Kennedy's journey marked by tragedy, triumph

WASHINGTON — Sen. Edward Kennedy was a hero to liberals, a foil to conservatives, a legislator with few peers, and, above all, heir to a legacy.

Sen. Kennedy, who died Tuesday at 77 in Hyannis Port, Mass., after battling brain cancer for more than a year, was a skilled lawmaker who crafted scores of statutes, including those that helped how children learn, how doctors treat the sick and how workers are paid and protected.

Alone of the Kennedy men of his generation, "Ted" lived to "comb grey hair," as Irish poet William Butler Yeats had it. It was a blessing and a curse and assured that his defeats, foibles and many triumphs played out in public at greater length than his brothers ever experienced.

His brother John was president when he was assassinated in 1963 a few days before Thanksgiving; Robert fell to a gunman in midcampaign five years later. Another older brother, Joseph Jr., was killed piloting a plane in World War II.

Sen. Kennedy was the youngest child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, last in line behind brothers groomed for the presidency. He lacked the polished charm of his brother John, who won the presidency in 1960, or the grit and fire of brother Robert, who pursued the White House in 1968.

In spring 1964, months after his brother's assassination, the Kennedy jinx appeared to have struck again when a plane carrying the senator crashed in western Massachusetts. He suffered two broken vertebrae but survived.

He virtually inherited John's Senate seat upon turning 30 in 1962, and he rose rapidly. His first Senate speech announced his support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and he was instrumental in pushing an overhaul of immigration law through the chamber a year later.

When Robert was assassinated, Sen. Kennedy became heir to the family legacy. In January 1969, he upset veteran Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana to become majority whip, the Senate's second-ranking position.

The close vote was a statement by the party's liberal wing that Sen. Kennedy, who had opposed the Vietnam War since 1967, was its undisputed leader and the front-runner to challenge Richard Nixon for the presidency in 1972.

That scenario was shattered late July 18, 1969, when the car he was driving sailed off a bridge and sank in a pond on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. Former Robert Kennedy campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, died. Sen. Kennedy did not report the incident for nine hours, and pleaded guilty six days later to leaving the scene. He got a two-month suspended sentence, the minimum penalty.

In an era when the "silent majority" was holding "decency rallies" protesting the erosion of moral values in American life, Sen. Kennedy was a vivid symbol to many of all that had gone wrong.

His first brush with controversy had come at Harvard, when he arranged for a fellow undergraduate to take an exam for him. He was caught and banished, and he enlisted in the Army for two years before returning to complete his degree. He went on to the University of Virginia Law School. While giving a speech at Manhattanville College in New York, he met Joan Bennett, whom he married. They divorced in 1982.

Despite Chappaquiddick, Sen. Kennedy quietly was building a reputation as someone who made the system work, negotiating, often successfully, with the Nixon administration on key domestic initiatives.

"He was getting things done. Think of Kennedy's initiatives: more spending on health and education, creating the Environmental Protection Agency, even wage and price controls. Nixon supported them," recalled Alvin Felzenberg, a presidential historian.

When Jimmy Carter's presidency began to stumble in the late 1970s, many party leaders turned to Sen. Kennedy. That period marked one of the few times the senator was publicly critical of a fellow Democrat. His contempt for Carter had been apparent for years. Carter, Sen. Kennedy thought, had not been true to many ideals the party had fought for: health-insurance reform, funding for poverty programs and so on.

As Sen. Kennedy prepared to declare his candidacy on Nov. 7, 1979, at Boston's Faneuil Hall, two events cast a shadow.

On Nov. 4, CBS aired a documentary on him by reporter Roger Mudd. He asked Sen. Kennedy about his shaky marriage, Chappaquiddick, and most memorably why he wanted to be president. Sen. Kennedy's vague, rambling answer haunted him throughout the campaign.

Iranian militants seized more than 60 U.S. hostages the same day. Carter's domestic problems suddenly faded in the public mind, and Americans rallied behind their president.

Carter and Sen. Kennedy battled right up to the August convention, never healing the schism they represented in their party. Sen. Kennedy's convention speech conceding defeat but not failure is regarded as a classic.

"For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end," he told the audience. "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."

His world changed after the 1980 election. Ronald Reagan, the symbol of so much of what Sen. Kennedy had fought throughout his career, became president. Republicans controlled the Senate for the first time in his tenure, and his liberal politics seemed discredited.

Still, the Senate was a better fit than the Oval Office for Sen. Kennedy's ambitions and personality. "He became comfortable with the idea his role in life was to be the most effective legislator he could be," longtime aide Jim Manley said.

The more effective Sen. Kennedy became, the more conservatives — and comedians — kept stinging him.

"Conservatives have raised more money in direct mail from criticizing Ted Kennedy than anyone, until the Clintons came along," said Felzenberg, the historian.

Sen. Kennedy was at the forefront of his era's major fights. He led the 1985 effort to pressure South Africa to end apartheid and the 1987 fight to stop confirmation of Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, branding him a "right-wing extremist."

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, children could not be taught about evolution," he said at the time.

He was a leading critic of the Iraq war and the plan to create military tribunals to try suspected terrorists, evoking the lofty Kennedy style in September 2002, when President George W. Bush and many Democrats were saying a war with Iraq was the patriotic thing to do.

An early and crucial supporter of Barack Obama's candidacy, the ailing senator spoke eloquently at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last August: "So many of you have been with me in the happiest days and the hardest days. Together we have known success and seen setbacks, victory and defeat. But we have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and a newer world."

While criticizing the Bush administration, Sen. Kennedy also worked with it. In 2001 he helped Bush pass the No Child Left Behind Act, which set tough standards for public schools to follow in return for federal help.

But he also was quick to note that Bush refused to fund the initiative. "Sadly," Sen. Kennedy said in 2007, "President Bush has yet to learn his lesson on leaving no child behind."

In 2008, he won approval of, and praised Bush for signing, legislation giving students easier access to college loans. At the same time, he ripped into Bush for his management of the economy.

"The president continues to bail out Wall Street and help the oil industry reap even larger profits, while blocking needed relief for the American people," the senator said.

He made that statement in late April. On May 17, he was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital after a seizure and was found to have a malignant brain tumor.

Compiled from McClatchy Newspapers, The Associated Press and Dallas Morning News