The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy (6 page)

This, says Ted Kennedy, was something he had yearned all his life to hear. And it took a new family member, his second wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, to see it.

Like my brothers before me, I pick up the fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, to excellence, and to courage that distinguished their lives.

—Speech given before the start of the
1968 Democratic Convention

I think about my brothers every day.

—Interview with Reuters, 2006

We loved him [Robert Kennedy] as a brother, and as a father, and as a son. From his parents, and from his older brothers and sisters—Joe and Kathleen and Jack—he received an inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side.

Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.

—Eulogy for Robert Kennedy,
St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York,
June 8, 1968

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. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us, and what he wished for others, will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

—Eulogy for Robert Kennedy,
St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York,,
June 8, 1968

I often think of what she [Jackie] said about Jack in December after he died: “They made him a legend, when he would have preferred to be a man.” Jackie would have preferred to be just herself, but the world insisted that she be a legend too.

—Eulogy for his sister-in-law,
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, May 23, 1994

John [Kennedy, Jr.] was a serious man who brightened our lives with his smile and his grace. He was a son of privilege who founded a program called Reaching Up to train better caregivers for the mentally disabled. He joined Wall Street executives on the Robin Hood Foundation to help the city's impoverished children. And he did it all so quietly, without ever calling attention to himself. John was one of Jackie's two miracles. He was still becoming the person he would be, and doing it by the beat of his own drummer. He had only just begun. There was in him a great promise of things to come.

The Irish Ambassador recited a poem to John's father and mother soon after John was born. I can hear it again now, at this different and difficult moment:

“We wish to the new child
A heart that can be beguiled
By a flower that the wind lifts as it passes.
If the storms break for him
May the trees shake for him
Their blossoms down.
In the night that he is troubled
May a friend wake for him
So that his time be doubled,
And at the end of all loving and love
May the Man above
Give him a crown.”

—Eulogy for his nephew,
John F. Kennedy, Jr.,
July 1999

Rose [his mother] is the finest teacher we ever had. She made our home a university that surpassed any formal classroom in the exciting quest for knowledge. With her gentle games and questions, she could bring the farthest reaches of the university to our dinner table, or transform the daily headlines into new and exciting adventures in understanding.

—Speech at Georgetown University,
October 1, 1977

The thing about being a Kennedy is that you come to know that there's a time for the Kennedys. And it's hard to know when that time is, or if it will ever come again.

—Quoted in
Time
magazine, January 10, 1969

John Kennedy referred to the age in which we live—an age when history moves with the tramp of earthquake feet, an age when a handful of men and nations have the power literally to devastate mankind. But he did not speak in despair or with a sense of hopelessness.

—Speech, Trinity College Historical Society
Bicentennial, Dublin, Ireland,
March 3, 1970

From my vantage point as the youngest of the nine Kennedy children, my family did not so much live in the world as comprise the world. Though I have long since outgrown that simplistic view, I have never questioned its emotional truth. We depended on one another. We savored food and music and laughter with one another. We learned from and taught one another. We worshipped one another. We loved one another. We were mutually loyal, even as we were mutually competitive, with an intensity that owed more to joy than to an urge for domination. These values flowed into us on the energies of Joseph and Rose Kennedy.

—True Compass: A Memoir,
2009

From the windows of my office in Boston … I can see the Golden Stairs from Boston Harbor where all eight of my great-grandparents set foot on this great land for the first time. That immigrant spirit of limitless possibility animates America even today.

—From a Senate speech in 2007,
quoted by reporter Kathy Kiely in
USA Today,
August 26, 2009

A VOICE FOR CHILDREN

I
T'S EASY ENOUGH TO POINT OUT HOW MUCH
S
ENATOR
Kennedy has done for children. Just take it from Reg Weaver, former president of the National Education Association: “Every major education law passed since the 1960s has borne Kennedy's imprint, from Head Start to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He has proven himself, time and again, to be a fighter for children.” (Weaver was quoted on Air America's website.)

Just count up the seven million formerly uninsured children now covered by health insurance through the S-CHIP program that came into being in 1997 due to Kennedy's authorship of the State Children's Health Insurance Program legislation and was expanded in 2009.

Look at the accolades bestowed on him by one of the oldest and most respected children's health organizations: In 2001 the March of Dimes Foundation gave him its top honor, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Award, for his advocacy of children's health issues, and then in 2003 and again in 2007 gave him its Public Affairs Leadership Award as the outstanding member of Congress in the field of maternal and child health.

There's much more of the same, of course. It would have been easy for him at any point to say to himself that he'd done as much as he could for children, and slow down, and pass the baton. But that wasn't his way. Up until his final weeks he was hard at work on new legislation, pushing for greater expansion of several of the children's programs that he had helped to bring into being, to make sure that even more kids would be served.

President Obama has promised to push for passage of those bills now that his friend Ted Kennedy is no longer here to do so.

Our nation's greatest resource is its children. We must do all we can to ensure that they reach their full potential. Improving school readiness is an essential first step.

—Introduction to the Early Learning Trust Fund,
March 25, 1999

Education shouldn't have to be an obstacle course. Imagine how much more you could accomplish without the albatross of overcrowded and outdated facilities.

—Speech at Edward Everett Elementary School,
Dorchester, MA, March 29, 1999

The greatest tribute of all to Dr. Seuss is a child who learns to read. He'd be very impressed by the 3rd graders here at Squantum. What a wonderful slogan you have—“Drop Everything and Read” for at least 15 minutes a day. Every child in America should do that. Dr. Seuss would love it—and so would the whole country.

—Statement on “Read Across America,”
March 1, 1999

It is the young who have often been the first to speak and act against injustice or corruption and tyranny, wherever it is found. More than any other group in the population, it is the young who refuse to allow a difficulty or a challenge to become an excuse to fail to meet it. We need their ideas and ideals, the spirit and dedication of young Americans who are willing to hold a mirror to society and probe the sores that others would ignore.

—Speech, February 9, 1976

There are many who criticize youth for not being more obedient to our traditions. What they fail to understand is that the questions of our youth are disturbing because they are questions we ourselves find hard to answer. They are questions we ourselves refuse to face.

—Speech to the National Council
for Social Studies, April 11, 1970

If there are some children in this land—whether because they are black or because they were born on a reservation or because they are poor—if there are some children who do not have an equal opportunity for a quality education, then there are some children who are not free.

—Speech, April 25, 1977

In the generation of our fathers and grandfathers, schools were expected to produce only a few leaders. Their principal output was unskilled workers. During that era, managers and professionals were all too often members of an elite class. The fantastically rapid development of modern technology has changed all that. The call of new opportunity has gone out to millions of American youth, and our education system must respond.

—Speech at the Conference of the
National Council for Social Studies,
April 11, 1970

Every generation has its own mission in the life of the nation. Your generation may well be the peace generation, because the issue of nuclear war or peace will in all likelihood be settled by you.

—Address at the Brown University
Commencement Forum, June 4, 1983

Good schools and good teachers are every bit as important to the future strength of our country as a strong defense.

—Comments at a committee hearing,
September 10, 2002

There has been a steady drumbeat of loud calls for cutting welfare benefits by some in this Congress. But there has been a deafening silence on the need for child care. It is time to break the silence and put together a realistic reform—reform based not on rhetoric but on results.

—Statement on welfare reform,
March 1, 1995

We must invest more in early education and healthy development for the youngest children, so that entering school ready to learn is no longer just a hollow mantra but a genuine reality. … If we fail to meet a child's development needs starting at birth, we fail not only the child, but our country and our future as well.

—Address at the National Press Club,
Washington, DC, January 12, 2005

We all agree that no child should be left behind—regardless of background, race, or gender, or whether a child is homeless, a child of a migrant worker, or an immigrant. Every child has the right to a high-quality education and every qualified student should be able to afford to go to college. But we cannot call for reform, then refuse to pay the bill. Parents and children deserve a guarantee, not a federal IOU.

—Statement on the Bush education budget,
March 29, 2001

For our many young people today who have grown up in a drug culture and are experimenting with drugs, the emphasis should be on prevention and rehabilitation, not simply throwing them in jail. We should not automatically burden these youngsters with the albatross of a criminal felony to wear for the rest of their lives.

—Statement, October 7, 1970

America does more today to regulate the safety of toy guns than real guns—and it is a national disgrace. When we listen to what unnecessary and preventable gun violence has done to the victims here today, we know that action is urgently needed. Practical steps can clearly be taken to protect children more effectively from guns, and to achieve greater responsibility by parents, gun manufacturers, and gun dealers. This legislation calls for such steps—and it deserves to be enacted this year by Congress.

—Introduction to legislation on
Children's Gun Violence
on the first anniversary of the
Jonesboro School Shooting,
March 24, 1999

It is wrong—dead wrong—to grant oversized tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, but fail to invest more in our nation's public schools. What we need is not just a tax cut, but an economic plan that responds to today's shaky economy by helping all Americans get a good education and good jobs. If we expect our children to succeed in the 21st century economy, we must do better. If we expect our schools to meet the challenges of a modern education for all of our children, we must do more.

—Press conference on the Bush education budget,
March 20, 2001

Today, by the time they enter school, the average child will have watched 4,000 hours of television. That is roughly the equivalent of four years of school. For far too many youngsters, this is wasted time—time consuming “empty calories” for the brain. Instead, that time could be spent reading, writing, and learning. Through Ready to Learn television programming, children can obtain substantial educational benefits that turn TV time into learning time.