Ted Kennedy Jr. has saluted his fallen father as his greatest source of love and encouragement through tough times.

The younger Kennedy, who lost a leg from cancer at the age of 12, stood before hundreds of mourners Saturday to memoralize Sen. Edward Kennedy at a funeral Mass in Boston. Kennedy's son said, "Although it hasn't been easy at times to live with this name, I've never been more proud of it than I am today."

Said Ted Kennedy Jr.: "He was not perfect — far from it. But my father believed in redemption and he never surrendered, never stopped trying to right wrongs, either as a result of his own failings or ours."