Don't Let It Be Forgot

Those of us who grew up in the jaunty sunlight of the Kennedy clan are now at twilight. Time to pass the torch to those who will wake up in the morning with places to go and people to see. Kev, a Ted Kennedy delegate at the 1980 Cleveland County (Oklahoma) Democratic convention, is bereft but optimistic. Those with the torch will do better than us.

Playing football at noon recess at Christ the King in Lubbock, Tex., on Nov.22, 1963, a new Cajun kid in school from Louisiana ran onto the dirt field to announce JFK had been shot. Father McGovern canceled the altar boys’ meeting for that weekend.

And now it’s on to Chicago, Bobby said, as I turned off the TV, only to be awakened by mother that June day in 1968 to be told that the third brother had fallen.

Ted Kennedy, flawed as we all are, refused to accept his flaws as a definition of his life and legacy. He picked himself up and said give me the ball, just as OU’s bad boy Joe Don Looney told coach Bud Wilkinson and QB Monte Deere in 1962 and took the handoff for a 60-yard touchdown run to beat Syracuse in the waning moments (you can look it up), just as the Pinstripers’ 2003 hero Aaron Boone seeks a comeback to baseball from heart surgery.

The torch, the pigskin, the horsehide. We hold on to them as long as we can, and then they must be passed, handed off, tossed to the best of us. They'll do the same.