Remembering Ted Kennedy

I can still remember driving from Boston to Cape Cod for a weekend retreat 40 summers ago and hearing first the news on the radio about men landing on the moon, and then about Ted Kennedy's accident on Chappaquiddick Island.

I had been in the news biz only a few weeks, but had figured out even then that Ted was lucky that something else had happened to take the focus off of what looked like his atrocious behavior that might have cost a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, her life. He swam out of the submerged car which he had driven off a bridge while she drowned. Yet the senator's actions weren't even the lead story in the next day's newspapers thanks to Neil Armstrong et al.

One could argue that Kennedy, who died from brain cancer this week, paid dearly for his mistakes, since they likely cost him the presidency. But a woman died, he failed to report the accident to the police until hours had elapsed (and his blood-alcohol content had probably subsided). Iif his name wasn't Kennedy he might well have have spent some time behind bars.

I interviewed Kennedy a little over a year later, when he was running for re-election to the Senate and I was a fresh-faced reporter at the Waltham (Mass) News Tribune. Have to admit I didn't have the nerve to ask him any Chappaquiddick questions. My editor said it had been rehashed enough. We stuck to Vietnam and the economy and some recollections of his martyred brothers.

The next time I remember paying close attention in person to what he said was at the 1984 Democratic convention, when he delivered a rousing speech, the catchline of which was "except Ronald Reagan,'' to emphasize how out of touch he thought the president was (not that out of touch. He was overwhelmingly re-elected three months later.) Kennedy spoke the same night that Mario Cuomo gave his masterful "shining city on a hill'' keynote, which had all of us New York reporters dreaming about going around the country on Air Force One. That was before Cuomo turned out to be a 20th Century version of Hamlet.

I remember thinking that night how Kennedy had developed as a speaker and as a politician.

Today's stories of Kennedy's death today emphasized how the realization that Chappaquiddick blocked him from the presidency made him focus on his job in the Senate, where he had a truly distinguished career.

Funny what it takes sometimes for politicians to stop worrying about climbing the ladder and concentrate on what they were elected to do.

The stories also talked about his desire to have a "good ending,'' to make his last days alive as productive and meaningful as possible. That's an admirable trait in anyone.