Senate pays tribute to Ted Kennedy

[graywarrior]

Get your hankies out.
WASHINGTON - The Senate chamber - where his booming laugh once echoed, where he gave impassioned speeches, and where he horse-traded with colleagues - fell silent in tribute yesterday to one of its most popular fixtures.

The moment of silence for Edward M. Kennedy stretched for more than a minute, following somber spoken testimonials, as his desk was draped with the traditional mourning symbol of the Senate: a black velvet cloth, topped with a glass vase of funereal white roses. Rather than the back-to-work paperwork laid neatly on the other 99 desks, Kennedy’s desk carried only a copy of the Robert Frost poem “The Road Less Traveled.’’

The Senate chaplain noted the end of an era, using his opening prayer to thank God for Kennedy’s life and legacy. Friends on both sides of the aisle recalled his gift for bipartisanship. And Democrats, wounded politically as well as emotionally by the loss of their party’s most ardent defender of liberalism, reminded their colleagues to continue the work started by the late lawmaker.

“Today is the first day since January 2, 1953, that a man named Kennedy does not have a desk on the floor of the United States Senate or in the Oval Office,’’ Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said as he opened the Senate after a monthlong recess.

“When I think of all the groundbreaking progress we have made over those 56 1/2 years - in civil rights, education, health care, and America’s global leadership - I know we have no choice but to keep going. Now is no time to let up.’’

Kennedy played a critical role in the imperiled health care overhaul talks, and while he was not present in the Senate during much of the 15 months of his illness, Democrats wondered how they would get a deal without Kennedy’s trademark negotiating skills.

As painful as it was to “look at the desk with the black drape and the flowers,’’ it is harder still, “to look at what’s ahead,’’ Senator majority whip Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said in an interview.

Reid kept in frequent touch with Kennedy’s wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, in recent months, trying to assess whether the senator could make it to Washington for a critical health care vote, Durbin said. But it became clear, the Illinois lawmaker noted sadly, “that he wasn’t coming back.’’

The Senate also passed a resolution last night honoring Kennedy that says, in part, that he “made the needs of working families and the less fortunate among us the work of his life, particularly those of the poor, the disenfranchised, the disabled, the young, the old, the working class, the service member, and the immigrant.’’

A formal day of tributes on the Senate floor is planned for tomorrow, when more of Kennedy’s colleagues will have returned from the August break. Dozens of senators made the trip to Boston for Kennedy’s funeral last month, but tomorrow will be the first chance for lawmakers to formally honor Kennedy in the chamber he so loved.

“The Senate grieves over the loss of one of its giants and one of our great friends,’’ top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said yesterday.

Some of the most poignant tributes came from colleagues whose political views were far to the right of Kennedy, who died Aug. 25 of brain cancer. While he had a national reputation as a determined liberal, fellow senators knew him as someone willing to make compromise and, often, as the deal-maker who could salvage foundering legislation.

Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican who was among many conservatives who found common ground with Kennedy on specific issues, mourned Kennedy’s “departure from public service’’ and the loss of the “Kennedy spirit’’ in the chamber.

“Senate Kennedy served with diligence, tireless passion, and of course, vigor,’’ Kyl said yesterday on the Senate floor. “Because of who he was, he could have gotten by without a lot of hard work, but that was not his way. He worked hard, as hard as any senator I’ve known.’’

Kennedy’s office continued its final work: shutting down its operation. Bouquets of white flowers filled the reception area, and visitors signed a guestbook in remembrance of Kennedy’s service. Mourners - including, on Labor Day, young men in Red Sox jerseys and elderly people who barely managed the trek with their walkers - visited Kennedy’s gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery.

“I miss him every day,’’ Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee last year, said in a brief interview. “Obviously there’s nobody like him.’’

http://www.boston.com/video/viral_page/?/services/player/bcpid19067533001&bctid=37894117001