By Patricia H. Kushlis
Ted Kennedy was buried on Saturday August 22, at Arlington National Cemetery next to his two older brothers John and Bobby in a simple grave tended by an eternal flame. The youngest son in Joseph Kennedy’s large clan, his funeral, a co-mingling of family, friends, politics, religion, sport, music, laughter, prayers, eulogies and tears was broadcast live from Boston’s Roman Catholic Basilica Our Lady of Perpetual Hope located in Roxbury, one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. His struggle with brain cancer had lasted 15 months.
His struggle on behalf of the poor and the forgotten had lasted nearly half a century.
This Kennedy never became president or attorney general. His achievements took place in the U.S. Senate which he entered at age 30, 47 years ago. He grew to become its Lion: the mane of white hair flying and the roar coming from down the corridor. This is where he made the difference. He became one of this country’s single most effective legislators – ever. He knew what he wanted. He learned how to get things done in that cacophonous body because he understood people, power, persuasion and the art of the possible. He realized the need to cut deals, to settle for less rather than nothing but to keep pushing forward and to stand true to his principles, to look for legal loopholes to turn principles into reality, to cross party lines and befriend Republican colleagues in ways increasingly difficult to achieve. He also knew how to use the Senate floor as a bully pulpit to lobby for policies and programs in which he believed.
An unabashed Liberal
Kennedy’s legislative accomplishments were legion. In President Obama’s words, “a man whose name graces nearly one thousand laws, and who penned more than three hundred himself.” Some of these laws were controversial – from federal government supported health care for the elderly to immigration reform which has changed the ethnic mix of this country. Yet how many older Americans would willingly give up Medicare and how many of their children would want them to? And is this country really poorer by welcoming immigrants and refugees from continents other than Europe? Doesn’t the US draw its strength from receiving the “tired and the poor” not by keeping them out?
But Kennedy also championed – as he wrote the Pope in a private letter a month before his death – to open the doors of economic opportunity, to fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education, as well as to oppose the death penalty and end war. His work was far from complete when he died. His presence and perseverance are already missed – but others will step in and press on.
Soul of the Democratic Party
The Irish are known for their oratorical skills and ability to connect with people – all people. They are natural politicians. It’s no wonder then that the family dinner table was often a debating society. It is also as a place where campaign strategies and tactics are discussed and dissected and tasks and responsibilities divvied up among the clan.
The Irish are also artistic, musical and emotional. The drama of ritual and ceremony are a part and parcel of their life – and death. That Kennedy loved to paint and was a lover of music (he proposed to his widow Vicki during an intermission of Puccini’s La Boheme) comes as no surprise: the music and the musicians chosen to perform at his funeral – tenor Placido Domingo, cellist Yo Yo Ma, and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham represented the very heights and the best of the classical tradition.
That the mourning lasted three days and his funeral was heavy on ceremony, ritual, laughter, eulogies, family, clan, compassion and grief is at the core of the Irish tradition in America whether Catholic or Protestant. I too remember the three day wake filled with tears, stories, friends, family, political cronies and well-wishers, compassion and endless food that my mother and aunts cooked 24/7 and drink that my dad and uncles served when my grandmother died – that took place when I was still a child on the Irish side of my own family.
Recklessness and life on the edge
Yet the Irish are also known for recklessness and living life on the edge. I have seen these characteristics personally – the good and the bad. Teddy Kennedy possessed all those gifts and failings in spades. Just read Lexington’s review of his life in the Economist as well as some of the comments beneath for the sordid details - if you’re into that sort of thing.
Nevertheless, he and his brothers had also ingrained in them a very different trait imbedded in austere New England Protestantism: the tenacity to pick oneself up from the deepest depths, turn one’s life to the good and also to realize that success comes not to the smartest or the more talented but to those willing to work the hardest, to practice the longest. In short, the Kennedys admired and practiced the perseverance my New Hampshire born grandmother of English heritage had taught me early in life.
As his namesake and son Teddy Kennedy Jr.. said in his moving eulogy at the funeral “My father believed that to do a job effectively required a tremendous amount of time and effort. . . he believed that in order to know what to do in the future, you have to understand the past, and he taught me to treat everyone I meet, no matter what station in life, with the same dignity and respect.”
Every American's Senator
Perhaps these are reasons why Kennedy had become every American’s Senator not just the senior Senator from Massachusetts blessed with and cursed by that legacy name.
But there’s one more trait Ted Kennedy embodied and expressed as well – atonement for his sins. Perhaps that explains his strong commitment to social justice – it was a way to live with himself while turning his sins and his errors to the good of others.
Senator Ted Kennedy’s death represents the end of an era, and the waning of a remarkable generation. Only one sibling, his sister Jean Kennedy Smith, remains alive. But this ending will not be the death of the causes he represented with such passion and eloquence or extinguish the impact on America of a family dynasty whose lives are so intractably intertwined with the history and fabric of this country, a dynasty over which he presided and whose laughter he cherished and whose heartbreaks and tragedies he personally shouldered for so many years.
His endorsement of Barack Obama’s candidacy for president came at a time when Kennedy’s nod of approval helped tip the balance in a hard fought race. He clearly saw something special in this younger man and fellow US Senator and chose to his own power and prestige to help make it happen.
In July, he again chose President Obama to deliver a personal letter to the Pope to ask for his prayers and forgiveness throughout Kennedy’s last days and passage into the hereafter. And finally, he asked the President to deliver the closing eulogy at his funeral – a fitting and moving last request. Portions of Kennedy’s letter that President Obama hand delivered and a section of the pope’s reply were read graveside. Shorter excerpts were released to the public soon thereafter.
The rest of the contents are private - as they should be - for the family and the two correspondents alone.
Official Senate photo of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Grave-site photo - BBC.