A Generation's Loss: Ted Kennedy Laid to Rest Today

 

 

Taps play following three volleys of seven shots each, and a man is laid to rest. Only a man. But in his final resting place ends an era for America of hope, change and dreams born from the Great Depression and the horrors of the Second World War. The burial of one of the champions of change.

 

 

 

 

 

How do you explain to a younger generation the impact of today’s funeral of Senator Edward Kennedy? He represents the end of an age, of our childhood, of my parents’ generation and the sunset of a dream?

 

 

 

Under a purple sunset, Senator Kennedy was buried this evening at Arlington National Cemetery, in a service that I believe reflected a changing nation and the shadow of civility, religion and a sense of history.

 

 

 

 

They believed, were raised to believe, that politics was an honorable profession. When Ted was a boy his father  was the ambassador to England, meeting all of the leaders of Europe, including Adolph Hitler. Joseph Sr. had four sons.

 

First was Joseph, who is forgotten by the media. Joe Jr. was to carry on his father’s wishes to become a senator and then the first Irish and first Catholic president of the United States. But he died a hero during a time modern journalist tend to forget, the Second World War, the same war that John become a hero with PT 109.

 

 

 

It came near the end of an age of discrimination and even hatred for Roman Catholic Christians as “Papist”, “foreigners”, somehow not American. Even in the sixties there were real feelings that the Irish of America were somehow less than human, despite having fought bravely since before the Civil War in the military, supported presidents who may not have liked the Irish personally, built the bridges, railroads, skyscrapers and infastructure that interlinked America together into what we have today.

 

 

 

To Baby Boomers the Kennedys were President John F Kennedy, with two Baby Boomer children playing on the White House Lawn, with the now deceased John John hiding under the Oval Office Desk or interrupting Rose Garden ceremonies. It was Caroline’s pony and the image of an American family.

 

Then Bobby Kennedy gunned down while greeting kitchen workers in Los Angeles after winning the California primary and cinching the Democratic nomination for president in 1968, as he sought to continue his brothers’ dream.

 

 

 

To modern civil rights, education, health reform, voting reform or so called “liberal” or “progressives, the death of Ted Kennedy is the death of their champion, someone who saw to it that the change his brothers worked so hard for continued into the new millennium."

 

 

 

 

The Lion of the Senate, with a roar and a passion in the name of the underdog, the rights of working people, the rights of minorities, the need for guaranteed health care and support of the men and women who make America great.

 

 

 

 

“Welcome the immigrant, oppose war, and fight for civil rights,” seniors, for education, for life. Despite his cancer he fought for health care reform to the end, believing in universal health care as a human right. These elements of his life were brought forth in his final grave site eulogy.

 

 

 

 

To his fellows in Congress, today lays to rest a true statesman, their senior member, a friend, a comrade, an advocate, a man who made it possible to disagree with the civility of a now dying or past age. His friends were of all ideologies, from both sides of the aisle. His service spanned over fifty years of public service.

 

 

 

 

His is also the remembrance of a family plagued by disease, controversy, tragedy and challenges his family faced through almost seven decades of their presence at the forefront of the national stage. In those challenges, shared by an entire generation though the media and our shared life experience, we became a part of the Kennedy family.

 

 

 

 

In a time of three networks and a society were news and public affairs were considered part of every American’s civic responsibility, the affairs of the family, for better or worse, and there was plenty of worse, were a part of our shared public experience. We were impacted by them and our actions as a nation impacted them. While the news media and the general public have become more judgmental, less forgiving, and less thoughtful, he managed to survive and thrive from the melting away of the myth to become what he actually is, a human being who made mistakes, like us all. There is freedom in not being bound by a narrative myth, but in living by your own principles and convictions. The media loves a good story. But that good story is the not the man. He showed how to never give up even when it might seem easier to do. Most of us cannot imagine what it would be like to live under such a harsh light. But he was able to this because of his faith, his family, his friends.

 

 

 

When he passed away on Tuesday night, it came as a shock, despite know that he had a brain cancer as strong and as deadly as the cancer that took my wife’s mother.

 

 

 

 

The Cardinal read a letter from Kennedy that was hand carried by President Obama to the Pope declaring his Catholic beliefs, and his continued commitment to the Lord’s people.

 

 

 

 

The Pope ‘s envoy responded with a beautiful and moving letter invoking the consolation and peace promised by “the risen savior” to all who follow his path.

 

 

 

 

His grandchildren reminded us their tearful final grave site memories that their grandpa was really a kid, with a zest for life and his family. That he always thought of freedom and a world of possibilities. He was like a father to John and Carline, the child of President Kennedy who had to grow up without their own father. He reinforced the Catholic faith and its focus on family.

 

 

 

In an age where politicians are looked upon somewhere below pickpockets and serial killers, it is hard to remember that for generations, politics could be an honorable profession where those who entered it did so or the right reasons. Of course the fiction of  "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" was not all fiction, but there were many champions of what they believed in and for the people they believed themselves to represent, and the Kennedy family were among them.

 

 

 

May God accept his soul into heaven, and help the rest of us to move forward in ways that keep our brothers and sister in our hearts, minds and actions.