'Our Teddy Changed America'

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'Our Teddy Changed America'
by Adam Clymer


Public celebrations about a great life are inevitably largely about the past, and with buses and traffic signs in Boston proclaiming “Thanks Ted,” the goodbye to Edward M. Kennedy is no exception. But the future is part of the agenda, too, both at last night’s celebration of his life and again at today's funeral.

Friday night there were promises from Democratic senators Chris Dodd and John Kerry to pass the health care legislation Kennedy wanted for 40 years. (Republicans John McCain and Orrin Hatch talked instead about the joys and frustrations of negotiating with him.) And there was a fiery promise from the late senator's nephew, Joseph P. Kennedy II, that his uncle's message, about a sailing race but really for life, was, "Don't ever, ever, ever, ever give up," that sounded as if the former congressman might seek the family seat in the senate.

Without knowing what President Obama and others will say today, one cannot predict the balance between past and future. But the history of the church where Senator Kennedy went to pray as his daughter, Kara Kennedy Allen, fought lung cancer in 2003, suggests a theme for the servce. The Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a church where the faithful come to pray for cures. Beneath an icon of Mary there are vases of crutches and canes to symbolize those cures, and silver plaques commemorating two cures in the 1880s, when the church was known as the "Lourdes in the Land of the Puritans." It would be an obvious opportunity missed if no one spoke of the need to cure the nation's health care system, or at least to find a cure for what ails the president's embattled legislation.

Friday night's event commemorated both past and future, again beginning with the site. It was held at the John F. Kennedy Library, in an auditorium where Senator Kennedy used to hold dinners—shadow state dinners, really—to honor foreign leaders such as Czech President Vaclav Havel, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and a variety of Irish politicians including Mary Robinson and John Hume. But the library is next door to a plot of land where the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate will rise. Boston's mayor Thomas Menino said it would provide "another lasting legacy of the Kennedys in Boston." Contributions to the project, budgeted at $100 million, have picked up since the senator's death said its CEO, Peter Meade, and the public has been invited to contribute instead of sending flowers.

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