Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009

Sen. Ted. Kennedy has passed away at his home in Hyannis Port, MA.

He didn’t live to see universal health care enacted. He didn’t achieve his hereditary goal of the presidency. He became by dint of long service a leader of the U.S. Senate, perhaps the most admired and respected U.S. Senator, an unwavering voice (loud, too) for invisible Americans, a conscience for U.S. politics.

He carried the torch and handed it forward. He may have been the king-maker for the current American president. Ted Kennedy was the lion of the Democratic Party and of the Senate. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ted Kennedy was a wealthy American aristocrat who was an untiring advocate for the poor.

“The dream shall never die.”

For other tributes from members of the over-60 generation, see Jon Taplin’s Blog and Single for a Reason. As Mary McGrory, then a reporter for the Evening Star of Washington, said at the time of John F. Kennedy’s death, “We’ll laugh again, but we’ll never be young again.”

— John Hayden