Ok now that the hype has lessened, here are my thoughts about Ted Kennedy

Dearest Cherubs:





Of course, I had to let the hype die down. How could I even add to anything? But now, I have bought the book "True Compass" and I have devoured it my dears. I mean, I have completely devoured it. And it has brought me back to my childhood and to my adolescent years and to my adulthood.





So now, here's what I have to say.





I am part of the generation who watched JFK die, RFK die, Martin Luther King die, Malcom X die, George Wallace become paralized from a gun shot, race riots, Kent State and many other appalling indignities and horrid events transpire.





But I did not lose three brothers and two sisters. I did not endure that. I did not endure being responsible for the death of another person. I endured other things, but not those things.





On the other side of that, I was not responsible for championing legislation that made other people's life better. I did not nor was not in the position to make things better for the people of Massachusetts and the people of the USA. I was not in that position. He was.





I have only one small Kennedy story to tell. When I was in highschool, I knew a student who went to school at Concord Academy, the school which Caroline Kennedy attended. There was a small gathering at Concord Academy that year to which I was invited. Caroline was there. Her father had been dead about eight years. She wore her hair very long, I remember. It covered half her face. I was also wearing my hair in the same fashion.





The party was lively and fun but yet, Caroline held herself apart, quietly sitting in a corner. Who could blame her?





I gently approached her. I have no idea what gave me the courage to do that. I touched her hand and said, hey, there's cake, have you had some? She smiled at me and said that she didn't care for cake.





I don't remember much after that. But I tried to speak because it seemed to me that she was an unwilling victim of that senseless act of violence. And no matter how unsettled my adolescent life was (and it was) it could never compare to what she had to go through.





I am sure if I related that incident to her now, she would not remember it. But I remembered it. Because she was a Kennedy.





They were and still are a family that represents things to us, as Americans. And Teddy chose to give up aspirations to power, because I believe that despite what happened on the Cape that night, he could have been president. He could have been President of the United States of America. But he gave it up. Perhaps he felt himself unworthy. But I think not. I think he thought of the children and grand children left to his care. I really think he thought of them and thought that he was the only one left. So he took it on. He took it on without complaint. And he stayed in the United States Senate and voted every year, day after day, month after month, year after year, exactly as I would have asked him to vote.





It is for that I am grateful. It is for that, that his book goes into my library in a place of honor. It is for that public service that I thank him from the bottom of my heart.





A perfect person he was not, and who is? But a great public servant, he was. And dearest cherubs, there are few. So very few.





With love and respect, I submit this post.