Father had nurtured high ambitions for his four sons. He wanted to see his eldest son in the White House. Though destiny had another course chartered for this son. He joined the American Air Force and was killed during the Second World War. The second son had joined the American Navy and his boat was torpedoed by the Japanese. However he rescued a wounded sailor and swam to the shore. For this he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour. Through his youthful charisma and high intellect, he fulfilled his father’s desire, wish and ambition to become the President of United states of America. Tragedy struck once more and he fell to an assassin’s bullet.
The third son took on his slain brother’s mantle and ran for the Presidency of America. He won the California Democratic Preliminary but tragedy struck the third time as his life too was claimed by an assassin’s bullet. Speaking at his funeral service his younger brother, the last of the four Kennedy brothers, Edward Kennedy, popularly known as Ted Kennedy, paid him an uncommon homage and yet a befitting eulogy when he said, “My brother need not be eulogized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good, decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”
Ted obtained a law degree from University of Viginia Law School. Tragedy struck the family the fourth time, when he drove his car off the bridge at the Chappaquiddick island where he surfaced to safety leaving the young woman trapped in the car. This accident and his failure to inform the police for nearly ten hours was to haunt him for the rest of his life and was a contributory factor to his losing to Jimmy Carter in the Presidential race in1979-80
At age 30 he had become a senator and won that seat for a record eight times holding that seat for 47 long years. In the Senate he successfully engineered innumerable sweeping legislations that directly affected lives of millions of Americans. From national immigration laws, so they could no longer favour white Europeans, to Children’s Healthcare Insurance Programme, education, racial integration in schools, poverty and gender equality etc. Unfortunately he died before one of his life long goals of universal health care legislation could be passed: Yet he succeeded in placing this Bill at the forefront of U.S. political debate and now that health care reforms have reached their final lap, it is time to recall his memory.. He could reach out to Republicans and work across the aisle in the Senate to get things done.
Speaking at his funeral service, President Barack Obama noted that the venerable Massachusetts Democrat was “one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.” Obama ordered the national flag flown at half mast. Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General called him, the “Voice of the voiceless.”
They laid him to rest along side his brother John F Kennedy at the Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington. He had served in the American Army as a private ( an ordinary soldier. ) Koffi Annan called him a ‘Liberal Lion.’
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