Ammon News - WASHINGTON (AFP) - Ted Kennedy, the last of the storied band of brothers whose triumphs and tragedies dominated a generation of American politics, has died after losing a battle with brain cancer.
The "liberal lion" of the Senate, who was once tipped to succeed his assassinated elder brother John F. Kennedy as president, died late Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts after losing a year-long battle with cancer. He was 77.
"We've lost the irreplaceable center 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," the Kennedy family said in a statement.
The youngest of the nine Kennedy children, he was left to take up the helm of the political dynasty after the assassinations of president John F. Kennedy in 1963 and another brother, Robert, while on the presidential campaign trail in June 1968.
Ted was the only Kennedy son not to die in a violent incident. Joe Kennedy, a pilot, died while on a World War Two bombing mission.
Ted Kennedy never fulfilled what many had seen as his political destiny, his White House hopes dashed after his name was tainted by scandal, drinking problems and a messy divorce.
In 1969, he drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick in Massachusetts, killing a female companion — Mary Jo Kopechne — and leaving the scene of the accident.
The scandal poured cold water over his presidential hopes, which ended after he lost the Democratic nomination to incumbent Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election.
Nevertheless, Kennedy easily won repeated re-election to the Senate as a progressive Democrat throughout a 47-year tenure that made him one of the most important voices in American politics.
A consummate deal-maker in the upper chamber of the US legislature, Kennedy forged sometimes unlikely alliances with more conservative politicians in pursuit of his champion causes, which ranged from civil rights and education to workers' rights and immigration reform.
Kennedy authored scores of legislative initiatives during his career but died before seeing through his lifelong goal of transforming the US healthcare system to provide guaranteed medical coverage to all Americans.
Just days before his death, Kennedy sought to aid Obama's reform drive by asking Massachusetts authorities to change state law to allow his quick replacement in the Senate — where the fate of healthcare and climate change legislation this autumn could hang on a single vote.