I was born in Massachusetts. The Kennedy name and mystique was part of our household growing up. It reached a pinnacle for me in February 2006, that I got to meet and interview Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy in person when I was city editor of the Taunton Daily Gazette, a small newspaper halfway between Providence and Boston. So Kennedy's death today comes as no surprise at the age of 77, considering his failing health, but is nonetheless nostalgic and sad.
Kennedy is one of the orginal liberal giants of the last five decades. Before there was a Nancy Pelosi or a Barney Frank or a Barack Obama, there was "the" Ted Kennedy.
He came from a rich Irish Catholic family in one of the most powerful enclaves of the industrial northeast. Edward Kennedy embraced the meaning of liberal. His was the idea of government helping the poor, the downtrodden. Of course, over the last few decades, the liberal term has become bastardized dirty. I consider myself a hard-core Democrat, but not a liberal. Certainly not with the liberal politics of today.
That doesn't mean that Kennedy was out of step. Not in his hey day. Give him his due. Just think: He challenged incumbent Jimmy Carter all the way to the Democratic National Convention. Perhaps he would have fared better than Carter did against Ronald Reagan who won by 8 million votes and 440 electoral votes.
Kennedy made a stop in Taunton and met with us for about an hour. I had met many famous people before him: Reagan, Carter, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, to name a few politicians you might have heard of, and after listening to him talk about the usual stuff, I got a few minutes by myself with him.
Before I could ask him much, he wanted to know about me, having heard that I was a Floridian. I explained that yes, I lived in Florida and worked in Massachusetts. That I had been doing that since April of 2005, flying back and forth every weekend from Providence to Orlando. He was amazed that I could do this and have so much energy and enthusiasm. I did this for six more months for a total of nearly two years before returning back to Florida full time.
Then it was my turn to ask him a question I hadn't heard too many others inquire and that was how he dealt with the assassinations of both his older brothers. He looked me in the eye and paused, before saying it was OK that I asked the question. Then he explained that away from the public glare, those events still haunted him within, even though each day, each month, each year and each decade, the pain lessened somewhat. "You don't forget," he said. "You just try and live your life.You still have the memories and the love."
Ted Kennedy lived his life that way and we won't forget. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States lost a good man -- the last of the Kennedy brothers and one great liberal politician.