Catherine Morgan, star of stage, screen, (well not really, but she should be) and (yes this is true) blogs including Political Voices of Women, has sought posts on the news that Senator Edward Kennedy, seen here with Senator Barack Obama, whom he endorsed, is suffering from a malignant brain tumor. It really is a sad thing. People make jokes about the Senator, some of them really cruel, as I discovered while searching for images for this post. And he’s made mistakes, including those surrounding the tragic events at Chappaquiddick.
But as a great speaker and legislator, he’s used his talents to be a champion of the “downtrodden” and many of the rest of us, for over 40 years. Coal miners, civil rights advocates, children who need better schools, American who need access to health care, soldiers in Iraq and veterans of every war and dozens of other causes; he’s been a mainstay of support for them all, often when not too many people were willing to be.
Since he lost his two brothers, President John Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, to assassins, he’s also been the protector of their children: JFK’s two, John and Caroline, and Bobby’s eleven. He’s buried John’s son and two of Bobby’s. His own son Edward contracted bone cancer and had a leg amputated at the age of 12. Kennedy himself nearly died in a plane crash in 1964. And there’s plenty more; take a look at this Wikipedia entry on the “Kennedy curse” which left him with burdens of care for so many. Weddings, illnesses, even funerals, it was he who was there for them all.
When I first came to Washington, I was a very young researcher in the CBS News Washington Bureau. Because I was so young, I was assigned to call the Kennedy “boiler room girls” – campaign workers who knew the young woman who had died in that car in Chappaquiddick, Mary Jo Kopechne, to see if they would talk to us. I called. All of them. Every day for a year.
Every day for a year they took my call. Every day for a year they were polite, gentle and silent on the subject of the crash. And so they have remained. Since I know many other people who have worked for Teddy and shown a devotion and loyalty seldom seen in public life, I am not surprised; that’s how people are in the Kennedy universe. It says a lot about the Senator and his family and the sort of commitment they inspire.
When I think of the Senator though, it’s not any of that I think about. Or of the fact that he can be hilarious, self-effacing and very kind to those around him. My strongest, and most unambiguous memory, is of his eulogy at the funeral of his brother Bobby* in the summer of 1968. You’ll see why.
*This is audio accompanied by cover footage; I couldn’t locate any video of the speech although I remember it vividly and can see it in my head. Can’t get that up on the Web though, at least not yet.