Published: April 20, 2009 09:42 pm      

New book details Sen. Kennedy’s national legacy

The Women Infants and Children program is in the Oklahoma County Health Department on 23rd Street. Known as “WIC,” it provides medical services for low-income pregnant women, and for children under the age of 5. The children enrolled in WIC have regularly scheduled appointments where they are seen by a nurse. The participants are given coupons that allow them to acquire milk and certain foods suitable for young children.

WIC is a federally funded program operated by the State Health Department.

And, as detailed in a recent book titled “The Last Lion,” the legislation that created the WIC program was sponsored by the senior senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy. Written by a team of reporters for the Boston Globe and edited by Peter Canellos of that publication, the book documents how many programs and institutions that are now part of American life are the result of Kennedy’s ability to get laws passed by Congress.

Health Care Maintenance Organizations, the SCHIP program that provides health care to children from low-income households, and the current funding level for the National Institute of Health are all in large part the work of Sen. Kennedy.

The book’s title is taken from a statement made by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who has described his colleague from the Bay State as the “last lion” of the Senate, and the most effective member of that body in getting proposals transformed into law.

The authors remind us of the tragedies that have befallen the Kennedy family beginning with the death of Joseph Kennedy Jr. during World War II and continuing with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert Kennedy..

It is possible that the recklessness and irresponsibility Ted Kennedy often displayed in his younger years was a result of the sorrow he had to bear. The incident that occurred at Chappaquiddick in which a young girl traveling with Kennedy drowned after the car he was driving went off a bridge has never been adequately explained by Kennedy, the authors conclude, and effectively ended any chance he had to be elected president.

After Kennedy’s divorce from his first wife in 1981, he plunged into an excess of drinking and womanizing that became the talk of Washington. In 1992, Kennedy married Victoria Reggie, a Washington attorney who was the daughter of a longtime friend from Louisiana, and that union has proved to be a happy one.

The Ted Kennedy that emerges from this study is a thoughtful and generous man whose success as a legislator is in part the result of the kindness that he has displayed to his senatorial colleagues since he was elected to that body in 1960.

His dedication to his constituents also is detailed. Many of those who lost family members from the two hijacked planes that left Logan Airport in Boston on Sept. 11, 2001, received personal phone calls from Kennedy in which he conveyed his sympathy. He also convened meetings with the federal agencies that were supposed to assist victims of those attacks to ensure they were doing all they could for those family members.

Kennedy is now 77 and is currently being treated for a brain tumor. The Oklahoma County WIC program and its counterparts throughout the state and nation may in time serve as a memorial to his efforts to improve the lives of ordinary citizens.

WILLIAM F. O’BRIEN is an Oklahoma City attorney.