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Log inYoungest Brother Enhanced Legacy, and Built His Own
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Youngest Brother Enhanced Legacy, and Built His Own
by Outspoken on Wed May 21, 2008 5:11 pm
Youngest Brother Enhanced Legacy, and Built His Own
By Robert G. Kaiser
Washington Post Staff Writer
For millions of Americans, the announcement that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has brain cancer was at least the fourth chapter of a tragic epic that began on Nov. 22, 1963, with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It continued through the death of his brother Robert in 1968, then of John Jr. in a plane crash in 1999. And yesterday it was the sudden reminder of the mortality of the last surviving son of Joseph P. Kennedy, the patriarch who created this family of strivers and doers.
"I'm having a hard time remembering a day in my 34 years here I've felt this sadly," said Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who has been Kennedy's colleague for most of his 45 years in the Senate. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a colleague since 1979, said: "I am so deeply saddened I have lost the words." Friends and colleagues poured forth encouraging and admiring tributes.
There has never been another American family quite like the Kennedys, who have combined accomplishment, glamour, melodrama, tragedy and mythology in ways almost magical, creating an intense public fascination that has lasted half a century.
John F. Kennedy and wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy began the story by creating an American royal court -- "Camelot," the writer Theodore White called it. Their creation lasted only a thousand days, but this was long enough to hustle Edward Moore Kennedy into the Senate in 1962, when he was just 30 years old. It was the sort of maneuver that infuriated Kennedy-haters -- and since the 1930s, when Joe Kennedy, one of the country's richest men, did not hide his sympathy for Nazi Germany, there had always been Kennedy-haters.
In 1960, when he won the presidency, John Kennedy resigned from the Senate and prevailed on the lame-duck Democratic governor of Massachusetts to appoint Kennedy's former roommate Benjamin A. Smith, to the seat. Smith would keep it warm until 1962, when Edward Kennedy, known to all as Teddy, would reach the constitutionally mandated age of 30 and could run for the Senate.
Kennedy pushed aside Edward McCormack, son of House Speaker John McCormack (D-Mass.) and himself attorney general of Massachusetts, who coveted the Senate seat. McCormack famously quipped that if Edward Moore Kennedy had been Edward Moore, no one would have considered him a serious candidate for Senate.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/20/AR2008052002116.html?wpisrc=newsletter
By Robert G. Kaiser
Washington Post Staff Writer
For millions of Americans, the announcement that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has brain cancer was at least the fourth chapter of a tragic epic that began on Nov. 22, 1963, with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It continued through the death of his brother Robert in 1968, then of John Jr. in a plane crash in 1999. And yesterday it was the sudden reminder of the mortality of the last surviving son of Joseph P. Kennedy, the patriarch who created this family of strivers and doers.
"I'm having a hard time remembering a day in my 34 years here I've felt this sadly," said Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who has been Kennedy's colleague for most of his 45 years in the Senate. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a colleague since 1979, said: "I am so deeply saddened I have lost the words." Friends and colleagues poured forth encouraging and admiring tributes.
There has never been another American family quite like the Kennedys, who have combined accomplishment, glamour, melodrama, tragedy and mythology in ways almost magical, creating an intense public fascination that has lasted half a century.
John F. Kennedy and wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy began the story by creating an American royal court -- "Camelot," the writer Theodore White called it. Their creation lasted only a thousand days, but this was long enough to hustle Edward Moore Kennedy into the Senate in 1962, when he was just 30 years old. It was the sort of maneuver that infuriated Kennedy-haters -- and since the 1930s, when Joe Kennedy, one of the country's richest men, did not hide his sympathy for Nazi Germany, there had always been Kennedy-haters.
In 1960, when he won the presidency, John Kennedy resigned from the Senate and prevailed on the lame-duck Democratic governor of Massachusetts to appoint Kennedy's former roommate Benjamin A. Smith, to the seat. Smith would keep it warm until 1962, when Edward Kennedy, known to all as Teddy, would reach the constitutionally mandated age of 30 and could run for the Senate.
Kennedy pushed aside Edward McCormack, son of House Speaker John McCormack (D-Mass.) and himself attorney general of Massachusetts, who coveted the Senate seat. McCormack famously quipped that if Edward Moore Kennedy had been Edward Moore, no one would have considered him a serious candidate for Senate.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/20/AR2008052002116.html?wpisrc=newsletter
"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."
Plato (427-347 BC)
Plato (427-347 BC)
