Ted Kennedy: A Good and Decent Servant

When Ted Kennedy gave the eulogy at his brother Bobby's funeral, he closed with these words:

"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 much as Ted claimed his brother Bobby would not wish to be idolized in death, one can assume Ted would also refuse deification and an endless heaping of praise, and with his flaws, it would be wrong to cage his life within the trappings of sainthood. Crowning the man in death would hide the tragic nature of his life and rob him of his weathered essence. Ships are meant to pass over the ocean, not to be encaged by bottles, and Ted Kennedy's story is one of a man who battled with the sea, day after day, year after year, because of Poseidon's wrath and his own flaws.

That being said, it was always difficult to pinpoint exactly what motivated the youngest of the Kennedy siblings to enter and remain in the political spotlight. When he first ran for the Senate, the maneuver appeared to be somewhat carried out because he didn't know what else to do as a Kennedy other than enter the political arena, but in the wake of his brothers' deaths, he held onto the family's political legacy with the desperation of a soldier not letting his army's flag touch the ground; he became a sure and steady leader, glistening with promise, like champagne on the bow of a ship. But the bubbly soon spilled into the murky waters of the Chappaquiddick, causing his efforts in the public arena to take on an air of rugged repentance. In his last years, time finally rewarded a man who always seemed cast in shadows, storms, and lightning with a legacy of respect and honor.

In the eyes of many, he became the last moor, holding the ship of liberalism close to these shores, and by liberal, I mean a man "who saw wrong and tried to fight it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." Whether one agreed with his politics or all aspects of his personal life, Ted Kennedy wanted the best for his country and spent fifty years in the service of an American Dream, touched deeply by his own humanity. Teddy, your brothers would be proud.