Deep into night, memories carry throngs to wake

They came in droves last night to pay their final respects to Senator Edward M. Kennedy as his body lay in repose within a flag-draped coffin at the center of an elegant, high-ceilinged room at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, hard by the sea in Dorchester.

As dusk settled at 7 p.m., the line looped for hundreds upon hundreds of yards, with thousands upon thousands of people, each one seeming to carry the memory of an encounter, or even just a moment, with the man whose life they had come to celebrate. By midnight, police officials estimated that 6,000 people remained in line, and that although everyone would be able to get inside, the viewing would end around 2 this morning.

Whether they had met him or not, virtually everyone professed a personal connection to Kennedy and his famous family.

“I just had to be here,’’ said Lessie McMillan, 54, who had driven from Hackensack, N.J., to attend the public wake. “The Kennedys - they were always involved with the civil rights movement, and anything that happened to them we felt happened to our family.’’

McMillan cried after she left the gathering, which felt so intimate for an event so grand in scale.

Some of Kennedy’s closest family members - including Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the senator’s widow, and the senator’s nephew, Joseph P. Kennedy II - surprised guests by standing in a receiving line inside to thank them and accept their comfort. Caroline Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the senator’s niece and nephew, went outside to greet people in the line that stretched through the parking lot.

The surge was so enormous that even the buses carrying people from nearby parking lots and an MBTA station were backed up. At 9 p.m., they continued to drop off people at the end of a line that police warned would take three hours to traverse. The Kennedy family told Boston police officials that they would keep the doors open all night to accommodate anyone who wanted to come. The repose will continue today.

For those who wanted, needed to be there last night, the wait did not matter. Just before 9 p.m., Olga and Ned Mucic, Serbian immigrants who now live in Malden, were greeted with a warning: They faced a three-hour wait, minimum.

Olga, 65, walked with a limp on arthritic legs to the end of the line. “We will wait,’’ she said.

Added her husband: “I will go anywhere. He was the champion of the poor people.’’

Mourners proceeded from the parking lot through a hallway decked with photos, magazine covers, and memorable quotations spanning a lifetime of public service. They moved into the Stephen E. Smith Center, decorated with an outsized American flag and carefully arranged white-and-green dahlias, hydrangeas, and roses. The closed casket was attended by an honor guard.

As the people waited they shared their stories.

Rich Adams, in a sleeveless shirt festooned with Vietnam service badges, said he had met Kennedy twice. The first time was after his high school glee club had performed for the senator; the second time, Kennedy happened to walk up while Adams was standing on a Cambridge street, a veteran traumatized by his combat memories and addicted to alcohol and drugs.

“He says, ‘Kid, you’re gonna be all right,’ ’’ recalled Adams, 56, of Brookline. “When Teddy talked to you, he talked to you as man to man.’’

Hector Algarroba, 55, of Astoria, N.Y., arrived by bus from New York yesterday morning and came straight to the library. Algarroba never met Kennedy, but as president of a nonprofit group that helps provide wheelchairs for underprivileged children in his native Dominican Republic, he wanted to pay his respects to the late senator “for those disabled people he worked so hard to help.’’

It was a tranquil venue, with a postcard view of the city that Kennedy loved and an atmosphere more evocative of a holiday or a tourist attraction than a wake. Earlier in the afternoon, a giant tanker steamed past Long Island slowly out to sea, followed by a schooner under full sail, then the crisp white triangles of sailboats knifing through the steady breeze.

People in line took pictures on their cellphones of one another, framed by the library’s white façade, the blue sky, and the passenger planes landing at Logan. The Stars and Stripes flew at half staff; beneath it, signal flags spelled the initials JFK.

A few women waiting on the hot concrete near the entrance drank bottled water and discussed the Duck Boat tour they had taken earlier in the day. Derek Bunten and Erin Shaw of Eau Claire, Wis., posed for some pictures; their next stop was the Freedom Trail.

“You always hear about these events,’’ Bunten said of the wake. “It’s our only chance of ever being at one.’’

Alexandra Kunz, one of those in the back of the line, was impressed that the services were being held in Boston and that the public was welcome to participate.

“I’m really touched by the fact that we’re that important to him,’’ said Kunz, 65, of Boston.

Shannon Mahoney, 25, a Dorchester medical assistant, spent an hour walking with her 4-month-old, Mia, and her 10-year-old stepdaughter, Jisela, to arrive in the middle of the evening. She was thousands back in line, but didn’t care.

“It’s an important part of history, Mahoney said, choking up. “It’s going to be something my kids are going to learn about later in the history books.’’

Along with the curious were people whose lives Kennedy had touched more personally.

Mary Ann Camp, 71, of Rockport had waited since 9:30 a.m. Inspired by John F. Kennedy, she had served in the Peace Corps in Africa. Her own brother died of a brain tumor after a yearlong battle, and she saw Ted Kennedy as an inspiration.

“Health care, children, seniors, what area did he not touch?’’ Camp said. “He touched America.’’

Michelle Nagel, 51, of Acton was living in Europe in May 2007 when she was diagnosed with leukemia and had no money to return home. Kennedy’s office helped get her treatment in Boston, where she was able to get a bone marrow transplant. By May 2008, when she was writing Kennedy a thank you note, she learned that he, too, had been diagnosed with cancer.

“I think everyone in Massachusetts feels like they’re their Kennedys,’’ Nagel said, after signing a condolence book placed in the steel-and-glass atrium at the Kennedy library. “There is something special about the Kennedys that makes them ours.’’

Sima Schwartz, a piano teacher in Worcester, came yesterday to see Kennedy. A native of Ukraine who immigrated in 1995, she thanked Kennedy for helping her gain citizenship.

“He connected people somehow,’’ she said, “including me.’’

Kennedy’s casket was being attended to by a military honor guard and a vigil of five civilians, including some 9/11 family members, throughout the night and into today.

Milton J. Valencia of the Globe staff contributed to this report.