152 Facts About Edward Kennedy

Edward Moore Kennedy was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009.

Edward Kennedy is ranked fifth in United States history for length of continuous service as a senator.

Edward Kennedy was 30 years old when he first entered the Senate, winning a November 1962 special election in Massachusetts to fill the vacant seat previously held by his brother John, who had taken office as the US president.

Edward Kennedy was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was later re-elected seven more times.

Edward Kennedy pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and later received a two-month suspended sentence.

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Edward Kennedy ran in 1980 in the Democratic primary campaign for president, but lost to the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter.

Edward Kennedy became recognized as "The Lion of the Senate" through his long tenure and influence.

Unabashedly liberal, Edward Kennedy championed an interventionist government that emphasized economic and social justice, but he was known for working with Republicans to find compromises.

Edward Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery near his brothers John and Robert.

Edward Kennedy was the youngest of the nine children of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, members of prominent Irish American families in Boston.

Edward Kennedy had attended ten schools by the age of eleven; these disruptions that interfered with his academic success.

Edward Kennedy was an altar boy at the St Joseph's Church and was seven when he received his First Communion from Pope Pius XII in the Vatican.

Edward Kennedy spent sixth and seventh grades at the Fessenden School, where he was a mediocre student, and eighth grade at Cranwell Preparatory School; both schools located in Massachusetts.

Edward Kennedy was the youngest child and his parents were affectionate toward him, but they compared him unfavorably with his older brothers.

Edward Kennedy played on the tennis team and was in the drama, debate, and glee clubs.

Edward Kennedy was an offensive and defensive end on the freshman football team; his play was characterized by his large size and fearless style.

In June 1951, Edward Kennedy enlisted in the United States Army and signed up for an optional four-year term that was shortened to the minimum of two years after his father intervened.

Edward Kennedy went to Camp Gordon in Georgia for training in the Military Police Corps.

In June 1952, Edward Kennedy was assigned to the honor guard at SHAPE headquarters in Paris, France.

Edward Kennedy re-entered Harvard in the summer of 1953 and improved his study habits.

Edward Kennedy's brother John was a U S Senator and the family was attracting more public attention.

Edward Kennedy was on athletic probation during his sophomore year, and he returned as a second-string two-way end for the Crimson football team during his junior year.

Edward Kennedy received a recruiting feeler from Green Bay Packers head coach Lisle Blackbourn, who asked him about his interest in playing professional football.

Academically, Edward Kennedy received mediocre grades for his first three years, improved to a B average for his senior year, and finished barely in the top half of his class.

Edward Kennedy graduated from Harvard at age 24 in 1956 with an AB in history and government.

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Edward Kennedy instead followed his brother Bobby and enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Law in 1956.

That acceptance was controversial among faculty and alumni, who judged Edward Kennedy's past cheating episodes at Harvard to be incompatible with the University of Virginia's honor code; it took a full faculty vote to admit him.

Edward Kennedy attended The Hague Academy of International Law during one summer.

At Virginia, Edward Kennedy felt that he had to study "four times as hard and four times as long" as other students to keep up with them.

Edward Kennedy received mostly C grades and was in the middle of the class ranking, but won the prestigious William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition.

Edward Kennedy was elected head of the Student Legal Forum and brought many prominent speakers to the campus via his family connections.

In October 1957, Edward Kennedy met Joan Bennett at Manhattanville College; they were introduced after a dedication speech for a gymnasium that his family had donated at the campus.

Edward Kennedy took many overseas trips, billed as fact-finding tours with the goal of improving his foreign policy credentials.

Reports from the FBI and other sources had Edward Kennedy renting a brothel and opening up bordellos after hours during the tour.

Edward Kennedy's slogan was "He can do more for Massachusetts", the same one John had used in his first campaign for the seat ten years earlier.

Voters thought McCormack's performance overbearing, and with the family political machine's finally getting fully behind him, Edward Kennedy won the September 1962 primary by a two-to-one margin.

Edward Kennedy maintained a deferential attitude towards the older, seniority-laden Southern members when he first entered the Senate, avoiding publicity and focusing on committee work and local issues.

Edward Kennedy was favored by Senator James Eastland, chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson, despite his feuds with John and Robert Edward Kennedy, liked Ted and told close aides that he “had the potential to be the best politician in the whole family.

Edward Kennedy was pulled from the wreckage by fellow Senator Birch Bayh, and spent months in a hospital recovering from a severe back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs and internal bleeding.

Edward Kennedy suffered chronic back pain for the rest of his life as a result of the accident.

Edward Kennedy took advantage of his long convalescence to meet with academics and study issues more closely, and the hospital experience triggered his lifelong interest in the provision of health care services.

Edward Kennedy was walking with a cane when he returned to the Senate in January 1965.

Edward Kennedy employed a stronger and more effective legislative staff.

Edward Kennedy took on President Lyndon B Johnson and almost succeeded in amending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to explicitly ban the poll tax at the state and local level, thereby gaining a reputation for legislative skill.

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Edward Kennedy was a leader in pushing through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended a quota system based upon national origin.

Edward Kennedy played a role in the creation of the National Teachers Corps.

Edward Kennedy tried to reform "unfair" and "inequitable" aspects of the draft.

The 36-year-old Edward Kennedy was seen as the natural heir to his brothers, and "Draft Ted" movements sprang up from various quarters and among delegates.

Edward Kennedy was hosting a party for the Boiler Room Girls, a group of young women who had worked on his brother Robert's ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign.

Edward Kennedy left the party with one of the women, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne.

Edward Kennedy lost control of his vehicle and crashed in the Poucha Pond inlet, which was a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island.

Edward Kennedy escaped from the overturned vehicle, and, by his description, dove below the surface seven or eight times, vainly attempting to reach and rescue Kopechne.

Edward Kennedy did not report the accident to authorities until the next morning, by which time Kopechne's body had already been discovered.

Week after the incident, Edward Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a suspended sentence of two months in jail.

Edward Kennedy introduced a bipartisan bill in August 1970 for single-payer universal national health insurance with no cost sharing, paid for by payroll taxes and general federal revenue.

Edward Kennedy would later tell Byrd that the defeat was a blessing, as it allowed him to focus more on issues and committee work, where his best strengths lay and where he could exert influence independently from the Democratic party apparatus.

Edward Kennedy sponsored and helped pass the limited Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973.

Edward Kennedy played a leading role, with Senator Jacob Javits, in the creation and passage of the National Cancer Act of 1971.

In October 1971, Edward Kennedy made his first speech about The Troubles in Northern Ireland: he said that "Ulster is becoming Britain's Vietnam", advocating for the withdrawal of British troops from the six northern counties, called for a united Ireland, and declared that Ulster Unionists who could not accept this "should be given a decent opportunity to go back to Britain" .

Edward Kennedy was sharply criticised by the British and Ulster unionists, and he formed a long political relationship with Social Democratic and Labour Party founder John Hume.

In scores of anti-war speeches, Edward Kennedy opposed President Richard Nixon's policy of Vietnamization, calling it "a policy of violence [that] means more and more war".

In December 1971, Edward Kennedy strongly criticized the Nixon administration's support for Pakistan and its ignoring of "the brutal and systematic repression of East Bengal by the Pakistani army".

In February 1972, Edward Kennedy flew to Bangladesh and delivered a speech at the University of Dhaka, where a killing rampage had begun a year earlier.

George McGovern was close to clinching the Democratic nomination in June 1972, when various anti-McGovern forces tried to get Edward Kennedy to enter the contest at the last minute, but he declined.

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Edward Kennedy initially opposed busing schoolchildren across racial lines, but grew to support the practice as it became a focal point of civil rights efforts.

The predominantly white crowd yelled insults about his children and hurled tomatoes and eggs at him as he retreated into the John F Kennedy Federal Building and went so far as to push against one of its glass walls and break it.

Edward Kennedy defeated a primary challenger who was angry at his support for school busing in Boston.

Carter administration years were difficult for Edward Kennedy; he had been the most important Democrat in Washington ever since his brother Robert's death, but now Carter was, and Edward Kennedy at first did not have a full committee chairmanship with which to wield influence.

Edward Kennedy expressed to reporters that he was content with his congressional role and viewed presidential ambitions as almost far-fetched.

Edward Kennedy visited China on a goodwill mission in late December 1977, meeting with leader Deng Xiaoping and eventually gaining permission for a number of Mainland Chinese nationals to leave the country; in 1978, he visited the Soviet Union and Brezhnev and dissidents there again.

Edward Kennedy became chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1978, by which time he had amassed a wide-ranging Senate staff of a hundred.

In May 1979, Edward Kennedy proposed a new bipartisan universal national health insurance bill—choice of competing federally regulated private health insurance plans with no cost sharing financed by income-based premiums via an employer mandate and individual mandate, replacement of Medicaid by government payment of premiums to private insurers, and enhancement of Medicare by adding prescription drug coverage and eliminating premiums and cost sharing.

Edward Kennedy finally decided to seek the Democratic nomination in the 1980 presidential election by launching an unusual, insurgent campaign against the incumbent Carter.

Labor unions urged Edward Kennedy to run, as did some Democratic party officials who feared that Carter's unpopularity could result in heavy losses in the 1980 congressional elections.

Edward Kennedy did not dwell upon his presidential loss, but instead reaffirmed his public commitment to American liberalism.

Edward Kennedy chose to become the ranking member of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee rather than of the Judiciary Committee, which he would later say was one of the most important decisions of his career.

Edward Kennedy became a committed champion of women's issues, and established relationships with select Republican senators to block Reagan's actions and preserve and improve the Voting Rights Act, funding for AIDS treatment, and equal funding for women's sports under Title IX.

Later that year, Edward Kennedy created the Friends of Ireland organization with Senator Daniel Moynihan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill to support initiatives for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Edward Kennedy easily defeated Republican businessman Ray Shamie to win re-election in 1982.

Edward Kennedy became the Senate's leading advocate for a nuclear freeze and was a critic of Reagan's confrontational policies toward the Soviet Union.

Chebrikov wrote that Edward Kennedy was "'very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations'" and believed that the "'only real threats to Reagan [were] problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations'".

Former Reagan administration negotiator Max Kampelman has asserted that Edward Kennedy did engage in back-channel communications with the Soviet Union, but added that he "'learned that the senator never acted or received information without informing the appropriate United States agency or official'".

Edward Kennedy's staff drew up detailed plans for a candidacy in the 1984 presidential election that he considered, but with his family opposed and his realization that the Senate was a fully satisfying career, in late 1982 he decided not to run.

Edward Kennedy campaigned hard for Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale and defended vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro from criticism over being a pro-choice Catholic, but Reagan was re-elected in a landslide.

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Edward Kennedy staged a tiring, dangerous, and high-profile trip to South Africa in January 1985.

Edward Kennedy defied both the apartheid government's wishes and militant leftist AZAPO demonstrators by spending a night in the Soweto home of Bishop Desmond Tutu and visited Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned black leader Nelson Mandela.

The discussions were productive, and Edward Kennedy helped gain the release of a number of Soviet Jewish refuseniks, including Anatoly Shcharansky.

Female Senate staffers from the late 1980s and early 1990s recalled that Edward Kennedy was on an informal list of male Senators who were known for harassing women regularly, such as while alone in elevators.

Edward Kennedy continued his close working relationship with ranking Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, and they were close allies on many health-related measures.

Edward Kennedy saw a possible Bork appointment as leading to a dismantling of civil rights law that he had helped put into place, and feared Bork's originalist judicial philosophy.

Bush, but Kennedy won re-election to the Senate over Republican Joseph D Malone in the easiest race of his career.

In 1988 Edward Kennedy co-sponsored an amendment to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibits discrimination in the rental, sale, marketing, and financing of the nation's housing; the amendment strengthened the ability of the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity to enforce the Act and expanded the protected classes to include disabled persons and families with children.

Edward Kennedy had personal interest in the bill due to his sister Rosemary's condition and his son's lost leg, and he considered its enactment one of the most important successes of his career.

In late November 1989, Edward Kennedy traveled to see first-hand the newly fallen Berlin Wall; he spoke at John-F.

Kennedy's brother-in-law, Stephen Edward Smith, died from cancer in August 1990; Smith was a close family member and troubleshooter, and his death left Kennedy emotionally bereft.

Edward Kennedy pushed on, but even his legislative successes, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which expanded employee rights in discrimination cases, came at the cost of being criticized for compromising with Republicans and Southern Democrats.

On Easter weekend 1991, Edward Kennedy was at a get-together at the family's Palm Beach, Florida, estate.

Edward Kennedy got his son Patrick and nephew William Kennedy Smith to accompany him.

Cassone said that Ted Edward Kennedy subsequently walked in on her and Patrick, who was dressed only in a nightshirt and had a weird look on his face.

The local police made a delayed investigation; Edward Kennedy sources were soon feeding the press with negative information about Bowman's background, and several mainstream newspapers broke an unwritten rule by publishing her name.

Time magazine said Edward Kennedy was being perceived as a "Palm Beach boozer, lout and tabloid grotesque" while Newsweek said Edward Kennedy was "the living symbol of the family flaws".

Edward Kennedy was hamstrung by his past reputation and the ongoing developments in the William Edward Kennedy Smith case.

Edward Kennedy said almost nothing until the third day of the Thomas–Hill hearings, and when he did it was criticized by Hill supporters for being too little, too late.

Writer Anna Quindlen said "[Edward Kennedy] let us down because he had to; he was muzzled by the facts of his life".

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Romney ran as a successful entrepreneur and Washington outsider with a strong family image and moderate stands on social issues, while Edward Kennedy was saddled not only with his recent past but the 25th anniversary of Chappaquiddick and his first wife Joan seeking a renegotiated divorce settlement.

Edward Kennedy's campaign ran short on money, and belying his image as endlessly wealthy, he was forced to take out a second mortgage on his Virginia home.

Edward Kennedy responded with a series of attack ads, which focused both on Romney's shifting political views and on the treatment of workers at a paper products plant owned by Romney's Bain Capital.

Edward Kennedy's mother Rose died in January 1995 at the age of 104.

In 1996, Edward Kennedy secured an increase in the minimum wage, which was one of his favorite issues; there would not be another increase for ten years.

Edward Kennedy worked with Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum to create and pass the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996, which set new marks for portability of insurance and confidentiality of records.

In 1997, Kennedy was the prime mover behind the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which used increased tobacco taxes to fund the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage for children in the U S since Medicaid began in the 1960s.

Edward Kennedy was a stalwart backer of President Clinton during the 1998 Lewinsky scandal, often trying to cheer up the president when he was gloomiest and getting him to add past Edward Kennedy staffer Greg Craig to his defense team, which helped improve the president's fortunes.

Edward Kennedy saw Bush as genuinely interested in a major overhaul of elementary and secondary education, Bush saw Edward Kennedy as a potential major ally in the Senate, and the two partnered together on the legislation.

Edward Kennedy accepted provisions governing mandatory student testing and teacher accountability that other Democrats and the National Education Association did not like, in return for increased funding levels for education.

Edward Kennedy said, "The tragedy is that these long overdue reforms are finally in place, but the funds are not, " and accused Bush of not living up to his personal word on the matter.

Two of the airplanes involved had taken off from Boston, and in the following weeks, Edward Kennedy telephoned each of the 177 Massachusetts families who had lost members in the attacks.

In reaction to the attacks, Edward Kennedy was a supporter of the American-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

However, Edward Kennedy strongly opposed the Iraq War from the start, and was one of 23 senators voting against the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002.

Edward Kennedy's appeal was effective among blue collar and minority voters, and helped Kerry stage a come-from-behind win in the Iowa caucuses that propelled him on to the Democratic nomination.

However, Edward Kennedy sought to partner with Republicans again on the matter of immigration reform in the context of the ongoing United States immigration debate.

Edward Kennedy was chair of the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Refugees, and in 2005, Edward Kennedy teamed with Republican Senator John McCain on the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act.

The "McCain-Edward Kennedy bill" did not reach a Senate vote, but provided a template for further attempts at dealing comprehensively with legalization, guest worker programs, and border enforcement components.

Edward Kennedy returned again with the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which was sponsored by an ideologically diverse, bipartisan group of senators and had strong support from the Bush administration.

Edward Kennedy was philosophical about the defeat, saying that it often took several attempts across multiple Congresses for this type of legislation to build enough momentum for passage.

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In 2006, Kennedy released a children's book from the view of his dog Splash, My Senator and Me: A Dog's-Eye View of Washington, D C Also in 2006, Kennedy released a political history entitled America Back on Track.

In 2006, a Cessna Citation 550 in which Edward Kennedy was flying lost electrical power after being struck by lightning and had to be diverted.

Edward Kennedy initially stated that he would support John Kerry again if he were to make another bid for president in 2008, but in January 2007, Kerry said he would not make a second attempt for the White House.

Edward Kennedy then remained neutral as the 2008 Democratic nomination battle between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama intensified, because his friend Chris Dodd was running for the nomination.

When Dodd withdrew from the race, Edward Kennedy became dissatisfied with the tone of the Clinton campaign and what he saw as racially tinged remarks by Bill Clinton.

In return, Edward Kennedy gained a commitment from Obama to make universal health care a top priority of his administration if he were elected.

Edward Kennedy's endorsement was considered among the most influential that any Democrat could get, and raised the possibility of improving Obama's vote-getting among unions, Hispanics, and traditional base Democrats.

Edward Kennedy decided to follow the most aggressive and exhausting course of treatment possible.

The 3½-hour operation—conducted by Dr Allan Friedman while Edward Kennedy was conscious to minimize any permanent neurological effects—was deemed successful in its goals.

Edward Kennedy left the hospital a week later to begin a course of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

Edward Kennedy relocated to Florida for the winter; he continued his treatments, did a lot of sailing, and stayed in touch with legislative matters via telephone.

Edward Kennedy was taken by wheelchair from the Capitol building and then by ambulance to Washington Hospital Center.

Edward Kennedy saw the characteristics of the Obama administration and the Democratic majorities in Congress as representing the third and best great chance for universal health care, following the lost 1971 Nixon and 1993 Clinton opportunities, and as his last big legislative battle.

Edward Kennedy made another surprise appearance in the Senate to break a Republican filibuster against the Obama stimulus package.

When spring arrived, Edward Kennedy appeared on Capitol Hill more frequently, although staffers often did not announce his attendance at committee meetings until they were sure Edward Kennedy was well enough to appear.

However, Edward Kennedy's tumor had spread by spring 2009 and treatments for it were no longer effective; this information was not disclosed to the public.

Edward Kennedy did cut a television commercial for Dodd, who was struggling early on in his 2010 re-election bid.

True Compass, the memoir that Edward Kennedy worked on throughout his illness, was published three weeks after his death.

Shortly before his death, Kennedy had written to Democratic Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick and the Massachusetts legislature, asking them to change state law to allow an appointee to fill a U S Senate vacancy for a term expiring upon the special election.

Edward Kennedy had been instrumental in the prior 2004 alteration of this law to prevent Governor Mitt Romney from appointing a Republican senator should John Kerry's presidential campaign succeed.

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Congressman Patrick Edward Kennedy brought a copy of a national health insurance bill his father had introduced in 1970 as a gift for the president.

Edward Kennedy had a lifetime liberal 90 percent score from the ADA through 2004, while the ACU awarded Edward Kennedy a lifetime conservative rating of 2 percent through 2008.

When Edward Kennedy died in August 2009, he was the second-most senior member of the Senate and the third longest-serving senator of all time, behind Byrd and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

Edward Kennedy therefore held the record as the longest-serving Democratic member of Congress to solely serve as a senator until October 2021, when he was surpassed by fellow Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Edward Kennedy was known for his effectiveness in dealing with Republican senators and administrations, sometimes to the irritation of other Democrats.

Edward Kennedy strongly believed in the principle "never let the perfect be the enemy of the good, " and would agree to pass legislation he viewed as incomplete or imperfect with the goal of improving it down the road.

Edward Kennedy was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly.