Post your personal memories of Teddy here

I never got to meet the man myself, but if you did, please post it here.
This is a good day for such memories.

If you worked in any of his campaigns(especially the 1980 presidential campaign)tell us about that as well.

Recommended.

I remember being ringside for the seconf Frazier vs Ali fight, at Madison Square Garden. My brother and I were sitting in the same row as Ted Kennedy and his son. They were a few seats away from us. I was, of course, primarily focused on the "main event" that night. But I remember the image of Ted Kennedy enjoying the night, and cheering for Ali. It added to the experience.

Every time I was ever in the Senate gallery and Senator Kennedy would speak, people would all stand and lean forward as far as they could making quite a commotion in an attempt to see the Great Senator.

The ushers in the gallery would all come running to put people back in their seats as noise or standing in the gallery is not permitted.

that Ted Kennedy voted against both the war and the patriot act. I loved him so much for it.

He stopped in town to campaign for another Senate great (then in the House) Paul Simon. I was working for the college radio station and got a chance to meet Senator Kennedy...a very gregarious and upbeat man. This was right after Nixon's pardon and I recall him saying how wrong Ford was to do that and to allow the Justice system to handle the matter. I should also note he had a pretty full glass in his hand that never seemed to hit bottom.

I've posted before that my father and JFK were close friends and that my dad advised the family on private legal matters. The one not so private matter that my dad handled was representing Teddy in the Chapppaquiddick tragedy.I'm not going into detail on that...suffice it to say it was a very difficult time. The two men remained friends for years. Ted was instrumental in getting a bill through Congress reinstating the rank of an Admiral, a dear friend of my father's, who had been blamed for the raid on Pearl Harbor. My father had worked for 50 years, 50 years, to clear the man's name and Ted had guided it through the final stages. Clinton signed the bill a month or so before my father passed away and Ted sent him one of the signing pens and a wonderful letter. A year or so later, I saw Teddy at an event in Boston and was able to speak with him. I told him how much his help on the Pearl Harbor matter had meant to my father and how his letter and the signing pen lay in the bookcase next to his favorite chair. To my complete shock, Teddy began to cry. Right there, with all those people around him. The tears were rolling down his cheeks. I will never forget that encounter. Ted Kennedy had a huge heart.

that was a grave injustice done to the Admiral. My dad, not exactly known for marching out of step with the military, always railed about that & how that man (name escapes me now, sorry) was made a scapegoat & punished for speaking the truth. Thanks to your Dad & Senator Kennedy for righting that wrong! :patriot:

dg

My dad was a young Navy lawyer and was assigned to represent him in connection with the hearings before Congress. My dad never forgot that injustice and literally worked all his life to right that wrong. He could never have done it without Ted Kennedy.

Thanks for sharing the touching story.

:dem:

-Laelth

Got to be part of the welcoming committee & met with him, his wife, & nephew briefly backstage. We joked about our names & how we were most likely cousins. His appearance made YouTube & I'm in it. Anyway, found out a few months afterwards via Ancestry.com that we are related, although quite distantly. Kind of ironic since my right-wing family members always derisively called him "Cousin Ted;" boy were there some long faces around the table at Christmas last year.

RIP Cousin Ted! :cry:

dg

with his wife Victoria. He had been placed in the TSA no flight list! Boy, what a night. Senator Kennedy in the no flight list??? Say it is not so....Anyone else would of raise the roof ! I spoke to him after he was place on another flight which he had to wait a couple of hours for, he shook my hand and smile, what a smile the type that touches the eyes with a wonderful sparkle, as we sat there, we talked about the state of our Country!:cry:

This is not a direct contact with Kennedy, but his national security advisor of his Senate staff, Greg Craig. These meetings were organized by a consortium of non profits and foundations, and brought together representatives of the ANC, the internal movement and government. They were talks about talks, so to speak. There were lots of speeches and presentations and a few dinners.

I was lucky to be seated at a table with Craig, who was representing Kennedy, and several South Africans, including the guy from the ANC, Mac Maharaj. He was working very hard behind the scenes to get talks going, and Craig was very engaged in dealing with the ANC which the Reagan administration considered a terrorist organization.

A few years later, I found myself interviewing elderly black South Africans in really, really remote black, rural South African communities threatened with forced removal by the apartheid government.

In several homes, there were pictures hanging in living rooms of Sen. Kennedy shaking hands with these people, because Kennedy had made many low key trips to SA, gone way out into the outback, to help these people resist having their land stolen from them by the government.

received huge cheers from the crowd when he uttered the names of several prominent anti-apartheid leaders(Tutu and both Mandelas IIRC)at a time when it was actually against South African law to SAY their names.

Going back further, a lot of people don't remember that most of Teddy's famous eulogy of Bobby was actually a recitation of the speech Bobby had given during his visit to South Africa in 1966(the only visit Bobby was able to make to that country, since the apartheid regime barred his re-entry to South Africa due to the huge crowds he drew and the passionate anti-apartheid stance Bobby took, a stance that could have imperiled Bobby's political career in the U.S., since at the time the U.S. government, to its eternal disgrace, was SUPPORTING the apartheid regime on "anticommunist" grounds, and also something of an act of repentance for the fact that it was a Kennedy State Department staffer who alerted the South African Defense Forces to Nelson Mandela's wherabouts in 1962, thus causing Mandela's imprisonment.)

A small group of us, beginning "Young Democrats," was setting up a meeting room for a Kennedy campaigner slowly and without much pep. About a half hour before the speech, Ted Kennedy popped in, thanked everyone personally and helped rearrange the room in a whirlwind, nonstop fashion. Enthusiasm went off the scale and continued right into JFK's administration. Nice memory.