Ted Kennedy, a singular figure in US life

HYANNIS PORT, Massachusetts – Senator Edward M Kennedy, who died on Tuesday, of Massachusetts was the last surviving brother in an enduring political dynasty and one of the most influential senators in US history.

In nearly 50 years in the Senate, Kennedy (77), a liberal Democrat, served alongside 10 presidents – his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy among them – compiling an impressive list of legislative achievements on health care, civil rights, education, immigration and more.His only run for the White House ended in defeat in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter turned back his challenge for the party’s nomination. To the American public, Kennedy was best known as the last surviving son of America’s most glamorous political family, father figure and, memorably, eulogist of an Irish-American clan plagued again and again by tragedy. But his career was forever marred by an accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969, when a car he was driving plunged off a bridge, killing a young woman.Kennedy’s family announced his death in a brief statement released early yesterday.’We’ve lost the irreplaceable centre 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,’ it said.In his later years, Kennedy cut a barrel-chested figure, with a swath of white hair, a booming voice and a thick, widely imitated Boston accent. He coupled fist-pumping floor speeches with his well-honed Irish charm and formidable negotiating skills. He was both a passionate liberal and a clear-eyed pragmatist, willing to reach across the aisle.He was first elected to the Senate in 1962, taking the seat that his brother John had occupied before winning the White House, and served longer than all but two senators in history.His own hopes of reaching the White House were damaged – perhaps doomed – in 1969 by the scandal that came to be known as Chappaquiddick.On the night of July 18 1969, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge and into a pond on Chappaquiddick Island, on Martha’s Vineyard. Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28-year-old worker with Robert Kennedy’s campaign, was found dead in the submerged car’s back seat 10 hours later.Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended sentence and a year’s probation. A judge eventually determined there was ‘probable cause to believe that Kennedy operated his motor vehicle negligently … and that such operation appears to have contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne’.He sought the White House more than a decade later, lost the Democratic nomination to President Jimmy Carter, and bowed out with a stirring valedictory that echoed across the decades: ‘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.’Kennedy was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour in May 2008 and underwent surgery and a gruelling regimen of radiation and chemotherapy.He was away from the Senate for much of this year.Kennedy’s death came less than two weeks after that of his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver on August 11. Kennedy was not present for the funeral, an indication of the precariousness of his own health. Of nine children born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy, only one – Jean Kennedy Smith, survives.In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Kennedy’s son Patrick Kennedy, who represents Rhode Island in Congress, said his father had defied the predictions of doctors by surviving more than a year with his fight against brain cancer.Kennedy arrived at his place in the Senate after a string of family tragedies. He was the only one of the four Kennedy brothers to die of natural causes.Kennedy’s eldest brother, Joseph, was killed in a plane crash in World War II. President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Senator Robert F Kennedy was gunned down in Los Angeles as he campaigned for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.Years later, in 1999, John F Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash at age 38. His wife died with him.It fell to Ted Kennedy to deliver the eulogies, to comfort his brothers’ widows, to mentor fatherless nieces and nephews. It was Ted Kennedy who walked JFK’s daughter, Caroline, down the aisle at her wedding.Politically, his concession speech at the Democratic convention in 1980 turned out to be a defining moment. At 48, he seemed liberated from the towering expectations and high hopes invested in him after the death of his brothers, and he plunged into his work in the Senate. In his later years, after he had divorced and remarried, he came to be regarded as a statesman on Capitol Hill, with a growing reputation as an effective, hardworking lawmaker.His legislative achievements included bills to provide health insurance for children of the working poor, the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, Meals on Wheels for the elderly, abortion clinic access, family leave, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.He was also a key negotiator on legislation creating a Medicare prescription drug benefit for senior citizens, was a driving force for peace in Ireland and a persistent critic of the war in Iraq.Born in 1932, the youngest of Joseph and Rose Kennedy’s nine children, Edward Moore Kennedy was part of a family bristling with political ambition, beginning with maternal grandfather John F ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, a congressman and mayor of Boston.Round-cheeked Teddy was thrown out of Harvard in 1951 for cheating, after arranging for a classmate to take a freshman Spanish exam for him. He eventually returned, earning his degree in 1956.He went on to the University of Virginia Law School, and in 1962, while his brother John was president, announced plans to run for the Senate seat JFK had vacated in 1960.Devastated by his brothers’ assassinations and injured in a 1964 plane crash that left him with back pain that would plague him for decades, Kennedy temporarily withdrew from public life in 1968. But he re-emerged in 1969 to be elected majority whip of the Senate.- Nampa-AP* See also page 13

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