By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE – Americans great and small, and at least one member of European royalty, sat in the boxed-in pews of the historic Trinity Episcopal Church in Newport Monday to pay their final respects to Sen. Claiborne Pell and celebrate what one eulogist called a “life defined by service.”

Senators, former senators including Vice President-elect Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton and the prince of Lichtenstein joined Pell family members in the church as a U.S. Coast Guard honor guard carried the senator’s casket into the church and a long line of “regular folks” – some of whom had stood in the cold since dawn on a sidewalk between the church and a hastily erected storm fence – waited to take the remaining seats in the church or watch a television feed in an adjacent building.

They heard Sen. Edward M. Kennedy praise Pell as “an extraordinary man, a respected leader, a valued colleague and a wonderful friend.”

Clinton told the mourners that Pell “was the right kind of aristocrat. A champion by choice and not circumstance of the common good, our common future and our common dreams.”

Biden cited the “quintessential decency” that he said “Claiborne Pell evidenced toward all (and) was the thing that set him apart from every other man and woman I have come in contact with.”

But it was not just the politician and statesman who was mourned on Monday.

Nicholas Lorillard Pell lightened the ceremony by remembering his “frugal” grandfather, who would wear a business suit to the end of its useful life, then when it was “reluctantly retired,” he used it when he went out jogging, or, as Pell called it in his self-effacing manner, “shuffling.” Nicholas also recalled the senator’s aged Chrysler LeBaron convertible, with fraying red upholstery and its roof mended with duct tape that he drove until it fell apart, only to be replaced by a used Dodge Spirit purchased from Thrifty Car Rentals.

“He came through when you needed him the most – always there, always dependable, always true to his moral compass. That was my grandfather,” the younger Pell said

Referring to the Parkinson’s Disease that confined Pell to a wheelchair in his final years and ultimately robbed him of his speech, Nicholas said, “While his body gave out long ago, his will to live was of mythic proportions. He showcased what we in the family called ‘Warrior spirit’ in his resolve to live and enjoy time with the people he loved most: his family, his friends and his constituents.”

Pell – who served six terms in the U.S. Senate between 1961 and 1997 – died at age 90 on New Year’s Day in his Newport home. He was the author of legislation to provide grants so poor and middle class students could attend college, which came to be dubbed Pell Grants, and he also shepherded into law the bills creating the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities. An environmentalist, he pushed for the treaty banning undersea nuclear tests.

A congressional delegation that came to Newport from Washington for the service included Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, Connecticut Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Christopher Dodd, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman and Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, all Democrats, and Republicans, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana

Other political celebrities who attended the funeral were Gov. Donald Carcieri and former Govs. Lincoln Almond, Bruce Sundlun and Edward DiPrete; General Treasurer Frank Caprio, Attorney General Patrick Lynch, Secretary of State Ralph Mollis and Providence Mayor David Cicilline.

The funeral was carried live by local television.

A reception was held after the service – at which the Right Reverend Geralyn Wolf, Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island presided – at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. The burial was private.

At the reception, former Governor Sundlun recalled that Pell, after he was first elected to the Senate in 1960 but before he was sworn in, “put a knapsack on his back and climbed into the mountains of Cuba to talk to Fidel Castro,” who had led a successful revolution just two years before and established a communist beachhead in the Caribbean. Pell arranged for the Senate to invite Castro to a hearing.

“That would be like being elected today and going to Gaza to talk to Hamas,” Sundlun said.

Jack Cummings, the former Woonsocket mayor who worked in Pell’s Rhode Island office for more than 20 years, called him “the epitome of what a public servant should be. To come from the background he came from and have the patience and empathy that he did for the average person was just amazing.”

Kennedy recalled stopping in Newport on sailing trips from Long Island to Cape Cod to pick up Pell and his wife, Nuala. “The quiet joy of the wind on his face was a joy to behold,” Kennedy said.

The patriarch of the Kennedy clan noted that Pell was an early political supporter of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, as well as an early supporter of his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, adding “and no member of the Kennedy family has ever forgotten it.”

Clinton also told a story with a family angle.

As president, Clinton appointed Sheldon Whitehouse as U.S. Attorney on Pell’s recommendation. He said Whitehouse frequently wondered why the senator would recommend him when there were many Democrats who could be considered in line before him.

Clinton said Whitehouse told him that one day he finally asked Pell why he conferred the honor and was told, “your great grandfather helped get my father into the New York Democratic Club.”

Clinton said that Pell lived “a long life of grace, generous spirit, kind heart and determination, right to the very end. That life is his last true Pell Grant.

Delivering his eulogy, Sen. Jack Reed's voice cracked as he said, "Now I have one remaining privilege -- simply to say, on behalf of the people of Rhode Island, thank you, Sen. Pell."