Red Rock On Air

Washington DC  – Representative Jim Oberstar made the following statement today in response to the death of Senator Ted Kennedy:

Public policy debates on the great issues of our time will be diminished without Ted Kennedy’s resounding voice, penetrating thought, clarion call to human values, and his relentless defense of society’s most vulnerable people.

I would say that he is best remembered in his own words in his eulogy of his brother Bobby: “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

Ted Kennedy’s greatness in life is etched in his monumental legislative achievements and in his inimitable personal touch—the right word, the Irish humor, the rugged grasp of your shoulder in friendship.

I was privileged to serve with him on the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees—there, to observe his passionate advocacy for the arts.  I was honored to join with him in a House-Senate conference committee on aviation, opposing legislation harmful to the rights of workers—and in numerous other causes.

During my recovery from hip surgery, there were flowers from Ted and Vicki.  When I called to offer thanks, he said, with a laugh, “I’m glad you got them—but, you know, Vicki does that—I  don’t know one flower from the other.”  Self defacing humor that goes with greatness.

What Walter Mondale said of Hubert Humphrey: “He taught us how to live, and now, he has taught how to die,” can be said as well of Ted Kennedy.

At the Democratic Convention in 1980, Ted Kennedy concluded his quest for the nomination with a signature appeal to the spirit:

“The fight goes on;

Hope still lives;

The dream shall never die.”