Elijah Cummings funeral: ‘It now falls on us to continue his work.’
BALTIMORE — In a vast church sanctuary filled with powerful people, Elijah Eugene Cummings was remembered Friday as a man who strove to protect American democracy but still made time to cherish his daughters , attend 7:15 a.m. Sunday worship each week and stop on the side of the road to help a motorist change a tire. For nearly four hours, 4,000 people, including two former U.S. presidents, mourned the longtime Democratic lawmaker, the son of sharecroppers who rose from South Baltimore to Congress. “Elijah Cummings was a man of noble and good heart ,” said former president Barack Obama, who sat in the front row of New Psalmist Baptist Church with Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the congressman’s widow; Bill and Hillary Clinton; and former vice president Joe Biden, a 2020 presidential candidate. “And it now falls on us to continue his work.” The service — sometimes joyous, sometimes solemn and sometimes funny — offered up a noble vision of public service, in which...