, as “a hero in her own right” and recalled her decades of public service and personal friendship with him and his family.

“She got me through a time where I didn't want to stay,” Biden said at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, referring to the aftermath of the 1972 accident that killed his first wife and daughter Lives were lost and his two sons were left seriously injured shortly after his election to the Senate.

The president added: “You know, the fact is that Ethel, as she did for the country, helped my family, principled and purposeful, find a way forward.”

Kennedy, who died last week at age 96, was one of the last remnants of the “Camelot” era, which spanned her brother-in-law John F. Kennedy's time as president until his assassination in 1963. Robert Kennedy, who served as attorney general during his brother's presidency before being elected to the U.S. Senate from New York in 1964, was himself assassinated in 1968 while running for president.

Biden has often spoken of being inspired by Robert Kennedy – whose legacy served as a lodestar for his own political career – to leave the prestigious Delaware law firm he joined shortly after graduating from law school to become a public defender. “I did this in large part because I thought it was something your father would have done,” he told the Kennedys in April, after much of the family publicly supported his presidential campaign.

Biden has often mentioned two heroes he had as a young man entering politics. During his time as president, he had kept busts of both on his desk in the Oval Office: one of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and one of Bobby Kennedy.

At Ethel Kennedy's funeral on Wednesday, Biden recalled receiving letters from her after his inauguration in 2021 and Valentine's Day this year.

He remembered that the Valentine's Day card had a picture of them surrounded by hearts. It read: “I'm not Biden waiting for your Valentine's Day / 'Cause he ain't no ordinary Joe.”

“I have received many awards in my life,” Biden said, “but this may be the best one I have ever received.”

The ties between the Kennedys and Bidens, the only two Catholic presidential families in American history, run deep. Several members of the Kennedy family, who remain a hugely influential force in American Democratic politics, endorsed Biden's bid for re-election earlier this year. In doing so, they also condemned the decision of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – Ethel Kennedy's second eldest son – to submit a third-party bid against him.

After Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July, members of the family supported Vice President Kamala Harris. RFK Jr. also paused his campaign in August and endorsed former President Donald Trump. Kennedy attended his mother's funeral, although he and Biden apparently had no contact.

Neither family is stranger to profound personal tragedy.

As Biden spoke about the brain tumor diagnosis his son Beau Biden received after returning from a deployment abroad, he told the crowd, his voice breaking, “Your mother was there, too.” Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015.

“To the Kennedy family,” Biden said, “the Biden family is here for you, just as you always have been for us.”