One of the finest speeches I’ve heard in my life was Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother Bobby. Today finds Ted Kennedy with with a malignant brain tumor. I suppose treatment with chemo and radication will follow, but I fear we are seeing the end of an era here. Alas. Here’s an excerpt of that speech at Bobby Kennedy’s funeral, from a PBS site(you can listen to it there as well):

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.”

I’ve not always been a big fan of Ted, but I was a huge fan of his older brother, and when I hear that eulogy, every single time, I get a tear in my eye. Ted was a bit of a charicature at times, though he certainly fought the good fight. The man could rise to heights, that’s for sure.

God Bless to the Kennedy family. They were born to wealth, but certrainly fought for the least of their fellow citizens. They are all to be commended for that.