World

Memorial Held for Tim Russert

by Jarrett Martineau | June 18, 2008 at 04:08 pm

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A funeral was held on Wednesday for NBC journalist Tim Russert, who died last week at the age of 58. In attendance were many of Russert's family, friends, and leading American journalists and politicians.

Tom Brokaw lifted a bottle of Rolling Rock beer in tribute to fallen colleague Tim Russert, part of a day of tributes that brought the nation's top journalists and politicians and even Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain together. Russert, the NBC "Meet the Press" anchor who died of a heart attack Friday at the age of 58, was eulogized at his funeral and a memorial service that was televised on MSNBC. "We are going to do it Irish style," Brokaw, who pilfered the Rolling Rock from Russert's cooler, said at the memorial service held at the Kennedy Center.

"There will be some tears, some laughs and the occasional truth."

Speakers included Maria Shriver, Mario Cuomo, Mike Barnicle and even the nun who taught Russert in the seventh grade.

It ended with Russert's 22-year-old son, Luke Russert. Watch Luke Russert talk about the debates his father is hosting in heaven »

"He regarded a day greeted without real enthusiasm as a sadly lost opportunity," said Cuomo, the former New York governor for whom Russert worked as an aide in the early 1980s.