Edward Kennedy, 'lion' of U.S. Senate, dies of cancer
August 26, 2009 by BY MELANIE LEFKOWITZ AND THOMAS MAIER / melanie.lefkowitz@newsday.com and thomas.maier@newsday.com
Edward M. Kennedy, iconic liberal "lion" of the U.S. Senate and reigning patriarch of a legendary family political dynasty, is dead.
Kennedy, whose advocacy of social issues left an indelible stamp on American politics, died of brain cancer Tuesday night at his Cape Cod, Mass., home. He was 77.
Photos: Ted Kennedy through the years
The youngest and last remaining son in a family of wealth and privilege, Kennedy was a staunch liberal voice in his four decades in the Senate who often rallied his fellow Democrats, but who also built powerful alliances with Republicans to pass milestone legislation on education, health care, voting rights and the minimum wage. Across a wide range of political issues, no senator had such a profound impact on the legislative process in the U.S. Senate.
Speaking in Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts, where he is on vacation with his family, President Barack Obama called Kennedy "one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy. He is expected to give a eulogy at Kennedy's funeral Saturday.
"His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives," he said. "In seniors who know new dignity, in families who know new opportunity, in children who know education's promise - and in all who can pursue their dream in an America that is more equal and more just, including myself. His extraordinary life on this Earth has come to an end. His extraordinary work lives on."
With Kennedy's death, only his sister Jean Smith remains of the nine children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. His sister Eunice Shriver died Aug. 11. Of the four sons - Joseph Jr., John, Robert and Edward - only Edward Kennedy died of natural causes. Kennedy's family announced his death early Wednesday.
"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever," the statement said. "We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all."
Kennedy's body is to lie in repose Thursday and Friday, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. A private memorial service will be held Friday evening at the library. On Saturday, a funeral Mass will be offered at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston. He is to be buried a few feet from his brothers, John and Robert, in Arlington National Cemetery.
With his death, the "last brother," as he was sometimes called, passed into American history and political lore. To many historians, the family paid an extraordinarily high price for its political aspirations, which were rooted in the dreams of the hard-driving family patriarch, Joseph Kennedy. The oldest brother, Joseph Jr., who was being groomed to be president, died in an airplane explosion during World War II. The next brother, John F. Kennedy, was elected president in 1960 and assassinated three years later in Dallas; Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968 while running for president.
"Ted" Kennedy, as he was universally called, had his own unsuccessful run for the presidency, a position he seemed destined for. He was dogged by scandal after the 1969 drowning death of a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, a former aide to his brother Robert, in Kennedy's car in an accident on Chappaquidick Island, Mass. Even as he never reached the country's highest office, Kennedy attained the lofty status of a Senate elder statesman.
"I am convinced that we as a people are ready to give something back to our country in return for all it has given to us," he said in his speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, where he unsuccessfully challenged incumbent president Jimmy Carter, who went on to lose to Ronald Reagan
"Let this be our shared commitment - whatever sacrifices must be made will be shared and shared fairly. And let this be our confidence - at the end of our journey and always before us shines that ideal of liberty and justice for all."His fateful diagnosis
Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer after suffering a seizure at the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod in May of last year, and he underwent brain surgery at Duke University Medical Center two weeks later. After several months spent recuperating at home in Massachusetts and in Florida, he returned to the Senate floor for the 2009 session.
, if sporadically, and made several appearances to accept tributes and promote President Barack Obama's agenda. He has been largely absent during the recent debate over health care reform - an issue he said was the most important of his long careerLife of charm, ambition
Born in Boston on Feb. 22, 1932, Edward Moore Kennedy was the ninth child of Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy, a multimillionaire and former U.S. ambassador to Great Britain with outsized political ambitions, first for himself and then his sons. Ted, a chubby, gregarious boy, grew up the darling of his older siblings and the beneficiary of his family's access to the powerful and famous.
"He patted my hand and told me I was a smart little fellow," he said, after receiving his First Holy Communion in Rome from newly installed Pope Pius XII at the age of 7 in 1939.
Kennedy entered Harvard College in 1950, but was suspended the following year for allowing another student to take a Spanish test for him. He then served two years in the U.S. Army before graduating from Harvard in 1956. After receiving his law degree from the University of Virginia, Kennedy served as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County, Mass., and worked on his brother John's presidential campaign. He was catapulted onto the national political scene when he won a special election in 1962 to fill John's open Senate seat.
He rose to become one of the Senate's most senior members, third in longevity only to Robert Byrd of Virginia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.
With a personal brio reminiscent of his grandfather, former Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald, Kennedy took on key roles in many of the major legislative accomplishments of the past half-century.After his two brothers were assassinated, Kennedy became the heir apparent to the family's storied political legacy and a surrogate father to 13 nieces and nephews. His June 1968 eulogy for his brother Bobby ached with the pain of a shocked nation in the throes of the Vietnam War.
"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it," Ted said with trembling voice at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan.
Changed by an accident
The following year - as Kennedy was widely considered a favorite for the White House, with 79 percent of voters predicting he would challenge President Richard Nixon in 1972 as the Democratic nominee - the July 1969 fatal accident at Chappaquiddick ended talk of a presidential run.
Kennedy was driving with Kopechne after a party when he drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. He managed to free himself from the car, but failed to immediately report the accident, and Kopechne died inside the car. Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident in 1970 and his 2-month sentence was suspended. After an inquest, a judge found him negligent, but no further charges were filed.
In a televised talk to his constituents, Kennedy said it was "indefensible" not to have reported the crash immediately and said he had wondered afterwards "whether some awful curse actually did hang over all the Kennedys." That question was asked again when his nephew, John F. Kennedy Jr., died in a plane crash in July 1999.
In his home state, Kennedy's strong backing for school integration and, following the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, abortion rights, upset conservative Irish Catholics in Boston. Kennedy's personal life took additional hits because of publicized episodes of drinking, his involvement in the rape trial of his nephew William Kennedy Smith and a messy divorce in 1982 from Virginia Joan Kennedy.
His second marriage, in 1992, to Victoria Ann Reggie Kennedy, brought calm to Kennedy's personal life, as he adopted the role of family patriarch for the surviving children of his two brothers as well as his own children, Kara, Edward Jr. and Patrick, now a representative from Rhode Island.
His run for the presidency in 1980 - which amounted to a rebuke of a sitting Democratic president, Jimmy Carter - was short-lived when Kennedy, in a television interview, could not coherently explain why he wanted to be president.
He lost the primary, but many believe the Democrats' bruising battle contributed to Carter's defeat to California Gov. Ronald Reagan in the general election.
In the wake of his defeat, Kennedy forged compromise agreements with Republicans, as he later did with President George W. Bush in passing the No Child Left Behind Act.
Even with Kennedy's death, the family myth of Camelot begun during the JFK administration will surely continue, as Kennedy himself suggested in his 1980 Democratic National Convention speech, conceding the nomination to Carter.
"For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end," he said. "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
With wire services
Photos: Ted Kennedy through the years
Photos: Kennedy family tree, 1888 to 2009
Photos: Sen. Ted Kennedy mourned
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