A farewell to Ted Kennedy
Spencer Pyke, Fact Checker
Issue date: 9/3/09 Section: National
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The service included President Barack Obama, former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Al Gore, Joe Biden and the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, John McCain were other politicians in attendance.
The service took place at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston, a church that has particular meaning to Kennedy. He prayed there frequently when his daughter, Kara, was diagnosed with cancer and when he himself was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
President Obama performed the eulogy.
"And that's how Ted Kennedy became the greatest legislator of our time. He did it by hewing to principle, but also by seeking compromise and common cause," Obama said in his speech. "Not through deal-making and horse-trading alone, but through friendship, and kindness, and humor."
Kennedy, the "Liberal Lion of the Senate," agreed and worked with the Catholic Church on a wide variety of topics but drew large amounts of criticism for his view on abortion, which involved support of Roe v. Wade.
"The senator took the helm of one of the most prominent American Catholic political families of the 20th century after his two older brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert Kennedy, were assassinated in the 1960s," according to Catholicnews.com.
One of Kennedy's most significant speeches, Faith, Truth and Tolerance in America, was given in Lynchburg. In October of 1983, several months after he mistakenly received a fundraising letter from the Moral Majority asking for help battling "ultra-liberals like Ted Kennedy," he accepted an apologetic invitation to speak at Liberty University, according to an article in Time magazine by Amy Sullivan.
In the speech, Kennedy asked Jerry Falwell, Sr., the late chancellor and founder of Liberty University, to allow the college students an extra hour before curfew and in return he would watch Olde Time Gospel Hour, the broadcast program out of Thomas Road Baptist Church that Falwell founded.
"Actually, a number of people in Washington were surprised that I was invited to speak here -- and even more surprised when I accepted the invitation," Kennedy said to his audience. "They seem to think that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a Kennedy to come to the campus of Liberty Baptist College."