Saket Vora

The nation is mourning over the loss of Senator Ted Kennedy, and I too feel greatly saddened by his passing. As I read about his life in the papers and on the television, and watch the speeches he made to his Senate colleagues and to the nation as a whole, I find my eyes welling with tears. We have a lost a great statesman, whose passing marks the end of an era.

I do not know Senator Kennedy well. I grew up in Texas and North Carolina, well outside the primary places of his service. Having become ‘politically aware’ only for the past decade, I never witnessed the many legislative endeavors he championed since joining the senate as a thirty year old in 1962. But anywhere I look, one cannot avoid the tremendous impact of his public service to a country for which two of his brothers gave their lives. Civil rights, the anti-apartheid movement, Americans with disabilities, AIDS and cancer research, children’s health insurance, mental health, minimum wage, public service, and many more — all enjoyed Senator Kennedy’s leadership and energy.

A month ago I wrote a post about a moving moment regarding Marquis de Lafayette, in which General Pershing led his troops to Lafayette’s grave in Paris to pay their respects. Lafayette was buried under soil from Bunker Hill, a poignant gesture to the Frenchman’s service and dedication to our young republic. I read today a similarly poignant moment from the life of Senator Kennedy, who was no stranger to grief.

“On the morning of the day before the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, Senator Ted Kennedy called the White House to inquire if it was appropriate to bring to the burial some earth from Arlington National Cemetery. The answer was essentially a shrug: Who knows? Unadvised, the senator carried a shopping bag onto the plane, filled with earth he had himself dug the afternoon before from the graves of his two murdered brothers. And at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, after waiting for the crowd and the cameras to disperse, he dropped to his hands and knees, and gently placed that earth on the grave of the murdered prime minister.

What I admire most about Kennedy was his tireless commitment  to advance the causes dear to him. He wore the label of liberal proudly on his sleeve — standing out among his timid, often feckless Democratic colleagues with passionate and fiery speeches that would shame  the opposition by calling upon our common morality and justice. One does not earn the title “Lion of the Senate” by middling around. My eyes fill with tears because I wonder if my generation will have a champion in the Senate like Ted Kennedy. A champion unafraid to speak boldly and strongly, who demands that our country strive ever higher in our ideals and to defend the poor and sick who so often can be heard as mere whispers in the marble halls of Washington. Sadly, I fear this is the end of an era.

As many point out, Ted Kennedy wasn’t a perfect man. He made mistakes in his life, some minor and some major, and endured setbacks that would cause most other men to give up and throw in the towel. For all of his shortcomings, Ted Kennedy chose to continue serving and striving for what he believed in, each and every day until cancer claimed his life. He is a man whose deeds have brought about so much more good than bad, and what more can any of us ask of a person? To conclude, I leave the words of Theodore Roosevelt – another American Lion.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

We’ll miss you Ted.