Kennedy

Now we find that the seizure over this past weekend was caused by a cancer in Ted Kennedy's brain.

No one knows how fast life turns, so suddenly, better than Ted Kennedy. He has experienced family deaths, excruciating humiliation, personal failures, and peculiar, complicated, often unsettled dark times, along with a bounty of joyful and triumphant moments. And all have been commented on, analyzed, held up to the light and paraded around endlessly in public places.

This isn't about any of those well known incidents. We have heard so many of them anyway already, and I fear we are in for them over and over again the next several days.

This is about my single personal contact with Senator Kennedy. A story I have told privately many times.

It was some 30 years ago and I was developing a national television series showcasing how The U.S. Constitution had a significant impact on individuals, some well known and some not.

Somehow the Senator's office found out, and asked me to testify about the particulars before a committee Kennedy was heading. I flew to Washington and answered questions for no more than 5 minutes. Everyone smiled and nodded. I was glad to have been asked but felt it was certainly not important to anyone (but me) except as an indulgence, a small nod to someone working out of Boston from someone representing Massachusetts.

But as I left the committee room I sensed a rather large presence moving out just behind me, and then a tap on my shoulder.

Ted Kennedy.

"Thanks for coming," he said to me smiling. "I'm glad you are helping celebrate The Constitution. This country has meant so much to me and my family. Given us so much. Let me know if I can help further."

He shook my hand, went back inside.

I thought it was a nice additional gesture, but probably just a little more constituent glad-handing, not likely anything beyond. Enough that I got some publicity for the work, some face time, an ego boost out of it.

About a week later the Senator himself called me to ask whether I needed any assistance getting additional participants for the project. I figured, what the hell, and gave the staff person he put on the phone the names of six individuals I wanted who were not returning my repeated requests.

Within 2 days I heard from them all, and each one eventually appeared.

When I called Senator Kennedy back to thank him, he repeated how glad he was to be able to be of assistance.

"It's just what I do," he said.

TO HIS HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE NO FEAR
Be you still, be you still, trembling heart;
Remember the wisdom out of the old days:
Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,
And the winds that blow through the starry ways,
Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood
Cover over and hide, for he has no part
With the lonely, majestical multitude.

Yeats