Remembering the Lion of the Senate

The first time I ever saw Ted Kennedy in person I was completely shocked.

I had been asked to come over to the Senate to interview for the position of Press Secretary to the U.S. Senator from Maryland, J. Glenn Beall, Jr. His Administrative Assistant and I were walking from the Old Senate Office Building over to the Senate floor by way of the Senate lawn. And there was Ted Kennedy, sitting on a blanket, surrounded by what I assumed was his staff, picnicking on the Capitol grounds. Right there, right out in the open. “My God,” I thought, “Don’t you know what happened to your brothers. You just sit out in public like this?” He had a nonchalance about him that was bold. And reassuring in a sense. In those days, before all of the electronic security and traffic blocks were put into place, Americans really did have first hand access to their leaders. The etching of Ted Kennedy munching on a chicken leg on the Senate lawn remains vivid in memory. Maybe an appropriate symbol of those times.

I took the job. (Who wouldn’t have?) My boss was on the Health subcommittee of the Labor and Public Welfare committee. His magnum opus was the Health Manpower Act, a bill that paid for the education of doctors if they agreed, in return, to serve for a few years in medically underserved areas such as Native American reservations and rural poor areas. He was very proud of that bill and it would not have happened (since we were in the minority) had it not been for Senator Kennedy’s cooperation and endorsement. It was an example of both sides of the aisle working to solve a problem in the public interest.

While we were putting that bill together, both staffs and senators had a luncheon meeting in the Senate Dining Room. For some reason, I wound up at that luncheon (I was the press guy, not a legislative aide and can’t remember why I would have been there unless I was asked to fill an empty chair or something like that). There I was, the Italian kid from Pittsburgh, dining with Senators. I was fascinated by Kennedy, of course. At one point he looked at me and I saw a great twinkle come into those dancing Irish eyes. I couldn’t figure out what had amused him until I realized that I was patting my mouth with my neck tie which I’d mistaken for my napkin. I’m sure the Senator encountered at least one dope a day, I was his idiot du jour on that occasion. I’ve never forgotten my embarrassment.

A few years later I was working at NBC in Washington when the Senator made his run for the Presidency. It was his interview in our studios with Roger Mudd that put the kibosh on those Presidential ambitions. I was standing in the back of the studio watching that interview as it took place. (One of the really interesting things about being a journalist is that you do get stand in the shadows and watch history being made). He still couldn’t answer questions about Chappaquiddick. His fumbling and meandering muttering to Mudd cost him the nomination.

He was a flawed man in many ways. For years there had been rumors of his philandering, his drinking, his lack of personal restraint. But, in the end, I believe he served his state and his country well. He never waivered from his fundamental beliefs, expressed them eloquently, and defended his turf intelligently. His staff was excellent, one of the best on the Hill, and the quantity and quality of his legislative initiatives speak for themselves.

The last time I saw him he was old, ailing. For many years he had been the symbol of youth in the Senate, now he was the symbol of age and experience. And his age and infirmity reminded me of my own aging. An era passing, and me with it. I miss the days when America’s lions could dine on the Senate lawn. And when young press secretaries could embarrass themselves in the Senate Dining Room.