Kennedy came into the old Senate Radio and TV Gallery to make some brief comments regarding the filibuster of a bill to a few assembled television cameras and their operators who were encamped as usual on the standing set.
A few months out of college, I was a newly minted television news producer and for some reason the only editorial presence in the studio.
It was early afternoon, and Teddy must have had a particularly enjoyable lunch with accompanying liquid refreshment.
Try as we might to proceed, the senator would start to formulate a sentence, but then would stumble, close his eyes and try to resume.
The cameramen were patient and we continued to try for just one more time.
Finally, the senator delivered an abbreviated distillation of his intended comments, shakily arose from behind the set’s imposing wooden desk and departed.
He was overweight with purplish capillaries tracking along his face like small rivers on a map. The great lion of the Senate was licking his personal wounds from a failed presidential candidacy, the ending of his 24 years of marriage to his first wife, and perhaps the final realization that he would never fill the shoes of his departed brothers.
A year later, I was covering the Iran Contra hearings and doing so every day for weeks and weeks. Senator Kennedy sat on the committee investigating such now folkloric characters as Oliver North and Eliot Abrams.
It was a simpler time, and security on Capitol Hill was rudimentary in comparison to other world capitals and to what it is today.
I could with a wink and a smile tell the Capitol policeman that I was going to park each morning “just for a little while” on the circular drive adjacent to the Senate side of the dome.
I was 23 years old, making no money in a job I loved, driving a new brand of car (a Hyundai), and very happy.
Leaving work fairly early one evening after the hearings, I was pulling away when I noticed Ted Kennedy standing on a curb in front of the Capitol.
“Do you need a ride senator?” I inquired rather cheekily after rolling down the window, manually of course.
That would be great, he replied to my complete amazement.
Whereas most of the time I would slink carefully away from any potential scrutiny by the police, we sailed across the Capitol grounds in my red hatchback, a wave from the senator all that was needed to clear our way.
I think I babbled congratulations on the recent engagement of his niece Maria Shriver to an action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
We spoke a little bit about the hearings and then I found myself at a business cocktail party standing with Ted Kennedy. Little alarm bells sounded in my head that maybe this was a bit out of my league, and I said a short goodbye and went home to recount the tale to my parents.
My father had one question: you did all the driving, right?
The 1980s ended and Edward Kennedy ultimately walked forward as a mighty legislator of great longevity, something none of his brothers tragically were ever able to achieve.
He discovered a rejuvenated and healthier life with his second wife Victoria Reggie, achieved several legislative triumphs like raising the minimum wage and a stalwart defense of Medicare, and helped magnanimously, and many times anonymously, in the effort to achieve a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.
Ted Kennedy would personally devote himself to the seemingly lesser tasks of attending to thank you notes. He was extremely solicitous, not just because of the kind of man he was, but also because he surrounded himself with a brilliant and dedicated staff.
The smallest of things outlives the human being, and Edward Kennedy was always attentive to the little things.