Bob Shrum Recalls Ted Kennedy’s Greatest Speech

A Dream That Never Died BY BOB SHRUM

Last summer, as I flew toward Denver for the Democratic Convention on a small jet with Ted Kennedy, his family and a few friends, I thought of another convention 28 years before. It was the one Kennedy addressed in New York City after losing the Democratic nomination for President to Jimmy Carter. The speech Kennedy hoped to deliver in Denver would echo the earlier one, although a slight change in the closing words would make for a profound shift in mood. The robust Kennedy of 1980, announcing “The dream shall never die,” was a young lion in winter, defiant in his beliefs even in defeat. The ailing Kennedy of 2008, stricken with incurable cancer but sailing every afternoon, told me that he was determined to conclude with an affirmation of hope. The convention and the country would not hear the word die from him. Instead, in that distinctive and commanding voice, he would proclaim, “The dream lives on.”

We were thinking of the future in 1980 too, despite the hard reality of our loss. Kennedy had surged several times in the long contest. A speech at the convention would be the only chance in the entire campaign for Kennedy to communicate with Americans in an unmediated way. We negotiated hard for a speaking slot; Carter’s forces were fearful of letting Kennedy anywhere near the podium before a rules vote on Monday sealed the President’s renomination. But to deny Kennedy after that would have shattered the convention and the party irrevocably.

What we were conceded was 15 minutes during the debate on the party platform on Tuesday night. In the event, Kennedy took 35, and the applause rolled on for nearly an hour more. He spoke “not to argue as a candidate but to affirm a cause,” and as his voice rang out, I watched the delegates, ours and then Carter’s, on their feet and on their chairs, swept up in waves of cheering. I had a unique vantage point, sitting on the steps just below the podium, a spot where Kennedy could glance down and see me at any time. He had a superstitious belief–half playful, half serious–that the teleprompter would break, as it had for the hapless governor who placed JFK’s name in nomination at the 1960 convention. If it happened that night, the plan was that Kennedy would look toward me, and I would utter a number to tell him what page of the typed text to turn to.

The speech was designed as a worded symphony, rising and rousing the audience, then falling to a quieter level and aiming to transfix listeners before the tempo picked up again. It was alternately serious and joyful, and it was movingly personal about the individuals and families in trouble whom Kennedy had met on the campaign trail. As he finished, Kennedy, who avoided mentioning his slain brothers in political speeches, now did, but in a carefully understated way, recalling the “words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have a special meaning for me: ‘I am a part of all that I have met;/ … Tho’ much is taken, much abides;/ … that which we are, we are;/ One equal temper of heroic hearts,/ … strong in will/ To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'”

You could hear the silence, and I could see people crying across the hall as he finished: “For me a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

I saw it all again on that journey to Denver in 2008. He was taken to a hospital almost as soon as we arrived, was released and then was rushed back again. He was in agony–not from the cancer but from a sudden attack of kidney stones. He was determined to speak to the convention and left his hospital bed just a little more than an hour before his appearance, which much of the press and most delegates regarded as improbable or impossible. I stood and cried as he walked onto the stage. In 1980, he had gone there at the end of a long, hard quest through the primaries. This night was the expression of a lifetime’s undiminished commitment, the culmination of three weeks of drafting and daily practice sessions–we live only 25 minutes apart on Cape Cod–and then a harrowing day and a half in Denver. It was courage and conviction about the true purpose of politics that brought him to this moment. He passed the torch to Barack Obama–to whose candidacy he had given a decisive endorsement the winter before. And he touched millions of hearts one more time: “The work begins anew, the hope rises again, and the dream lives on.”

On the plane back to Hyannis, we swapped stories. One was about my cutting the speech in half just hours before he gave it to make it easier for him to get through. He looked at the cuts and teased me: “You took out some of my favorite parts.” He laughed, this indomitable man who had given his life to the dream–the dream that in many ways, because of him, does live on.

Shrum was a Kennedy press secretary and speechwriter

Of Memory And the Sea BY MIKE BARNICLE

Here was Ted Kennedy, 74-year-old son, brother, father, husband, Senator, living history, American legend. He was sitting on a wicker chair on the front porch of the seaside home that held so much of his life within its walls. He was wearing a dark blue blazer and a pale blue shirt. He was tieless and tanned on a spectacular October morning in 2006, and he was smiling too because he could see his boat, the Mya, anchored in Hyannis Port harbor, rocking gently in a warm breeze that held a hint of another summer just passed. Election Day, the last time his fabled name would appear on a ballot, was two weeks away.

“When you’re out on the ocean,” he was asked that day, “do you ever see your brothers?”

“Sure,” Kennedy answered, his voice a few decibels above a whisper. “All the time … all the time. There’s not a day I don’t think of them. This is where we all grew up. There have been some joyous times here. Difficult times too.

“We all learned to swim here. Learned to sail. I still remember my brother Joe, swimming with him here, before he went off to war. My brother Jack, out on the water with him … I remember it all so well. He lived on the water, fought on the water.”

He paused then, staring toward Nantucket Sound. Here he was not the last living brother from a family that had dominated so much of the American political landscape during the second half of the 20th century; he was simply a man who had lived to see dreams die young and yet soldiered on while carrying a cargo of sadness and responsibility.

“The sea … there are eternal aspects to the sea and the ocean,” he said that day. “It anchors you.”

He was home. Who he was–who he really was–is rooted in the rambling, white clapboard house in Hyannis Port to which he could, and would, retreat to recover from all wounds.

“How old were you when your brother Joe died?” Ted was asked that morning.

“Twelve,” he replied. “I was 12 years old.”

Joe Kennedy Jr., the oldest of nine children, was the first to die–at 29–when the plane he was flying on a World War II mission exploded over England on Aug. 12, 1944.

“Mother was in the kitchen. Dad was upstairs. I was right here, right on this porch, when a priest arrived with an Army officer. I remember it quite clearly,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy remembered it all. The wins, the losses and the fact there were never any tie games in his long life. Nobody was neutral when it came to the man and what he accomplished in the public arena. And few were aware of the private duties he gladly assumed as surrogate father to nieces and nephews who grew up in a fog of myth.

He embraced strangers. Brian Hart met Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery on a cold, gray November day in 2003. Brian and his wife Alma were burying their 20-year-old son, Army Private First Class John Hart, who had been killed in Iraq. “I turned around at the end of the service, and that was the first time I met Senator Kennedy,” the father of the dead soldier said. “He was right there behind us. I asked him if he could meet with me later to talk about how and why our son died–because he did not have the proper equipment to fight a war. He was in a vehicle that was not armored.

“That month Senator Kennedy pushed the Pentagon to provide more armored humvees for our troops. Later, when I thanked him, he told me it wasn’t necessary, that he wanted to thank me for helping focus attention on the issue and that he knew what my wife and I were feeling because his mother–she was a Gold Star mother too.

“On the first anniversary of John’s death, he and his wife Vicki joined Alma and me at Arlington,” Brian said. “He told Alma that early morning was the best time to come to Arlington. It was quiet and peaceful, and the crowds wouldn’t be there yet. He had flowers for my son’s grave. With all that he has to do, he remembered our boy.”

Ted Kennedy was all about remembering. He remembered birthdays, christenings and anniversaries. He was present at graduations and funerals. He organized picnics, sailing excursions, sing-alongs at the piano and touch-football games on the lawn. He presided over all things family. He was the navigator for those young Kennedys who sometimes seemed unsure of their direction as life pulled them between relying on reputation and reality.

An emotional man, he became deeply devoted to his Catholic faith and his second wife Vicki. He even learned to view the brain cancer that eventually killed him as an odd gift–a gradual fading of a kind that would be easier for his family and friends to come to terms with than the violent and sudden loss of three brothers and a sister, Kathleen. He, at least, was given the gift of time to prepare.

The day after Thanksgiving in 2008, six months after his diagnosis, Kennedy had a party. He and Vicki invited about 100 people to Hyannis Port. Chemotherapy had taken a toll on Ted’s strength, but Barack Obama’s electoral victory had invigorated him. His children, stepchildren and many of his nieces and nephews were there. So were several of his oldest friends, men who had attended grammar school, college or law school with Kennedy. Family and friends: the ultimate safety net.

Suddenly, Ted Kennedy wanted to sing. And he demanded everyone join him in the parlor, where he sat in a straight-backed chair beside the piano. Most of the tunes were popular when all the ghosts were still alive, still there in the house. Ted sang “Some Enchanted Evening,” and everyone chimed in, the smiles tinged with a touch of sadness.

The sound spilled out past the porch, into a night made lighter by a full moon whose bright glare bounced off the dark waters of Nantucket Sound, beyond the old house where Teddy–and he was always “Teddy” here–mouthed the lyrics to every song, sitting, smiling, happy to be surrounded by family and friends in a place where he could hear and remember it all. And as he sang, his blue eyes sparkled with life, and for the moment it seemed as if one of his deeply felt beliefs–“that we will all meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when”–was nothing other than true.

“I love living here,” Ted Kennedy once said. “And I believe in the Resurrection.”

Barnicle was a columnist at the Boston Globe for 25 years

The Last Lion BY TED SORENSEN

When I first met ted Kennedy 55 years ago, he did not initially seem to be much more than the “kid brother”–fun, funny, friendly, but not a major part of the genial Kennedy dinner-table conversations on policy and politics. When I last met with him, in the summer of 2008, he was the Senate’s next-to-eldest statesman, convening a breakfast meeting to discuss his plan to establish a research institute or foundation for the scholarly study of the Senate, its history and role in American public life. I took that opportunity to present to him a copy of my new book of memoirs, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, with a personal inscription commending him on his accomplishments and predicting more in an even brighter future. In a few days, he graciously replied with a letter, closing with a prediction that an Obama victory would implement my ideals.

Kid brother to senior statesman was an extraordinary journey, matching the similar journeys taken by his brothers John and Robert. All three of the Kennedy brothers who entered our national public life–meaning the three who survived World War II–demonstrated this extraordinary quality of growth, particularly after they arrived in Washington. Too many successful politicians stop growing once they get there, certain that they already know it all and have already completed their growth within the biblical standard of “wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and Man.” But not the Kennedys, and certainly not Edward Moore Kennedy.

Spurred by his father and by his own interests to seek the Senate seat for Massachusetts that JFK had vacated upon entering the White House, Teddy entered a hotly contested Democratic primary in 1962. He was opposed by Eddie McCormack, the favorite nephew of the House Democratic majority leader, John McCormack of South Boston. President Kennedy, whose brother Bob was then serving as Attorney General, was concerned that he would be accused of fostering nepotism and founding a dynasty. He did not wish to add a feud with Eddie’s uncle to his already difficult relations with Congress. Neither did he wish to add still another private disagreement with his beloved father to an already long list. So he publicly vowed that the White House would remain neutral regarding the 1962 Senate Democratic nomination in Massachusetts. But privately he asked RFK and me to fly unannounced to Cape Cod and brief Teddy on the eve of his first televised debate with McCormack. We found Teddy surprisingly relaxed and informed. He won the debate, the primary and the election, just as he won every race for re-election in the 47 years since.

Teddy never lost his drive to serve his country and honor his brothers’ memory. Bobby’s assassination left Teddy in charge of not only the Kennedy legacy but the Kennedy family as well. Already a loving father of his own wonderful children, he took special care to help guide and comfort Jack’s and Bobby’s survivors. Throughout it all, his impact as a Senator and Democratic Party leader continued. Fellow Senators on more than one occasion have told me that when Ted rose on the Senate floor to speak, members of both parties paid attention whether or not their views were compatible with his, because they knew he had done his homework.

Several decades ago, John F. Kennedy, as a Senator known for his special interest in history–including particularly the history of the Senate itself–was named to head a special committee to select five Senators whose portraits would hang in the Senate reception room for all to see. The “Famous Five” were to be chosen on the basis of their historic contributions in terms of courage, integrity and substantive activity over a long Senate career. They are now called the “Famous Nine,” after two Senate resolutions added four more portraits.

There are still two spaces remaining in that room. I can think of no one more deserving of having his portrait placed there now than Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Sorensen was special counsel and an adviser to President John F. Kennedy

How He Found Himself BY JOE KLEIN

He seemed a ghost the day I met him. It was Memorial Day 1970. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, black tie. He was still wearing a back brace from the Chappaquiddick accident and he moved stiffly, like a robot cartoon of a politician. He didn’t smile, seemed grim even when shaking hands with the civilians; his demeanor was all the more striking because we were at a classic grip-and-grin event, the annual Greek picnic in Lowell, Mass. All sorts of politicians were there, including two who would run for President themselves–Michael Dukakis and Paul Tsongas. The pols gadded about with antic smiles and jackets hooked over their shoulders, ties loosened, sleeves rolled up, trying to look like Kennedys, trying to look … like him. His family defined political style and vigor for a generation of politicians. But at that moment, and for years after, Ted Kennedy seemed to writhe in the public eye.

He was scared catatonic, of course. Scared of death, obviously. There was no reason to believe, in a nation of nutballs, that he would be allowed to continue, unshot. But he was frightened of more profound things as well–overwhelmed by his own humanity in the face of his brothers’ immortality, convinced that he’d never measure up, that Joe and Jack and Bobby had been the best of the Kennedys. He was not only the baby, but also the screwup–cheating on his Spanish test in college, boozing and womanizing well beyond the requisite Kennedy-legacy level, and then Chappaquiddick–and even after Chappaquiddick, after he had somehow allowed a young woman to die, they still wanted him to run for President. There was no way to convince them that he was a hollow shell of the dream.

I spent a fair amount of time with him in the 1970s, and most of the circumstances involved pain or awkwardness. I watched him work a supermarket in New Bedford when he ran for re-election in 1976. He accompanied a woman who was shopping for her family. It was total agony. He simply had no idea what to say or do. “So, uh, your family, ah, likes … meat?” he asked. “Oh, yes, Senator,” the woman replied, and that was that. No question about the high price of chuck. He stared at her, unable to figure out what came next. Contrary to received wisdom about him, contrary to the joyous Irish bull he later became, he seemed to have no political instincts at all in those days. He went down to Alabama to share a July 4 stage with George Wallace, another political hologram by then, and Kennedy got smoked. Wallace rose from his wheelchair–a clever series of braces and handles–like the Lord had saved him that very minute, and gave a percussive trumpet solo of a speech, rapid and dexterous and witty. Kennedy read from a text. I was beginning to feel sorry for the guy.

And no more so than the day we walked through Boston’s City Hall Plaza together and got pelted with tomatoes thrown by some of his most loyal and mythic constituents–the aggrieved Celts of South Boston, whose children were about to be bused into a black neighborhood. Afterward, in his office, he offered me a towel to wipe the tomato off my ruined khaki suit and disappeared. But we talked again about that day soon after, and memorably so, since neither of us was sober. It was at a cocktail reception at Ethel Kennedy’s home, for recipients of the Robert F. Kennedy journalism awards, one of whom happened to be me. In celebration, before the ceremony, a Kennedy who shall remain nameless took me down to the barn for an intense herbal experience. When I returned to the house, there was Teddy–and it was immediately apparent that he was as shiffazed as I was stoned. We greeted each other like old comrades in arms, sat in a corner and talked about how he wasn’t angry about the tomatoes, about how sad and unfair it was that the Irish of Southie and the blacks of Roxbury had to endure busing while the rich kids out in the suburbs got off the hook. It was the first actual conversation we’d ever had. A picture was taken of him handing me the award, which has somehow, sadly, been lost. We were both smiling.

A few months later, I was back at Ethel Kennedy’s house–living there as the deputy to Richard Goodwin, the JFK speechwriter who had been tapped as the Rolling Stone Washington bureau chief. On July 4 weekend, Hunter Thompson showed up, and I don’t remember much else after that, except that a fair number of Ethel’s children were involved. Word spread quickly, as word will do in Washington. That Monday, by coincidence, I had an appointment with Kennedy to talk about a story I was working on, and he said, “Joe, before we get started, can I ask you something off the record?” I said sure, and he continued. “What on earth is happening at that house?”

“Why nothing, Senator,” I said, summoning all the false gravity in my tiny arsenal. He smiled, raised an eyebrow. “O.K., O.K.,” he said. “I asked.”

And I was with him the day he was liberated from ambition, finally. It was Feb. 26, 1980, the day of the New Hampshire primary. He was losing–an unimaginable event for a Kennedy, losing in New England. His campaign up to that point had, in fact, been dreadful. He had famously been unable to answer a simple question posed by Roger Mudd of CBS News, “Why do you want to be President?” Because I’m supposed to? Well, that was the truth, but it wasn’t an acceptable answer. He had been every bit as shaky and unhappy on the stump as I’d seen him when he ran for Senate. He had blown a 35-point lead. He had been clobbered by Jimmy Carter in Iowa. And now, in New Hampshire, we landed in a small plane and an aide rushed up with the bad news about the early exit polls. He was losing again. “So much for the well-oiled Kennedy machine,” he joked, and–I swear–almost immediately became a different person. The nomination was clearly lost, but he continued to fight on, stubbornly, disastrously for the Democratic Party, but he actually seemed to be enjoying it for a change. He gave the speech of his life, “The Dream Shall Never Die,” at the Democratic Convention that year and began the far more satisfying Second Act of his life.

The demarcation wasn’t as clear as all that. He had started becoming an excellent Senator well before his presidential millstone was lifted. Unlike his brothers, he loved the intricacy and camaraderie of the Senate. He became as adept in small rooms, where the deals are made, as his brothers had been on the largest stages. Others can describe his political efficacy, the legislative monuments that will constitute his legacy. For me, the best moments came when we talked about things like returning vets, from Vietnam to Afghanistan–he haunted Walter Reed Army Medical Center, especially whenever a kid from Massachusetts wound up there. I also remember the day when I began to blub as he read the report of a Chilean torture victim, a woman who watched her children be tortured; I pretended not to be blubbing, and he pretended not to notice. If we were women, we might have actually talked about it.

We were never friends; our relationship was professional, but keen and, ultimately, affectionate. I don’t remember the last time I spoke with him. It might have been in Iowa, during the 2008 campaign–he had the connoisseur’s appreciation of Barack Obama. But the last time I saw him that I really remember was a day I stopped by his office to talk about … what? Health care, maybe the war in Iraq? His dog was roaming about, rubbing up against me, then settling at the Senator’s feet. We were surrounded by his oil paintings of Cape Cod scenes. We talked about his painting; we talked about the Cape, a place we both love, little things–this harbor, that herring run. After all the craziness, after 40 years had slipped between us, he was completely at ease. I wanted to ask him about those awkward, awful times back when. But why mess with the mood? He had exorcised the demons. He was whole.