"Ted Kennedy was the father who looked after not only his own three children, but John's and Bobby's as well," Obama said. "He took them camping and taught them to sail. He laughed and danced with them at birthdays and weddings; cried and mourned with them through hardship and tragedy."
The passing of Ted Kennedy is a natural event in the circle of life and yet it was against the most superstitious of odds that he lived, as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote, to comb grey hair. As a man who faced extreme tragedies through the loss of loved ones (both his senior and junior), the baby brother of a Boston-bred clan, Teddy took on more and more legacies with each passing kin. It was with their spirits that he tenaciously embodied the fight for justice and equality. He also became the paternal pillar for the next generation of ambitious Kennedys, acting as a father, uncle, grandfather, and mentor for the entire Kennedy brood. And that's what made him such an approachable guy. It's hard to carry on a family name, and yet he made it all the way to endorse the first African American president, earning him cool points with a generation only slightly familiar with the Kennedy legacy, as well as maintaining the significance of the clan. His lionlike bravado in the Senate, mixed with his family-orientated upbringing and human fallacies, made him a regular people's champ. Even when some of those people may not have agreed with the causes he championed.
R.I.P. Mr. Kennedy. I hope you and your brothers are finally chillin' together again.
Photo credit: ABC News
Quote credit: NPR
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