There was a time 40 years ago, right after the assassination of his brother Robert, when it looked like Edward Kennedy would become President someday by right of succession. The Kennedy curse, the one that had seen all three of his brothers cut down in their prime, had created for him a sort of Kennedy prerogative, or at least the illusion of one, an inevitable claim on the White House. For years he seemed like a man simply waiting for the right moment to take what everybody knew was coming his way.

Everybody was wrong. Ted Kennedy would never reach the White House. His weaknesses - and the long shadow of Chappaquiddick - were an obstacle that even his strengths couldn't overcome. But his failure to get to the presidency opened the way to the true fulfillment of his gifts, which was to become one of the greatest legislators in American history. When their White House years are over, most Presidents set off on the long aftermath of themselves. They give lectures, write books, play golf and make money. Jimmy Carter even won a Nobel Prize. But every one of them would tell you that elder-statesmanship is no substitute for real power.(See pictures of Ted Kennedy's life and times.)

Because Kennedy never made it to the finish line, he never had to endure a post-presidential twilight. Instead, by the time of his death on Aug. 25 in Hyannis Port at the age of 77, he had 46 working years in Congress, time enough to leave his imprint on everything from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009, a law that expands support for national community-service programs. Over the years, Kennedy was a force behind the Freedom of Information Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. He helped Soviet dissidents and fought apartheid. Above all, he conducted a four-decade crusade for universal health coverage, a poignant one toward the end as the country watched a struggle with a brain tumor. But along the way, he vastly expanded the network of neighborhood clinics, virtually invented the COBRA system for portable insurance and helped create the laws that provide Medicare prescriptions and family leave. (See a Kennedy family photo album.)

And for most of that time, he went forward against great odds, the voice of progressivism in a conservative age. When people were getting tired of hearing about racism or the poor or the decay of American cities, he kept talking. When liberalism was flickering, there was Kennedy, holding the torch, insisting that "we can light those beacon fires again." In the last year of his life, with the Inauguration of Barack Obama, he had the satisfaction of seeing a big part of that dream fulfilled. In early 2008, when Obama had just begun to capture the public imagination, Kennedy bucked the party establishment. Just before Super Tuesday, the venerable Senator from Massachusetts enthusiastically endorsed the young Senator from Illinois, helping propel Obama to the Democratic nomination and ultimately the White House.

So does it matter that Kennedy never made it to the presidency? Any number of mere Presidents have been pretty much forgotten. But as the Romans understood, there can be Emperors of no consequence - and Senators whose legacies are carved in stone.

Rose Kennedy wanted a family. Joe Kennedy wanted a dynasty. They both got what they wanted, but only for a time. Joe had made a fortune in film production, liquor, real estate and stocks. But he wasn't just a businessman. In the scope of his ambitions and schemes, he was something out of Shakespeare. He married Rose in 1914, and as their children arrived, he formed the conviction not only that the boys belonged in public life but that one of them, maybe more than one, should be President of the United States.

This was the atmosphere that Ted was born into on Feb. 22, 1932 - the last of the nine Kennedy children. But from the start, he had three elder brothers as a buffer between himself and the worst of the old man's ambition for his sons. All the same, he grew up at some distance from his parents. Over the years, Joe and Rose had become increasingly estranged. Overweight and lonely, Ted was shuttled through a succession of boarding and day schools, but he grew into an athletic, good-looking teenager, one who ambled into Harvard, where Jack and Bobby had gone before him.

He hadn't been at Harvard long before he screwed up in a way that would come back to haunt him years later. In his freshman year, Kennedy was having trouble with a Spanish class. There was a test coming up, and he needed to do well in order to be eligible to play varsity football the next year. With the encouragement of some of his buddies, Kennedy recruited a friend who was good at Spanish to take the exam in his place. The scheme backfired. The surrogate was caught, and both boys were expelled, though Harvard offered them the opportunity to be readmitted later if they showed evidence of "constructive and responsive citizenship."

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Kennedy's abrupt next move was to join the Army, which sent him to Georgia to be trained as a military police officer and then, thanks to his father's intervention, to Paris to serve as an honor guard at NATO headquarters. In the fall of 1953, he was readmitted to Harvard, where he majored in government. After graduation, he went on to study law at the University of Virginia. He was in law school when he met Joan Bennett, a senior at Manhattanville College, a small Catholic school in New York State that his mother and two of his sisters had attended. Not much more than a year after they first met, they married. Over the next nine years, they had three children: Kara, Edward Jr. and Patrick. (Joan also suffered three miscarriages.) But by 1982, the combination of her prolonged struggle with alcohol and his infidelities led them to divorce. Joan often found herself burdened by the effort required to fill the role of a Kennedy wife. Years later, sounding a bit like Princess Diana, she told an interviewer, "I didn't have a clue what I was getting into."

What she had gotten into was the Kennedys, a family whose family business was politics. Ted was still in law school when he was made campaign manager for Jack's 1958 bid for a second term as Senator. Though the real decision-making was left to seasoned Kennedy operatives, the campaign put Ted in the field constantly to meet and greet voters. It prepared him for a future, coming soon, in which he would be the candidate. When Jack was elected to the White House in 1960, there were four years remaining in his Senate term. The family wanted Ted to succeed him, but at 28, he was two years below the minimum age for the Senate. So a Kennedy loyalist was chosen to fill the seat for a couple of years while Ted used the time to make himself plausible to the state's voters as a man they should send to Washington. With Jack's help, he attached himself to a Senate fact-finding trip to Africa. He toured Latin America, Israel and Berlin. On Election Day, with 54% of the vote, Kennedy beat George Cabot Lodge, a descendant of the Waspiest of New England political dynasties. (Read "Kennedy's Absence Felt on Health-Care Reform.")

Ted had been in the Senate for less than a year when JFK went to Dallas the day Lee Harvey Oswald was lying in wait. Jack's death was more than a personal tragedy for Ted. It was a watershed. It put him one step closer to assuming the Kennedy burden, the perennial quest for the heights. It marked the beginning of his transformation into a true public figure. As a first measure, Ted devoted himself to ensuring the passage of legislation that had been important to his brother, especially the civil rights bill JFK introduced the summer before his death. On June 19, Ted added his vote to the 73-to-27 majority that turned that bill into the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Then he headed to the airport to board a private plane that was to take him to the state Democratic Party convention in Springfield, Mass. But as the plane made its descent into a fogbound Springfield airport, it struck a row of trees and somersaulted across an orchard. The pilot, Ed Zimny, died at the scene. A Kennedy aide, Ed Moss, died a few hours later. Indiana Senator Birch Bayh and his wife Marvella, who were also on board, survived with minor injuries. Kennedy suffered a broken back and a collapsed lung.

What followed was a five-month recovery, mostly spent immobilized in a hospital bed, and a lifetime of back pain. Yet when he returned to the Senate the following year, Kennedy set to work with the energy that comes to a man who gets a second chance at life. It wasn't long before Ted scored a victory on another of Jack's unrealized goals, the reform of immigration quotas to allow more arrivals from nations outside Northern Europe. One year later, he secured federal support for neighborhood clinics, marking the first time he applied himself to the problem of health care, the signature issue of his public life. (Read "Eunice Kennedy Shriver Dies at 88.")

By 1967, Kennedy had also begun to speak out against the Vietnam War. Exasperation about Vietnam was one of the main reasons his brother Robert decided to seek the presidency in 1968. Then Bobby was shot down as well. His death was a crucial moment of recognition for Ted that the burden of the Kennedy legacy was now his to shoulder. For years he had been the Prince Hal of the Kennedy dynasty, the wayward son who would just as soon not inherit the kingdom. But now, at 36, he was the last of the line. There was no one else.

So when Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon in the fall, Ted instantly became liberalism's last, best hope. There were people who thought he lacked Jack's intellect or Bobby's passion, that all his life he had merely trawled in their wake. But in his first speech after Bobby's death, he was already sounding the cry that would be the great theme of his political life: "Like my brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, to excellence, to courage, that distinguished their lives." (See pictures of TIME's coverage of Watergate.)

This was the moment when everyone assumed that the presidency would someday be his for the asking. But it was only a moment. On July 18, 1969, Kennedy hosted a reunion for six women who had worked at the center of Bobby's presidential campaign. The gathering took place in a rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, just off Martha's Vineyard. Around 11:15 that night, Kennedy asked his driver for the keys to his Oldsmobile so that he could leave the party with Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, a former aide to his brother. According to testimony he gave later at a judge's inquest, he took a wrong turn onto an unlit dirt road and then across a small, unrailed wooden bridge. His car went over the side of the bridge and landed upside down in the water. Kennedy managed to escape. Kopechne did not.

There are questions about Chappaquiddick that have never been closed. Where was Kennedy going with Kopechne at that late hour? (At the inquest in January, he claimed that he was taking her back to her hotel in Edgartown.) Why did he wait until the following morning, 10 hours later, to report the accident to the police? (He said it was because he had been in a state of shock and confusion.) Was the real reason for delaying the report that at the time of the accident he was drunk? (He insisted he was not.) At the inquest, he testified that after escaping from the car, he dived back into the water seven or eight times in a vain attempt to free Kopechne. Then he made the mile-and-a-half walk back to the cottage, where the party was still underway, collected two male friends and returned with them to the car, where they also attempted to free Kopechne. When that proved impossible, Kennedy decided to return to his hotel across the water in Edgartown. But instead of summoning the night ferry, he chose to swim 500 feet across the bay. (Read " Mary Jo Kopechne: The Girl Next Door.")

The inquest concluded that Kennedy had lied when he said he was taking Kopechne back to Edgartown. It also ruled that his "negligent driving" appeared to have contributed to her death. By the time the inquest was complete, Kennedy had already entered a guilty plea to leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended sentence. But it would be truer to say he was sentenced to life under the cloud of Chappaquiddick.

Had it not been for that night, he almost certainly would have been a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. He stayed on the sidelines that year and in 1976 as well, even though in the aftermath of Watergate, that looked to be a winning year for the Democrats. It would be, but for Jimmy Carter.

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Kennedy found new issues to throw himself into. In 1970 he introduced his first bill to establish a system of universal health-care coverage. He confounded people who thought of him as a doctrinaire liberal by pushing for airline deregulation and for required sentencing of convicted criminals. He promoted arms-control talks with the Soviet Union but also devoted himself to the cause of Soviet dissidents and would-be Jewish ÉmigrÉs.

It was Chappaquiddick as much as anything else that sabotaged his most serious attempt at the White House: his fight in 1980 to push Carter aside. Almost three decades later, that campaign is still a bit of a puzzle. His ideological differences with Carter never seemed great enough to justify a challenge to a sitting President of his own party. His main complaint was that Carter wasn't moving forward fast enough on health care, "the great unfinished business on the agenda of the Democratic Party," as he called it. In a televised interview on Nov. 4, 1979, just three days before he would launch his campaign, Kennedy gave CBS News correspondent Roger Mudd a notoriously rambling answer to the simple question "Why do you want to be President?" The man who had spent years on a trajectory to the White House still couldn't say exactly why. (Read "Could He Win in 72 Despite Chappaquiddick?")

In the end, Kennedy won 10 primaries. Carter took 24, then sailed into the propellers of Ronald Reagan in the fall. But that failed campaign liberated Kennedy. He gave the best speech of his life at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, the speech of a man who had no intention of exiting the public stage. Because the White House was never again a serious option for him, he was free to concentrate once and for all on legislating.

It was the dawn of the Reagan Revolution, and the Republicans had just retaken the Senate - not an easy time to be the torchbearer for liberalism. But Kennedy assumed the role gladly. He became not only a dogged defender of the faith but also an even more adept player of the congressional game. In the '80s, he teamed repeatedly with the unlikeliest of allies, conservative Utah Republican Orrin Hatch. It was Hatch and Kennedy who got the first major AIDS legislation passed in 1988, a $1 billion spending measure for treatment, education and research. Two years later, they pushed through the Ryan White CARE Act to assist people with HIV who lack sufficient health-care coverage. But if Kennedy knew how to play ball with the other side, he also knew how to play hardball. When Reagan tried to put Robert Bork on the Supreme Court, it was Kennedy who led the ferocious and ultimately successful liberal opposition. (Read "The All-American President: Ronald Wilson Reagan.")

Kennedy wasn't nearly as prominent in the next major battle over a court seat, the 1991 nomination of Clarence Thomas by George H.W. Bush. Even in the best of times, Kennedy's reputation for womanizing would have made it awkward for him to sit in judgment when Thomas was accused by Anita Hill of sexual harassment. But the Senate hearings on Thomas started at a particularly bad moment for Kennedy, just months after one of the messiest episodes in his public life. In March, while visiting the family compound in Palm Beach, Fla., Kennedy had roused his son Patrick and his nephew William Kennedy Smith out of bed so they could join him for drinks at a local bar. Smith returned to the compound that night with a young woman who would later accuse him of raping her. He was eventually acquitted after a nationally televised trial in which Kennedy was called as a witness. But the image of the capering Senator leading two younger men out to play reawakened all the old misgivings about Kennedy, women and alcohol. The man who had once been Prince Hal, the reluctant heir to the throne, was in danger of turning into Falstaff, the aging reprobate.

Kennedy pulled himself back from that brink. In the summer of the same year, a decade after his divorce from Joan, Kennedy re-encountered Victoria Reggie, a 37-year-old lawyer and gun-safety advocate who had briefly been an intern in his Senate office. Now she lived in Washington with her two children from a previous marriage. Soon they were dating, and a year later they were married. The new marriage transformed Kennedy, giving him a feeling of contentment and stability he had not enjoyed for years. It was a newly energized Kennedy who moved on to the legislative accomplishments of the '90s, like the Family and Medical Leave Act. When the Republicans retook Congress in 1994, it was Kennedy who would push Bill Clinton from the left when Clinton's old soul mates from the Democratic Leadership Council were urging him to move right. "The last thing this country needs," he said then, "is two Republican Parties." (See pictures of Bill Clinton's North Korea rescue mission.)

Yet when the next President turned out to be a Republican, Kennedy still found a way to work with him on shared goals. Kennedy spearheaded the effort to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, a priority for George W. Bush. But they later parted ways over what Kennedy felt was Bush's failure to adequately fund the program. And on other issues, there could be no common ground. In 2002, Kennedy was one of the 23 Senators who voted against authorizing the Iraq war. Years later, he would call it the "best vote" he ever cast in the Senate.

But by that time, there had been a lot of good votes - votes that left the country a changed place and a better one. Nobody talks about Camelot anymore. They struck the scenery long ago. Without Ted, the Kennedy legacy would be mostly beautiful afterglow, just mood music and high rhetoric. More than either of his brothers, he took the mythology and shaped it into something real and enduring.

On the weekend of his Inauguration in 1961, John Kennedy gave Ted, the last born of the Kennedy siblings, an engraved cigarette box. It read, "And the last shall be first." That was almost 50 years ago. Neither of them knew then in just what ways that prophecy might turn out to be true.

We do.

Read TIME's 1962 article "Teddy & Kennedyism."

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The last picture: Sen. Edward Kennedy, in the centre in white hat and dark glasses, returns to the Hyannis Yacht Club on Sunday just days before he died

Ted Kennedy: 'Heartbroken' Obama leads tributes to 'the greatest U.S senator of our time'

26th August 2009

 

Barack Obama has hailed Edward Kennedy as 'the greatest United States senator of our time', after the announcement that the 77-year-old senator had died of brain cancer last night.

Sen. Kennedy, who was left to head the Kennedy clan after his brothers President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008.

President Obama said he and his wife MIchelle were 'heartbroken' to learn of Senator Kennedy's death.

Appearing outside a beach house where he is holidaying with his family on Martha's Vineyard, Obama called Kennedy 'an extraordinary leader.' 

Obama said. 'For his family, he was a guardian. For America, he was a defender of a dream.'

 

Heartbroken: Barack Obama reads a statement about the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy this afternoon

In a statement Obama said: 'An important chapter in our history has come to an end.

'Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time.'

He continued: 'And the Kennedy family has lost their patriarch, a tower of strength and support through good times and bad.'

Today, Gordon Brown said Kennedy would be mourned in 'every continent'.

The Prime Minister said: 'He is admired around the world as the senator of senators.

'He led the world in championing children's education and health care, and believed that every single child should have the chance to realise their potential to the full.

'Even facing illness and death, he never stopped fighting for the causes which were his life's work.'

Tory leader David Cameron said: 'During his life he served the American people in the spirit of a family whose name is synonymous with public service in the United States.

'He fought for the causes he stood for, from civil rights to education and healthcare.'

Former prime minister Tony Blair hailed his role in the peace process.

Ted Kennedy (right), with brothers John F. Kennedy (left) who was assassinated in 1963, and Robert Kennedy, who died in 1968, at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts






He said: "I saw his focus and determination first hand in Northern Ireland where his passionate commitment was matched with a practical understanding of what needed to be done to bring about peace and to sustain it.

'I was delighted he could join us in Belfast the day devolved government was restored.

'My thoughts and prayers today are with all his family and friends as they reflect on the loss of a great and good man.'

And Nancy Reagan said in a statement from Los Angeles: 'Given our political differences, people are sometimes surprised by how close Ronnie and I have been to the Kennedy family.

'But Ronnie and Ted could always find common ground, and they had great respect for one another. In recent years, Ted and I found our common ground in stem cell research, and I considered him an ally and a dear friend. I will miss him.'

After a successful initial operation, Kennedy's health continued to deteriorate, and he suffered a seizure after President Barack Obama's inauguration.

Kennedy was a major figure in the US Democratic Party and one of the most influential and longest-serving senators in U.S. history.

The Kennedy clan at the family home in Hyannisport: Seated (left to right) Eunice, Rose, Joe - the head of the family, Jackie Onassis, Ted. Standing (left to right) Ethel, Stephen Smith, Jean, John, Robert, Patricia Kennedy, Robert Sargent Shriver, Virginia (wife of Ted, and actor Peter Lawford

Kennedy has served his country for nearly half a century after he  was elected to the Senate in 1962, and has served longer than all but two senators in history.

Known as 'Teddy', he was the brother of President John Kennedy, assassinated in 1963, Senator Robert Kennedy, fatally shot while campaigning for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, and Joe Kennedy, a pilot killed in World War Two.

He died just weeks after his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics and was a leading advocate for the mentally disabled.

In March, Kennedy's relationship with the UK was cemented after he was awarded an honorary knighthood for his services to the US-UK relationship and to the Northern Ireland peace process.

But in the past had drawn criticism after he was seen as an IRA sympathiser early on in The Troubles.

Coming from an American-Irish family, he was outspoken about Northern Ireland throughout his political career, and supported Republicanism.

He pressed for the withdrawal of British troops from the Province and whenever Margaret Thatcher visited Washington, Kennedy could always be seen wearing a bright green tie.

But in recent years he mellowed and modified his views and appealed for peace.

Over the decades, Kennedy put his imprint on every major piece of U.S. social legislation to clear the Congress, and was particularly vocal on health care, civil rights, war and peace.

 

Kennedy meets Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in 2006

His death marks the twilight of the Kennedy political dynasty, but it also deals a blow to Democrats.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who beat out Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, called him 'an unwavering advocate for the millions of less fortunate in our country.'

'The courage and dignity he exhibited in his fight with cancer was surpassed only by his lifelong commitment and service to his country,' Carter said in a statement.

President Obama is seeking to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system, a cause which Kennedy had made his lifetime's work.

Despite illness in the past 18 months, colleagues and staff said he remained determined to provide health insurance to all Americans, which he named the 'cause of my life'

In a statement, his family said: 'Edward M. Kennedy, the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply, died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

'We've lost the irreplaceable centre of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever.'

His interest in healthcare dated from his own son's bout with cancer in the 1970s as well as his own battle with the disease.

When he first took the Senate seat, vacated by John Kennedy in 1962, he was seen as a political lightweight who owed his ascent to his famous name.

Yet during his nearly half century in the chamber, he became known as one of Washington's most effective senators, crafting legislation by working with lawmakers and presidents of both parties, and finding unlikely allies.

At the same time, he held fast to liberal causes. He helped create measures to protect civil and labour rights, expand healthcare, upgrade schools, increase student aid and contain the spread of nuclear weapons.

He drew praise from liberals, labor and civil rights groups and scorn from conservatives, big business and anti-abortion and pro-gun activists.

 

Ted Kennedy's car is pulled from the water at Edgartown. Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Kennedy drove his car off Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island

'There's a lot to do,' he said in 2006. 'I think most of all it's the injustice that I continue to see and the opportunity to have some impact on it.'

After elder brother Robert Kennedy's death in 1968, Edward was expected to run for presidency.

But in 1969, a young woman drowned when a car he was driving plunged off a bridge on the Massachusetts resort island of Chappaquiddick after a night of partying.

Cover-up? Mary Jo Kopechne was killed when Sen. Kennedy drove a car off a bridge in Massachusetts 40 years ago

His image took a major hit after it emerged he had failed to report the accident to authorities. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene and received a suspended sentence.

But a decades-long argument arose about whether he tried to cover up his involvement by leaving the scene while Mary Jo Kopechne's body remained submerged, and whether police helped sweep such questions under the rug.

Despite the incident, polls in 1971 suggested he could win presidential nomination if he tried. But it was not until 1980 that he eventually ran for nomination - but lost to then-President Jimmy Carter.

His presidential ambitions thwarted, Kennedy devoted himself to his Senate career.

His political battles brought him enemies as well as admirers, including in South Africa where he staged a dangerous visit to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned black leader Nelson Mandela, against the wishes of the apartheid government.

Republican Senator John McCain called Kennedy 'the single most effective member of the Senate if you want to get results'.   

Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama for presidential nomination in January 2008, over Hillary Clinton, was seen as the passing of the political torch to a new generation.

President Obama has named Kennedy as one of 16 recipients of the 2009 Presidential  Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honour.

Teddy, with his second wife Victoria at his side, punches the air in triumph after winning re-election for the Senate for a sixth term

Senator Kennedy with Winnie Mandela, then wife of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, in 1985

Born on February 22, 1932, Edward More Kennedy was the last of four sons and five daughters, all now dead, born to millionaire businessman Joseph Kennedy, who would later be ambassador to Britain, and his wife Rose.

The sons were groomed for presidency, starting with the oldest, Joseph Jr., a bomber pilot who died in World War Two.

'I think about my brothers every day,' he said. 'They set high standards. Sometimes you measure up, sometimes you don't.'

Like his brothers, Kennedy was known for his oratory, delivered in a booming voice at rallies, congressional hearings and in the Senate.

He married first wife Virginia, known as Joan, in 1958 and they had three children, Kara, 49, Edward Jnr, 47 and Patrick, 42. After the deaths of his brothers, he took on a role as a surrogate father to their 13 children.

But he was well known for womanising during and after his first marriage and tragedies were never far away from the Kennedy clan.

Not only did he suffer the deaths of brothers Joe, Robert and John, but his sister Kathleen died in plane crash in 1948.

Ted Kennedy at 30, waves to party workers with his first wife Joan after his election as democratic US senator for Massachusetts

Another sister, Rosemary, had a failed lobotomy at the age of 23 and was mentally incapacitated for the rest of her life.

Other tragedies to dog Kennedy included a 1964 plane crash that damaged his spine and left him with persistent pain, bone cancer that cost son Teddy a leg, first wife Joan's battles with alcoholism that contributed to their divorce, and drug problems involving nephews, one of whom died of an overdose. 

His nephew, John Kennedy Jr., also died in July 1999 when his small plane crashed into the ocean near Cape Cod.

He leaves court in Edgartown in July 1969 after pleading guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of the accident which killed aide Mary Jo Kopechne





After his first marriage ended in divorce in 1980, he remarried Victoria, a divorced mother-of-two, in 1992 and she helped him regain his political momentum.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, in which two of the planes had taken off from Boston, Sen. Kennedy rang each of the 177 families there who had lost members in the terrorist attacks.

He delivers a powerful speech, despite being ill, at the 2008 Democratic National Convention






He was a supporter of the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan but opposed the Iraq war, which he called 'Bush's Vietnam'.

In May 2008, Edward Kennedy collapsed at his Cape Cod home and was flown to hospital in Boston, where he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Brain cancer kills half its victims within a year.

He continued to work, particularly on health care issues, despite being prone to seizures, weak and short on energy.

Sen. Kennedy made a surprise visit the Senate, while being treated for cancer in July 2008, to cast a decisive vote on the Medicare bill, and appeared at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008 where he vowed to see Obama inaugurated as President.

He said: 'So, with Barack Obama and for you and for me, our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.'

On January 20, he was there to see Obama become President, but then suffered a seizure at the luncheon afterwards.

Kennedy's illness kept him from attending the funeral of his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a leading advocate of the mentally disabled, who died on August 11 at the age of 88.






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