For Edward Kennedy: 'It was our final history trip together', by niece Caroline Kennedy - 2009

28 August 2009, John F Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Vice President and all the speakers tonight for the gifts of Teddy that you have given to all of us. And thank you Vicky for loving him with all your heart for so many years, bringing him so much happiness, and to Karin, Teddy, and Patrick, Kiki, Karin, and Caroline for making him so proud, bringing him so much joy. And to Jean, I know you've lost your soulmate because you and Teddy lived each other's lives for your whole entire lives, and all your nieces and nephews are here to help you as best we can

Welcome to this library that Teddy built and brought to life with his spirit and dedication to public service. As many of you know, over the last few years, or really for most of my semi adult life, one of my part-time jobs has been introducing Teddy to crowds of people who already knew him incredibly well.

Although this process was unbelievably stressful for me, it was just another one of the gifts that he gave me. When he saw that I was nervous, he would give me a pat on the back. When he knew that I was sad, he would call up and say, 'I've got a great idea. There's a convention coming up, and maybe you'd like to introduce me?' <laugh>,

And off I would go on another adventure in public speaking, but no matter how nervous I was, I always knew that when I stepped down from the podium, I would get a big kiss and hear him whisper. 'Now I'm going to get you back,' and I can't believe that's not going to happen tonight.

The other night after Vicky called Ed and I went outside. It was a beautiful summer night. The moon had set. There was no wind. The sea was calm and the stars were out. I looked up and there was this one star hanging low in the sky that was just bigger than all the rest and brighter than all the rest, with a twinkle and a sparkle louder than all the others. I know it was Jupiter, but it was acting a lot like Teddy.

His colleagues have spoken tonight about his work, his devotion to the Senate, the joy he took in helping others, his thoughtfulness and compassion, his inspirational courage, and his commitment to the ideals of peace and justice that his brothers gave their lives for, and that he fought for his entire career. In our family we were lucky to see his passion, his self-discipline, and his generosity of heart every single day. He had a special relationship with each of his 28 nieces and nephews, and with the 60 people who called him great uncle Teddy.

He was there for every baptism, every school trip to Washington, every graduation and every wedding with his big heart, his big shoulders, and a big hug. He knew when we were having a tough time or a great time, and he would just show up and say It's time to go sailing. He convinced us that we could ace the next test, make the varsity team win the next race, whether it was sailing or politics, and it was okay if we didn't. As long as we tried our best.

He did it by letting us know that he believed in us, so we should believe in ourselves. He talked by example and with love. He showed us how to keep going no matter how hard things were, to love each other, no matter how mad we got and keep working for what we believe in.

He never told us what to do. He just did it himself, and we learned from his example. Though it was sometimes overshadowed by his other gifts, Teddy was a creative spirit. He loved painting and singing in the natural world and the sea. He was always looking for new ways to bring people together, to make a better world, to get things done, and he was always doing things that other people could have done, but he was somehow the one who did it. This is true in the Senate, as we've heard tonight, as it is in our family,.

So I thought I'd tell you a little bit about one of the less known examples. His creation of the annual family history trips. Visiting historical sites is something anyone can do, but Teddy made it into something special. He realised that a family reunion was wasted if it was just a cookout, so he made it a chance to learn and share the love of history that he got from his mother and honey Fitz.

In my childhood, these trips were relatively simple affairs. An occasional visit to the Nantucket Whaling Museum where Western Massachusetts campaign swing that included the Cranes paper factory where dollar bills were printed, and the studio where Daniel Chester French created the statue of Abraham Lincoln. And no visit to gram's house was complete without Teddy's recitation of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. When I was young, I thought Teddy was just entertaining us, but as I grew up, I realised he was passing down his belief that each of us has a chance to change the course of history.

Teddy lived for the future. Now he loved the past, but when a new generation came along, in typical Teddy style, he decided to take it all to a new level. He wanted us all to share his love of being together, his passion for history, and to learn about the sacrifices upon which this country was built, so that we would understand our own opportunities and obligations. He took this on with enthusiasm, and his organisational magic, helped as always by the extraordinary team that are all here tonight and will be working for him forever.

Teddy illuminated the world around us and brought the past to life. The trips were open to everyone, and although there was always some pre-trip moaning and groaning among the teenagers, no one ever wanted to stay home. We visited the monuments of Washington by night and Mount Vernon by boat. We walked the Civil War battlefield of Antideum, Fredericksburg, Manassas, Harpers Ferry, and Gettysburg. In Richmond, we saw the Tredegger Iron Works and the church where Patrick Henry made his immortal speech about liberty. We went to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Valley Forge and Constitution Hall in Philadelphia. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and learned about the Battle of Long Island. But the culmination of this tradition was our trip to Boston. We took a ride on the old Cape Railway and learned about the building of the Cape Cod Canal. On the way to Boston, we went to Plymouth Rock.

When we got here, we visited the USS Constitution, saved by Honey Fitz. Bunker Hill, Paul Revere's house, the old North Church, the Old South meeting house, the house where grandma was born, and the spot where the Irish immigrants came ashore. We toured the Kennedy Library and had picnic at the Boston Harbour Lighthouse.

Although the rule for history trips was that they were day trips only, we all knew that to Teddy, Boston was special. He had a surprise for us, which was that we were going to get the chance to camp out on Thompson Island. He didn't tell us that for most of the year, this facility is used for juvenile detention until after we had set up our tents in the dirt. It was about 98 degrees. The bugs were out. It smelled like low tide all night long, and the planes from Logan were taking off and landing right over our heads. We figured Teddy was trying to teach us something, but after a boiling hot 16 hour history day with 20 children under 10, we weren't quite sure what it was. In any event, that was when Teddy decided that even he had had enough of history, finally, and snuck out under Cover of Darkness on his secret getaway boat, and headed for the Ritz <laugh> Once again, he had it all figured out.

Yesterday, as we drove the same route up from the Cape, I thought about all the gifts that Teddy gave us, and the incredible journey he took. I thought about how lucky I am to have travelled some of that journey with him and with all the wonderful people that he embraced, so many of whom are here tonight. I thought about how he touched so many hearts and did so many things that only he could have done. I thought too, about all the things he did that we all could do, but we just figured Teddy would do them instead.

As we drove through the Boston that he loved and saw the thousands of people who loved him back, I realised that it was our final history trip together. Now, Teddy has become a part of history, and we have become the ones who have to do all the things he would've done for us, for each other and for our country.

For John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette: 'There was in him a great promise of things to come', by Edward Kennedy - 1999

23 July 1999, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington DC, USA

Thank you, President and Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea, for being here today. You’ve shown extraordinary kindness through the course of this week.

Once, when they asked John what he would do if he went into politics and was elected president, he said, “I guess the first thing is call up Uncle Teddy and gloat.” I loved that. It was so like his father.

From the first day of his life, John seemed to belong not only to our family, but to the American family. The whole world knew his name before he did. A famous photograph showed John racing across the lawn as his father landed in the White House helicopter and swept up John in his arms. When my brother saw that photo, he exclaimed, “Every mother in the United States is saying, ‘Isn’t it wonderful to see that love between a son and his father, the way that John races to be with his father.’ Little do they know, that son would have raced right by his father to get to that helicopter.”

But John was so much more than those long ago images emblazoned in our minds. He was a boy who grew into a man with a zest for life and a love of adventure. He was a pied piper who brought us all along. He was blessed with a father and mother who never thought anything mattered more than their children.

When they left the White House, Jackie’s soft and gentle voice and unbreakable strength of spirit guided him surely and securely to the future. He had a legacy, and he learned to treasure it. He was part of a legend, and he learned to live with it. Above all, Jackie gave him a place to be himself, to grow up, to laugh and cry, to dream and strive on his own.

John learned that lesson well. He had amazing grace. He accepted who he was, but he cared more about what he could and should become. He saw things that could be lost in the glare of the spotlight. And he could laugh at the absurdity of too much pomp and circumstance.

He loved to travel across the city by subway, bicycle and roller blade. He lived as if he were unrecognizable, although he was known by everyone he encountered. He always introduced himself, rather than take anything for granted. He drove his own car and flew his own plane, which is how he wanted it. He was the king of his domain.

He thought politics should be an integral part of our popular culture, and that popular culture should be an integral part of politics. He transformed that belief into the creation of “George.” John shaped and honed a fresh, often irreverent journal. His new political magazine attracted a new generation, many of whom had never read about politics before.

John also brought to “George” a wit that was quick and sure. The premier issue of “George” caused a stir with a cover photograph of Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington with a bare belly button. The “Reliable Source” in The Washington Post printed a mock cover of “George” showing not Cindy Crawford, but me dressed as George Washington, with my belly button exposed. I suggested to John that perhaps I should have been the model for the first cover of his magazine. Without missing a beat, John told me that he stood by his original editorial decision.

John brought this same playful wit to other aspects of his life. He campaigned for me during my 1994 election and always caused a stir when he arrived in Massachusetts. Before one of his trips to Boston, John told the campaign he was bringing along a companion, but would need only one hotel room. Interested, but discreet, a senior campaign worker picked John up at the airport and prepared to handle any media barrage that might accompany John’s arrival with his mystery companion. John landed with the companion all right – an enormous German shepherd dog named Sam he had just rescued from the pound.

He loved to talk about the expression on the campaign worker’s face and the reaction of the clerk at the Charles Hotel when John and Sam checked in. I think now not only of these wonderful adventures, but of the kind of person John was. He was the son who quietly gave extraordinary time and ideas to the Institute of Politics at Harvard that bears his father’s name. He brought to the institute his distinctive insight that politics could have a broader appeal, that it was not just about elections, but about the larger forces that shape our whole society.

John was also the son who was once protected by his mother. He went on to become her pride – and then her protector in her final days. He was the Kennedy who loved us all, but who especially cherished his sister Caroline, celebrated her brilliance, and took strength and joy from their lifelong mutual admiration society.And for a thousand days, he was a husband who adored the wife who became his perfect soul mate. John’s father taught us all to reach for the moon and the stars. John did that in all he did – and he found his shining star when he married Carolyn Bessette.

How often our family will think of the two of them, cuddling affectionately on a boat, surrounded by family – aunts, uncles, Caroline and Ed and their children, Rose, Tatiana, and Jack, Kennedy cousins, Radziwill cousins, Shriver cousins, Smith cousins, Lawford cousins – as we sailed Nantucket Sound. Then we would come home, and before dinner, on the lawn where his father had played, John would lead a spirited game of touch football. And his beautiful young wife, the new pride of the Kennedys, would cheer for John’s team and delight her nieces and nephews with her somersaults.

We loved Carolyn. She and her sister Lauren were young extraordinary women of high accomplishment – and their own limitless possibilities. We mourn their loss and honor their lives. The Bessette and Freeman families will always be part of ours.

John was a serious man who brightened our lives with his smile and his grace. He was a son of privilege who founded a program called Reaching Up to train better caregivers for the mentally disabled. He joined Wall Street executives on the Robin Hood Foundation to help the city’s impoverished children. And he did it all so quietly, without ever calling attention to himself. John was one of Jackie’s two miracles. He was still becoming the person he would be, and doing it by the beat of his own drummer. He had only just begun. There was in him a great promise of things to come.

The Irish ambassador recited a poem to John’s father and mother soon after John was born. I can hear it again now, at this different and difficult moment:

“We wish to the new child,
A heart that can be beguiled,
By a flower,
That the wind lifts,
As it passes.
If the storms break for him,
May the trees shake for him,
Their blossoms down.
In the night that he is troubled,
May a friend wake for him,
So that his time be doubled,
And at the end of all loving and love
May the Man above,
Give him a crown.”

We thank the millions who have rained blossoms down on John’s memory. He and his bride have gone to be with his mother and father, where there will never be an end to love. He was lost on that troubled night, but we will always wake for him, so that his time, which was not doubled, but cut in half, will live forever in our memory, and in our beguiled and broken hearts. We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But like his father, he had every gift but length of years. We who have loved him from the day he was born, and watched the remarkable man he became, now bid him farewell.

God bless you, John and Carolyn. We love you and we always will.

For Edward Kennedy: 'We weep because we loved this kind and tender hero', by Barack Obama - 2009

29 August 2009, Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Mrs. Kennedy, Kara, Edward, Patrick, Curran, Caroline, members of the Kennedy family, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Today we say goodbye to the youngest child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy. The world will long remember their son Edward as the heir to a weighty legacy; a champion for those who had none; the soul of the Democratic Party; and the lion of the U.S. Senate – a man whose name graces nearly one thousand laws, and who penned more than three hundred himself.

But those of us who loved him, and ache with his passing, know Ted Kennedy by the other titles he held: Father. Brother. Husband. Uncle Teddy, or as he was often known to his younger nieces and nephews, “The Grand Fromage,” or “The Big Cheese.” I, like so many others in the city where he worked for nearly half a century, knew him as a colleague, a mentor, and above all, a friend.

Ted Kennedy was the baby of the family who became its patriarch; the restless dreamer who became its rock. He was the sunny, joyful child, who bore the brunt of his brothers’ teasing, but learned quickly how to brush it off. When they tossed him off a boat because he didn’t know what a jib was, six-year-old Teddy got back in and learned to sail. When a photographer asked the newly elected Bobby to step back at a press conference because he was casting a shadow on his younger brother, Teddy quipped, “It’ll be the same in Washington.”

This spirit of resilience and good humor would see Ted Kennedy through more pain and tragedy than most of us will ever know. He lost two siblings by the age of sixteen. He saw two more taken violently from the country that loved them. He said goodbye to his beloved sister, Eunice, in the final days of his own life. He narrowly survived a plane crash, watched two children struggle with cancer, buried three nephews, and experienced personal failings and setbacks in the most public way possible.

It is a string of events that would have broken a lesser man. And it would have been easy for Teddy to let himself become bitter and hardened; to surrender to self-pity and regret; to retreat from public life and live out his years in peaceful quiet. No one would have blamed him for that.

But that was not Ted Kennedy. As he told us, “(I)individual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in” and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves.” Indeed, Ted was the “Happy Warrior” that the poet William Wordsworth spoke of when he wrote:

As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.

Through his own suffering, Ted Kennedy became more alive to the plight and suffering of others; the sick child who could not see a doctor; the young soldier sent to battle without armor; the citizen denied her rights because of what she looks like or who she loves or where she comes from. The landmark laws that he championed – the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, immigration reform, children’s health care, the Family and Medical Leave Act all have a running thread.

Ted Kennedy’s life’s work was not to champion those with wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to those who were not heard; to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity; to make real the dream of our founding. He was given the gift of time that his brothers were not, and he used that gift to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow.

We can still hear his voice bellowing through the Senate chamber, face reddened, fist pounding the podium, a veritable force of nature, in support of health care or workers’ rights or civil rights. And yet, while his causes became deeply personal, his disagreements never did.

While he was seen by his fiercest critics as a partisan lightning rod, that is not the prism through which Ted Kennedy saw the world, nor was it the prism through which his colleagues saw him. He was a product of an age when the joy and nobility of politics prevented differences of party and philosophy from becoming barriers to cooperation and mutual respect at a time when adversaries still saw each other as patriots.
And that’s how Ted Kennedy became the greatest legislator of our time. He did it by hewing to principle, but also by seeking compromise and common cause, not through deal-making and horse-trading alone, but through friendship, and kindness, and humor.

There was the time he courted Orrin Hatch’s support for the Children’s Health Insurance Program by having his chief of staff serenade the senator with a song Orrin had written himself; the time he delivered shamrock cookies on a china plate to sweeten up a crusty Republican colleague; and the famous story of how he won the support of a Texas committee chairman on an immigration bill.

Teddy walked into a meeting with a plain manila envelope, and showed only the chairman that it was filled with the Texan’s favorite cigars. When the negotiations were going well, he would inch the envelope closer to the chairman. When they weren’t, he would pull it back. Before long, the deal was done.

It was only a few years ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, when Teddy buttonholed me on the floor of the Senate for my support on a certain piece of legislation that was coming up for vote. I gave him my pledge, but expressed my skepticism that it would pass. But when the roll call was over, the bill garnered the votes it needed, and then some. I looked at Teddy with astonishment and asked how he had pulled it off. He just patted me on the back, and said “Luck of the Irish!”

Of course, luck had little to do with Ted Kennedy’s legislative success, and he knew that. A few years ago, his father-in-law told him that he and Daniel Webster just might be the two greatest senators of all time. Without missing a beat, Teddy replied, “What did Webster do?”

But though it is Ted Kennedy’s historic body of achievements we will remember, it is his giving heart that we will miss. It was the friend and colleague who was always the first to pick up the phone and say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” or “I hope you feel better,” or “What can I do to help?” It was the boss who was so adored by his staff that over five hundred spanning five decades showed up for his 75th birthday party. It was the man who sent birthday wishes and thank you notes and even his own paintings to so many who never imagined that a U.S. Senator would take the time to think about someone like them. I have one of those paintings in my private study – a Cape Cod seascape that was a gift to a freshman legislator who happened to admire it when Ted Kennedy welcomed him into his office the first week he arrived in Washington; by the way, that’s my second favorite gift from Teddy and Vicki after our dog Bo. And it seems like everyone has one of those stories – the ones that often start with “You wouldn’t believe who called me today.”

Ted Kennedy was the father who looked after not only his own three children, but John’s and Bobby’s as well. 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; and passed on that same sense of service and selflessness that his parents had instilled in him. Shortly after Ted walked Caroline down the aisle and gave her away at the altar, he received a note from Jackie that read, “On you the carefree youngest brother fell a burden a hero would have begged to be spared. We are all going to make it because you were always there with your love.”

Not only did the Kennedy family make it because of Ted’s love – he made it because of theirs; and especially because of the love and the life he found in Vicki. After so much loss and so much sorrow, it could not have been easy for Ted Kennedy to risk his heart again. That he did is a testament to how deeply he loved this remarkable woman from Louisiana. And she didn’t just love him back. As Ted would often acknowledge, Vicki saved him. She gave him strength and purpose; joy and friendship; and stood by him always, especially in those last, hardest days.

We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know God’s plan for us.

What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and love, and joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings.

This is how Ted Kennedy lived. This is his legacy. He once said of his brother Bobby that he need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, and I imagine he would say the same about himself. The greatest expectations were placed upon Ted Kennedy’s shoulders because of who he was, but he surpassed them all because of who he became. We do not weep for him today because of the prestige attached to his name or his office. We weep because we loved this kind and tender hero who persevered through pain and tragedy – not for the sake of ambition or vanity; not for wealth or power; but only for the people and the country he loved.

In the days after September 11th, Teddy made it a point to personally call each one of the 177 families of this state who lost a loved one in the attack. But he didn’t stop there. He kept calling and checking up on them. He fought through red tape to get them assistance and grief counseling. He invited them sailing, played with their children, and would write each family a letter whenever the anniversary of that terrible day came along. To one widow, he wrote the following:

“As you know so well, the passage of time never really heals the tragic memory of such a great loss, but we carry on, because we have to, because our loved one would want us to, and because there is still light to guide us in the world from the love they gave us.”

We carry on.

Ted Kennedy has gone home now, guided by his faith and by the light of those he has loved and lost. At last he is with them once more, leaving those of us who grieve his passing with the memories he gave, the good he did, the dream he kept alive, and a single, enduring image – the image of a man on a boat; white mane tousled; smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for what storms may come, carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon. May God Bless Ted Kennedy, and may he rest in eternal peace.

For for Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis: 'She was a lesson to the world on how to do things right', Onassis by Edward Kennedy - 1994

23 May 1994, St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church, Washington DC, USA

Last summer, when we were on the upper deck on the boat at the Vineyard, waiting for President and Mrs. Clinton to arrive, Jackie turned to me and said: "Teddy, you go down and greet the President."

"But," I said, "Maurice is already there."

And Jackie answered: "Teddy, you do it. Maurice isn't running for re-election."

She was always there--for all our family--in her special way.

She was a blessing to us and to the nation-and a lesson to the world on how to do things right, how to be a mother, how to appreciate history, how to be courageous.

No one else looked like her, spoke like her, wrote like her, or was so original in the way she did things. No one we knew ever had a better sense of self.

Eight months before she married Jack, they went together to President Eisenhower's Inaugural Ball. Jackie said later that that's where they decided they liked Inaugurations.

No one ever gave more meaning to the title of First Lady. The nation's capital city looks as it does because of her. She saved Lafayette Square and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Jackie brought the greatest artists to the white House, and brought the Arts to the center of national attention. Today, in large part because of her inspiration and vision, the arts are an abiding part of national policy.

President Kennedy took such delight in her brilliance and her spirit. At a white House dinner, he once leaned over and told the wife of the French Ambassador, "Jackie speaks fluent French. But I only understand one out of every five words she says--and that word is DeGaulle."

And then, during those four endless days in 1963, she held us together as a family and a country. In large part because of her, we could grieve and then go on, She lifted us up, and in the doubt and darkness, she gave her fellow citizens back their pride as Americans. She was then 34 years old.

Afterward, as the eternal fame she lit flickered in the autumn of Arlington Cemetery, Jackie went on to do what she most wanted--to raise Caroline and John, and warm her family's life and that of all the Kennedys.

Robert Kennedy sustained her, and she helped make it possible for Bobby to continue. She kept Jack's memory alive, as he carried Jack's mission on. Her two children turned out to be extraordinary, honest, unspoiled, and with a character equal to hers. And she did it in the most trying of circumstances. They are her two miracles.

Her love for Caroline and John was deep and unqualified. She reveled in their accomplishments, she hurt with their sorrows, and she felt sheer joy and delight in spending time with them. At the mere mention of one of their names, Jackie's eyes would shine brighter and her smile would grow bigger.

She once said that if you "bungle raising your children nothing else much matters in life." She didn't bungle. Once again, she showed how to do the most important thing of all, and do it right.

When she went to work, Jackie became a respected professional in the world of publishing. And because of her, remarkable books came to life. She searched out new authors and ideas. She was interested in everything.

Her love of history became a devotion to historic preservation. You knew, when Jackie joined the cause to save a building in Manhattan, the bulldozers might as well turn around and go home.

She had a wonderful sense of humor--a way of focusing on someone with total attention--and a little girl delight in who they were and what they were saying. It was a gift of herself that she gave to others. And in spite of all her heartache and loss, she never faltered.

I often think of what she said about Jack in December after he died: "They made him a legend, when he would have preferred to be a man.' Jackie would have preferred to be just herself, but the world insisted that she be a legend, too.

She never wanted public notice, in part I think, because it brought back painful memories of an unbearable sorrow, endured in the glare of a million lights.

In all the years since then, her genuineness and depth of character continued to shine through the privacy to reach people everywhere. Jackie was too young to be a widow in 1963, and too young to die now.

Her grandchildren were bringing new joy to her life, a joy that illuminated her face whenever you saw them together. Whether it was taking Rose and Tatiana for an ice cream cone, or taking a walk in Central Park with little Jack as she did last Sunday, she relished being Grand Jackie and showering her grandchildren with love.

At the end, she worried more about us tan herself. She let her family and friends know she was thinking of them. How cherished were those wonderful notes in her distinctive hand on her powder blue stationery!

In truth, she did everything she could--and more--for each of us.

She made a rare and noble contribution to the American spirit. But for us, most of all she was a magnificent wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend.

She graced our history. And for those of us who knew and loved her--she graced our lives.

For Edward Kennedy: 'I knew it was Jupiter, but it was acting a lot like Teddy', by Caroline Kennedy - 2009

23 December 2011, JFK Presidential Library, Washington, USA

For Robert Kennedy: 'What it really adds up to is love,' by Edward Kennedy - 1968

8 June 1968, St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, USA

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Mr. President:

On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world.

We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son. From his parents, and from his older brothers and sisters -- Joe and Kathleen and Jack -- he received an inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side.

Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.

A few years back, Robert Kennedy wrote some words about his own father which expresses [sic] the way we in his family felt about him. He said of what his father meant to him, and I quote:

"What it really all adds up to is love -- not love as it is described with such facility in popular magazines, but the kind of love that is affection and respect, order and encouragement, and support. Our awareness of this was an incalculable source of strength, and because real love is something unselfish and involves sacrifice and giving, we could not help but profit from it."

And he continued,

"Beneath it all, he has tried to engender a social conscience. There were wrongs which needed attention. There were people who were poor and needed help. And we have a responsibility to them and to this country. Through no virtues and accomplishments of our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the United States under the most comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a responsibility to others who are less well off."

That is what Robert Kennedy was given. What he leaves to us is what he said, what he did, and what he stood for. A speech he made to the young people of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation in 1966 sums it up the best, and I would like to read it now:

"There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember -- even if only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek -- as we do -- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that "all men are created equal."

These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. *It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.* Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society. Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.

That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us.

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.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."