‘He never forgot the little guy’

THE world remembers Senator Edward Kennedy for his passionate liberalism, legislative skill and stewardship of a political dynasty.

Kevin Larson recalls a McDonald’s lunch.

A decade ago, Mr Kennedy hosted Mr Larson’s two sons, aged six and four, to thank them for returning a lost diamond ring they had found at a playground. Mr Larson remembers his boys bounding past a reception area filled with important people in suits to McDonald’s meals Mr Kennedy’s staff had waiting for them in his office.

The graciousness Mr Kennedy showed his family that day was repeated in the coming years in notes and Christmas cards.

“He never forgot the little guy,” said Mr Larson, who lives in the Boston suburb of Malden.

On Wednesday, the little guy remembered Mr Kennedy, a day after he died of brain cancer.

Outside Massachusetts, Mr Kennedy was loved and hated for the national causes he championed, sometimes with thunderous intensity. But state residents also knew Mr Kennedy for his careful tending to constituents, whether it was his calls to each family who lost someone on September 11, help with State Department bureaucracy for a troubled immigrant, or a handwritten note.

Mr Kennedy took pride in working the hardest and longest on constituent services, so much so that his congressional colleagues could be criticised for paling in comparison.

“He really just truly wanted to reach out, and he just cared about us,” said Army National Guard Sgt Peter Damon, a helicopter mechanic Mr Kennedy befriended after he lost both arms in an accident in Iraq. “I think that’s his legacy.”

Sgt Damon met Mr Kennedy in 2003 while he was a patient at Walter Reed Medical Centre in Washington DC. The two spoke for an hour about everything from Sgt Damon’s hometown of Brockton to the New England Patriots, but not his injury. Sgt Damon later learned Mr Kennedy’s son, Edward Jnr, lost a leg to bone cancer as a child.

Mr Kennedy followed up with personal notes, surprise football tickets and years of consistent correspondence as he helped Sgt Damon navigate the veterans’ healthcare system. In 2007, Mr Kennedy learned that Sgt Damon, an artist, had opened a gallery in his town of Middleborough and arranged with Senator John Kerry to display some of his artwork in Senate offices.

“He was just a true friend,” Sgt Damon said. “We’re from just two totally different worlds, but we were able to come together and talk as two long-time friends.”

Angela Sanfilippo of Gloucester first contacted Mr Kennedy when she was 19 in the late 1960s. Her two-year-old brother, Vincent, had Down syndrome and local doctors offered little hope to her parents.

Ms Sanfilippo knew Mr Kennedy’s sister has an intellectual disability, so she wrote to the senator asking for help. Mr Kennedy arranged for Vincent to be examined at a Boston hospital, where doctors brought relief and hope to Ms Sanfilippo’s parents by discovering his condition was not as severe as they had been told. Vincent is 43, speaks two languages, and has a steady job.

“Our relationship never ended,” Ms Sanfilippo said.

Lauren Stanford also had a deep relationship with Mr Kennedy, even though she’s just 17. They connected after Ms Stanford, who has Type 1 diabetes, wrote to all her congressmen asking for help searching for a cure. Mr Kennedy responded. The Plymouth resident was 11 when she met the senator at his Washington office. He put the nervous girl at ease by first sending out his playful Portuguese water dogs.

They exchanged several letters, and Mr Kennedy read one of them, about stem cell research, on the Senate floor. Then, in January 2007, he invited Ms Stanford to Washington to speak about the issue in front of the Senate herself.

One of their last contacts came last year, when Mr Kennedy called Ms Stanford’s cellphone while she was at field hockey practice, so she couldn’t pick up.

It turned out to be a lucky break, because Mr Kennedy left a voice mail that she’s saved. It starts, “Hi, it’s Ted!”

“I think that he represents what a politician should be,” Ms Stanford said. “They shouldn’t be scary and intimidating, they should be easy to connect to.

“It’s so sad that he’s gone,” she added, “but he did a lot of good for the people before he left.”