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NEWPORT — The late Sen. Claiborne Pell was remembered during his funeral service Monday as a patrician statesman of enormous personal wealth who devoted his career to serving the less fortunate and enabled millions of American students to attend college.
The Rhode Island Democrat died Thursday at the age of 90. He had suffered for years from Parkinson's disease.
During his 36 years in the Senate, the multimillionaire descendant of early New York landowners championed the arts, the environment and affordable education. He left office in January 1997, after his sixth term.
"Claiborne Pell was a gentleman and a gentle man," Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts eulogized during the service at Trinity Episcopal Church. "On the outside he was calm and composed, but deep down he was a real fighter."
Former President Bill Clinton said that after winning the presidency he was given a tour of the Pell home and noticed the portraits of the senator's ancestors in formal white wigs.
Clinton said he felt "that there was something almost magical about this man who was born to aristocracy but cared about people, like the people I grew up with."
"He was the right kind of aristocrat — a champion by choice, not circumstance, of the common good, our common future and our common dreams," Clinton said.
Fellow politicians recalled Pell's courtly manner, saying he refused to disparage adversaries and never embraced negative campaigning.
"I smile when I think of the many times I heard him say, 'I always try to let the other fellow have my way,'" Kennedy said.
Longtime Senate colleague Joe Biden, the vice president-elect, told the congregation Pell offered comfort after Biden's wife and infant daughter were killed in a 1972 car crash.
"It was you acting as if your heart was as broken as mine," Biden said, turning to Pell's wife, Nuala. "You made your home my home."
Pell sponsored legislation creating the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant program, which passed in 1972 and provided direct aid to college students. The awards were renamed "Pell Grants" in 1980. By the time he retired, they had aided more than 54 million low- and middle-income Americans.
Pell was also the main Senate sponsor of the 1965 law creating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He participated in the 1945 San Francisco conference that wrote the United Nations charter and served in the U.S. foreign service for seven years.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a janitor's son who succeeded Pell in the Senate, said Pell struggled to make small talk. He described how he once asked Pell why he was traveling to historic Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York for a family reunion.
"Well Jack, you see, we own it," Pell told him. According to the Fort Ticonderoga Web site, members of the Pell family are still on the board of trustees of the National Historic Landmark.
(This version corrects wording of Biden quote on fatal crash.)
