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WHAT MORE can be said about an icon such as the late Sen. Edward Kennedy?
What more could be written about a man who was so bold that he endorsed Sen. Barack Obama back when most Democratic stalwarts, including our own mayor and governor, were still supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton?
I could have moved on to some other newsworthy topic. But as a black woman and the daughter of two public-school teachers who could school me at a moment's notice on Kennedy's legacy in terms of education and civil rights, I had to chime in because the Kennedy brothers were heroes to us.
Our Nana, the elderly neighborhood woman who babysat for my siblings and me, had two velvet portraits on her walls. One was of Jesus Christ and the other of the late John F. Kennedy. I didn't know her to read the newspaper much or to follow politics all that closely. But as far as she was concerned, the Kennedys could do no wrong - not brother John, Robert or even prodigal son Edward. Because of their collective efforts on behalf of civil rights and voting rights, they occupied a special place on the same level as the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Now that he's dead, Edward Kennedy's legacy will be this as well as his lifetime of public service - passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Fair Housing Act of 1968; Americans with Disabilities Act; President Bush's No Child Left Behind; 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act and numerous other social programs. He was a man who lived much of his life by the Kennedy family creed: from those to whom much is given, much is expected.
As he is laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, I'm also hoping that another lasting takeaway message is that of redemption and that how, even after the worst missteps, people can and do change. Edward Kennedy showed us that. He never completely recovered from that fatal 1969 accident on Chappaquiddick Island, in which Mary Jo Kopechne was left to die in the car he had been driving. Even after admitting that his actions had been "indefensible," that horrific accident in some ways foreshadowed the end of the senator's chance of ever becoming president and also became somewhat of a political albatross. Over the years, his reputation for drinking and womanizing worsened.
Luckily, Kennedy lived long enough to outgrow his bad-boy image. Most likely the steadying influence of his 1992 marriage to Victoria Reggie helped sober him up, as did time. During the final decades of his life, Edward Kennedy proved himself time and again, earning the appellation "the lion of the Senate."
He proved that even after the most egregious acts, people can bounce back, turn their lives around and make considerable contributions. As Vice President Joseph Biden pointed out yesterday, it wasn't all about him. His brother John once said, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."
From the looks of things, Edward Kennedy did that countless times over.
Send e-mail to heyjen@phillynews.com. My blog:
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