Remembering Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Floor Speech

REMEMBERING SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY -- (Senate - September 10, 2009)

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I thank my friend and colleague Senator Murray for her heartfelt words, and all of my colleagues. The love we all felt and feel for Ted Kennedy is genuine. It is person to person because that is how he was.

There is so much to say. I know we are limited in time. We could speak forever. I think every one of us could speak forever about Ted Kennedy because he had so many interactions with each of us. It is amazing that every person in this body has a long list of stories and thousands of people in Massachusetts and thousands more throughout America. One would think there were 20 Ted Kennedys. He had so much time for the small gesture that mattered so much, such as the hug, going out of his way to go to a reception and hug Patty Murray's mom. It happened over and over again. So we could each speak forever.

I know time is limited, my colleague from Oregon is waiting. We are going to shut off debate soon and others want to speak. I will touch on a few things.

I could speak forever about Ted Kennedy. I thought of him every day while he was alive; I think of him every day that he is gone. I had a dream about him the other night where typically he was taking me around to various places in Boston and explaining a little bit about each one with a joke, with a smile, with a remembrance.

There is also nothing we can say about Ted Kennedy because nothing is going to replace him. No words can come close to equaling the man.

You read about history and you read about the great people in the Senate--the Websters, the Clays, the LaFollettes, the Wagners. What a privilege it was for somebody such as myself, a kid from Brooklyn whose father was an exterminator, never graduated from college, to be in the presence and was actually a friend to a great man. I don't think I can say that about anyone else. It is amazing.

What I want to tell the American people--you all read about him. There were the good times and the bad times and the brickbats that were thrown at him, not so much recently but in the early days. But here in the Senate, when you get to know people personally and when you are in our walk of life, being a Senator, you get to know a lot of people personally. You get to meet a lot of famous people. Some of them, frankly, are disappointing. The more you see them the less you want to know them. But with Ted Kennedy, the more you got to see him, the closer you got, the better he looked.

He had flaws, but he was flawless. He was such a genuine person and such a caring person and such an honorable and decent man that I wish my children had gotten to know him, that my friends had gotten to know him, that all of my 19 million constituents had gotten to know him a little bit the way I did.

What a guy. There are so many stories and so many memories. One day Ted and I sat next to each other--I used to sit over there. I think it was one of the vote-aramas, a long session. We occasionally would go up to his hideaway to talk. I said: Why don't we bring some of the freshmen. This was a couple of years ago. I regret that you, Mr. President, and the Senator from Oregon in the class of 2008 did not have that experience. We would go up to his hideaway, and he would regale us with stories. He would talk about the pictures on the wall and tell each person in caring detail what each picture meant, what each replica meant. He would tell jokes and laugh. His caring for each person in that room, each a new freshman, was genuine, and they knew it. We would go up regularly. It sort of became a thing, freshman Members of the Senate. Ted didn't need them. He could get whatever he had to get done and they would support him. But he cared about them as if they were almost family.

Whenever we had a late night, we would sort of gather--I would be the emissary and I would go over to Ted and say: Can we go upstairs? Of course. Amy Klobuchar, Sherrod Brown, Claire McCaskill, Bobbie Casey--their faces would light up, and there we would go to hear more stories about the past, the Senate, the individuals. It is a memory none of us will forget.

Ted Kennedy would size people up early on, and he would care about them. He was very kind to me, but he also knew I was the kind of guy you had to put in his place a little bit. I would get hazed by Ted Kennedy. Jay Rockefeller told me he went through the same thing when he got here. He knew who I was but would deliberately not mention my name. He would be standing there saying: Senator Mikulski, you will do this, and Senator Harkin, you will do this; Senator Conrad, you will do this--I was the last one--and the others will do this. It was fun. He did it with a twinkle in his eyes. We loved, he and I, the give and take, Brooklyn-Boston.

The first year I was here, the Red Sox were playing the Yankees in the playoffs. Ted and I made a bet. He said: The loser will have to hold the pennant of the winning team over his head and recite ``Casey at the Bat'' on Capitol Hill. We had a bet. The Yankees won. I went over to him--and he was feigning fear, this man who had been through everything. When we went out on the steps, he was hiding behind me. I have a picture of it on my wall. We were joking and laughing. And then he did his duty.

I was only a freshman Senator, sort of like Patty or anybody else. He went out of his way for all of us. He would tell me to remember the birthdays and the individual happenings in each person's life, in each Senator's life, and go over and say something to them. It was his way of teaching me. It was done like a father. An amazing person.

As I said, the closer you got to him, the better he looked. As a legislator and as a giant in our history--and all the history books record it--people have referred to all his accomplishments. But I want to share with people how it was in person, one on one. You could be a Senator or you could be two guys on a street corner. He was fun and he was caring and he was loving. He was a big man, but his heart was much bigger than he was.

He loved almost everybody. He saw the good in people and brought it out. He saw the faults in people, and in a strong but gentle way tried to correct them. He was great on the outside, and he was even more great on the inside.

Again, I see my colleagues are waiting. I will part with this little memory that I will never forget. Ted and I became good friends. We spent time together in many different ways. When he got sick, I felt bad, like we all did. I would call him every so often. This was October of last year. He was ill, but he was still in strong health.

I called him a couple of days before it was October. I said: We have a DSCC event a couple days from now in Boston. I thought I would call and say hello, let him know I was going to be in his State, his territory.

He said: What are you doing before the event? He said: Why don't you come out to the compound at Hyannis. I did. He picked me up at the airport. I flew in on a little plane. I will never forget, he had his hat on. He was happy as could be pointing out everything, full of vim and vigor.

It is obvious why the man was not afraid of death. When you know yourself and you know you have done everything as he did on both a personal basis and as a leader, you are not afraid of death. Anyway, he was not at all talking about that.

We were supposed to go out sailing, but it was too windy. So we had lunch--he, Vicki, and I--clam chowder and all the usual stuff. Then he said: I want to show you something. He lived in the big house on the compound, the one you see in the pictures. He took me to the house by the side. That was the house where President Kennedy lived because when President Kennedy was President, Joseph P. Kennedy, Ted's father, lived in the big house.

For about 3 hours, he opened all these drawers and closets, things on the walls, and with each one in loving, teaching detail talked to me about the history of the family and of Boston, what happened from Honey Fitz, the mayor, through his father and Ted growing up in all these pictures laughing and reminiscing, and then about President Kennedy as he was growing up, and then as President in this little house and through to Ted. He was sort of passing on the memories. He did it again out of generosity, spirit, love, and friendship.

As I say, he was a great man and every one of us knows his greatness was not only in the public eye but in the private one on one. A great man. The term is overused. There are not many. He was one. I was privileged to get to know him, to get to be his friend, to stand in that large shadow, learn from him, enjoy it, and to love him.

So, Ted, you will always be with us. They may take those flowers off that desk and they may take the great black drape off the desk, but you will always be here for me, for all of us, and for our country.

I yield the floor.

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