Update 1: Grammar correction duly noted and made.
Like many Kossacks, the past several days have been emotional ones for me. But that emotionalism has reached a peak today, and I have spent the past several hours reaching an understanding about this.
And now I realize, that this isn't so much about me - at least not me alone - but, rather, about my father, the Senator, and then me - after all.
This is not a story of acquaintance. My father, I think, met Senator Kennedy once. I never met him (although I heard him booming out the Gettysburg Address while accompanied by the Boston Pops Orchestra while my wife, twins and I were bopping around downtown Hyannis one July about 5 years ago - complete coincidence). This is more about a connection that I now understand in aspiration and behavior, and similarities of generation and belief:
My father was born in October 1932, about 9 months after Ted Kennedy. Their backgrounds were completely different, my father was a child of the burgeoning Jewish middle class in Brooklyn, New York. He had one brother and one sister. His tragedies and difficulties happened in childhood. He had a successful, happy marriage to my mother - his only marriage - until he passed away from cancer in October 1995 - just after his 63rd birthday.
But my Dad was politically right where Senator Kennedy was. He never ran for anything higher than Democratic Committeeman (he was one for several years), and - in fact - was a Kennedy supporter in 1980.
And even though we weren't wealthy growing up (and there were only two of us kids), I can remember my father using that instructive line, "to whom much is given, much is expected." He meant it in terms of using our intellectual gifts, or our healthy lives, to give something back. He did, so I did. My father often talked about Nixon, later Reagan, and other Republicans in a ferociously partisan way. He worried about minorities, the rights of women, about public education, and militaristic foreign policy. He was a dedicated believer in the ideals of the New Deal and of Camelot.
But he hailed the Republicans of the likes of Lowell Weicker and Jacob Javitz. He disagreed with, but enjoyed the writings of, William F. Buckley, and even enjoyed episodes of Firing Line - Buckley's commentary on public television.
He loved people, and they loved him. And he was always happy and ready to help - even though he never had the resources or the finances that Teddy Kennedy did. Maybe it was just a generational similarity, but I think not - I think they were just two peas in a very, very large pod.
And even though we weren't wealthy growing up (and there were only two of us kids), I can remember my father using that instructive line, "to whom much is given, much is expected." He meant it in terms of using our intellectual gifts, or our healthy lives, to give something back. He did, so I did.
I volunteered for my Congressman when I was 13 in his district office (I think I was one of the youngest congressional interns in the country at the time). For two summers I happily and gladly made telexes (no faxes yet), filed papers, and took phone messages and filed cases about people who were, in turn, engaged in serious concerns and - more than occasionally completely off the wall.
As I grew older I volunteered on many campaigns, and wondered (often aloud) about a future in public life for myself. But, the older I got and the closer I got to candidates, the more I saw that the thirst for power and the egos that drove campaigns were more than a little distasteful. It was all about them - and voters and ideas many times fell by the wayside. Where was the excitement and interest in public service that was driving my idealism?
It turned out that my father had discovered the same thing several years earlier - and that had caused him to stop his activism. He just didn't share that with me. It was because he didn't want to dampen my enthusiasm. But that was my Dad.
Which brings me to today. And here I was listening - since Wednesday - to the stories of who Senator Kennedy was. Not as a legislator (I knew all that), or as the patriarch of a famous family, but as a man with a remarkeable belief system and personality similar to my father.
And so I sit here wondering what I could have done since I left the political scene in 1986. What causes could I have impacted? What lives could I have bettered? And - now with a loving wife and four kids of my own - what can I do to be a better father? And how can I help now to make the world a better place?
I know that's what my father wanted, and I've, shamefully, let that slide. And I cannot help thinking that in his passing, through his family, this lesson in civic responsibility is a final gift from Teddy Kennedy, too (regardless of how I got around to it): The idea that for most of us, in some way, much is given, and - therefore - much is expected.
For each of us, it's just a matter of finding out what we can, and ought, to give.
Rest in peace, Senator.