By Darlene VannEDGEWATER, Fla. -- One of the negative things about getting older besides the breaking down of body parts, the aches and pains from places you didn’t know could hurt and so forth is the dying off of everyone you grew up watching in movies or on television, saw in politics, etc.
Since I was old enough to know there was such a thing as politics or at least since I was aware I could have a say in things happening to my country there has been a Kennedy in office. I was in senior year of high school in the middle of giving a speech when JFK was assasinated and spent days, as did all Americans, glued to my black and white television watching him lie in state, watching John John salute the cortege and weeping with the world over the death of a world leader.
Although he was a womanizer, which I did not approve of, I liked the man’s politics.
Then we went on to watch Bobby die, right after winning the California Democratic primary and a potential presidential bid, and Martin Luther King Jr. trying to end segregationist policies through non-violent protests, only to be cut down by an assassin's bullet while standing on a Memphis hotel balcony. But still we had Ted Kennedy persevering for nearly four decades since.
Of late, so many of the movie and television stars of the past have left us. I have been feeling like the world I grew up in had changed beyond my comprehension and these deaths brought that point to fruition. I already knew the world was not the safe mostly happy place I grew up assuming it would always be.
Losing Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, and so many others cemented that fact. Watching Jerry Lewis and Ed McMahon at the annual telethons grow old and ill was devastating to me because it meant I couldn’t deny any longer that I myself was rushing toward old age.
I can’t say I was a backer of Ted Kennedy or that I approved of all he did, but I will say I admired his grace through adversity and how he supported his family through all their travails. He was always there for John and Bobby’s kids. He represented his constituents in Massachusetts, made sure his mother and sisters were cared for, and I think in his later years, he made up for some of his glaring errors as a young man. He did not have an easy life, even with all the Kennedy fortune.
YouTube download / AP video / Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate and haunted bearer of the Camelot torch after two of his brothers fell to assassins' bullets, has died at his home in Hyannis Port after battling a brain tumor. He was 77 (Aug. 26).I can’t say I was a backer of Ted Kennedy or that I approved of all he did, but I will say I admired his grace through adversity and how he supported his family through all their travails. He was always there for John and Bobby’s kids. He represented his constituents in Massachusetts, made sure his mother and sisters were cared for, and I think in his later years, he made up for some of his glaring errors as a young man. He did not have an easy life, even with all the Kennedy fortune.
Money does not buy happiness and that family seemed to have more than their share of tragedies to bear. Senator Kennedy often crossed party lines for a cause he felt strongly about and was friends to Democrats and Republicans alike.
Ted Knnedy did his best for his country and what more can anyone ask of any politician or citizen?