Marie Colvin, Reporter Killed in Syria, Is Mourned at Funeral Rosemarie Colvin, center, the mother of Marie Colvin, a journalist who was killed in Syria, at her funeral Monday on Long Island. OYSTER BAY, N.Y. - No matter where she was, in some war-torn region on the other side of the world or on the Gothic campus of Yale University, Marie Colvin was always "trailing clouds of glory and pandemonium," a former college roommate remembered on Monday. Rupert Murdoch was among the mourners, including friends, relatives, colleagues and strangers, at Ms. Colvin's funeral. A sometimes larger-than-life figure to those who knew her only through her often harrowing accounts in The Sunday Times of London, Ms. Colvin attracted a crowd of about 200 people at her funeral in the Church of Saint Dominic, here in her hometown. They reminisced about Ms. Colvin's human side as much as her journalistic accomplishments. She was remembered as a local girl with a wild streak, an avid sailor plying the waters of Long Island Sound and a woman who gave great parties frequented by top journalists who let their hair down and danced. "She never went anywhere without her cache of reporter's notebooks - or her pearls," said Katrina Heron, Ms. Colvin's friend and roommate at Yale. Ms. Heron told of scaling walls and scurrying over a shale roof together when Ms. Colvin had lost her keys, and of running out of gas on a highway in the dark after Ms. Colvin had insisted that the temperature gauge on the car was the gas tank needle. She was an often-heroic writer, Ms. Heron said, but she was also "a beloved girl, a beloved woman." Ms. Colvin's editor for 14 years, Sean Ryan, offered a prayer for the Syrian people, as well as for Rémi Ochlik, the young French photojournalist who was killed with Ms. Colvin in a rocket attack in Homs, Syria, on Feb. 22. "She gave me a lot of my best and worst moments," Mr. Ryan said. She was not somebody who cared too much for deadlines. "I've done my share of wild dancing with Marie," he added. She lived partly for her work and partly for her friends. Mr. Ryan flew from London to meet Ms. Colvin's body when it arrived in America, just last week. It had been turned over by what Mr. Ryan described as an unusually cooperative Syrian army, and ferried away with the help of Polish and French authorities. This quiet seaside town, dotted with beach clubs where Ms. Colvin learned to sail (she planned to cross the Atlantic in a sailboat this summer, her friends said) is far from the ravaged worlds with which she was associated. "I've always seen Marie in Bosnia and Baghdad," said Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's Mideast correspondent, who flew in from Dubai for the funeral. "Seeing this side of her," he added, "it's nice." But her legacy as a journalist was undeniably on display, in the form of a giant flag flying from the raised ladders of two fire trucks on nearby South Street, attended by firefighters in dress uniforms with white gloves. Chief Frank Mantegari III, who has been in the Oyster Bay Fire Department for 17 years, said it was the first time he had seen such a display for a civilian. A group of Syrians had come to pay their respects, some wearing scarves emblazoned with the red, green and white of the flag adopted by the rebel faction. Malek Jandali, a Syrian musician who said Ms. Colvin was killed just feet from the house in which he had lived in Homs, his native city, flew in from Atlanta, though he did not know Ms. Colvin personally. Outside the church, a group of Tamil people, an ethnic minority of Sri Lanka, stood vigil. Some carried posters with Ms. Colvin's picture - featuring a black eye patch over her left eye, worn since she was injured by a grenade in Sri Lanka in 2001 - and the slogan: "Uncrowned queen of intrepid journalists." "We lost our friend," said Pat Pathmakumar, a member of the group, adding: "I never met her, I never talked to her. But when I heard she died, I cried.