Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, the "Lion of the Senate," occasional presidential candidate and brother to President John F. Kennedy, passed away Tuesday night, prompting some in the Virgin Islands to reflect upon his long connections to St. Croix. “It was a better bill than what we had and I told him the CBC and I would support it as long as the territories got equal treatment,” Christensen said. “I have no doubt that it is because of him that we have equitable treatment today in health care reform and the Senate HELP Committee’s bill.”
Sen. Shaun-Michael Malone remembered seeing Kennedy one year ago at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, where, Malone said, Kennedy was promoting the passing of the torch to a new generation of leaders and championing the passage of health care reform to extend benefits to forty seven million uninsured Americans which he described as his “life’s work.”
“In his passing, disadvantaged people across the nation have lost a great champion, for Kennedy is considered the greatest United States Senator of the 20th Century and a fraction of this 21st Century," Malone said. "His death represents the end of an era that began when he was elected in 1962 to the Senate seat vacated when his brother John F. Kennedy was elected the 35th President of the United States. His legacy as the sponsor of over 300 bills and many landmark pieces of legislation ranks him among the great United States Senators in America’s history.”
“He did not just vote for the bills, he drafted them and forged the compromises to make them gain bipartisan support,” Malone said.
" Senator Kennedy and his siblings—notably, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Eunice Kennedy-Shriver, have been an integral part of American history for decades and thus will never be forgotten,” Sprauve said. "I truly respected him as a leader."
