Most of us have seen the commercial where Larry Bird and Michael Jordan
talk and play a different kind of hoops - off the roof of the building, over the
highway, off the scoreboard, nothing but net. People think that's a new
concept. My brother Michael wrote the earlier version many years ago.
While he was at Harvard, I went to his house in Cambridge one afternoon.
Vicki was there, along with his friends Lorenzo and Juan. Spags and Morgan
were sitting on the couch. Spoonjob and Chris and maybe David or Bobby
would be coming over shortly. The crazy black Lab Bosco had a red
bandanna around his neck. Michael said: ''Let's play football - you and me
and Juan against Lorenzo, Spags and Morgan.'' I could still cover Lorenzo
back then.
Then Michael called our first huddle in the kitchen. I asked him what are we
doing here? He laughed and answered that the field of play was the entire
first floor, the front lawn, and the street outside. A touchdown was getting
the ball across the street into the neighbor's yard.
He outlined the play: He would streak down the hall, jump over the coffee
table, roll over the couch, race out the front door and in front of the Checker
Cab he drove back then. I would then throw the ball from the kitchen,
straight down the hall, through the window, and he'd catch it and score a
touchdown. And of course, he did - with a football that had a few shards of
glass stuck in it - and the game was over on the first play.
Michael had amazing physical gifts as an athlete. And like all gifted athletes,
he was fearless - on the slopes, on water skis, wherever he could test himself
at the edge. This was one of the glories of his life and it should not be
diminished by his loss. He was not made for comfort or ease; he was the
athlete dying young of A.E. Housman's verse: ''Like the wind through the
woods ... Through him the gale of life blew high.''
We all marveled at that wind when he and we were very young. Playing
touch football at Hickory Hall with my dad and our family, and with friends
who were sometimes professional athletes, Michael was always the first to
be chosen when he was just 9 or 10 years old. Even much later, I recall him
literally leaping over the top of Rafer Johnson to intercept a pass in the
backyard. It left Rafer looking stunned and wide-eyed.
I ask now only that we look at Michael truly - not in the glare of a moment,
but in the wholeness of his life. It was a life cut short; a life not without pain
and imperfection - but full of hope and high achievement.
Michael excelled; he seemed to finish first in every race - but he never put
himself first. He was always interested in someone else succeeding - in our
family and in the wider world, where he found so many, from Dorchester to
Angola, who truly were his brothers and sisters.
He came into my first campaign for Congress and took control when events
were on the edge. We had a budget of $1 million; we were spending one
point six. I had just had my fifth Howie Carr article - and I was asking how
did I get myself into this? Michael pulled me aside and said: ''Joe, you're
going to run. You're going to win, You're going to serve.'' And that was it -
in large measure, because of him. I am in Congress - I am fighting for the
causes that we shared - because on so many occasions he was there and we
were a band of brothers.
He was there as well for uncle Teddy, in 1994, in the toughest Senate race
of his career. Michael was the campaign manager and lightning rod - as
everyone in Massachusetts knows, there was no shortage of ideas and
advice. He sorted it all out and listened and acted - and as Senator Kennedy
said, that grand victory belonged in a special way to Michael, who quietly
took the criticism but never took the credit.
There was Michael: He did not prize the credit side of the ledger, and he
produced exceptional results. Every one of his brothers and sisters, his
mother and all our family, turned to him again and again.
And he turned, heart and soul, to the task our father set, which has inspired
each of us and people everywhere - to make more gentle the life of the
world.
In the early years at Citizens Energy, he would do the work and I would get
the praise. In the years since, under his leadership, there has been great
financial success, but his real, unspoken pride was in what he made possible
- the hundreds of thousands of low income families whose homes have been
heated in the winter, the homeless and the people with AIDS who have been
sheltered, the Citizens Energy Public Health Initiative that is helping the
uninsured to find health care.
A whole nation knows his name, but few know the best of what he did.
Because of Michael Kennedy, free heating oil, natural gas, and electricity
flow to 140 homeless shelters in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Because of Michael Kennedy, the heating bills of needy families are being
paid in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.
Because of Michael Kennedy, individuals with HIV are receiving life-saving
medicines in this state and in Ohio.
Because of Michael Kennedy, a boarded up crack house in Jamaica Plain
has been transformed into ''One Wise Street'' - a center to give homeless
men in recovery a second chance.
Because of Michael Kennedy the most abandoned among us have found
''Safe Harbor'' on Long Island and they have a program called ''Serving
Ourselves'' in Boston - which provides simple necessities like laundry and
food so they can find and hold a job.
Michael was one man, but he was a hundred points of light.
That light reached far away - to Africa and Angola, where he started the
U.S.-Angola Chamber of Commerce to promote economic development,
worked with the Catholic Church to secure free elections and found a
university, and reached out to children in hospitals in the war zone that were
performing four amputations a day. He helped bring peace to an entire
country - and because of him, thousands of children will live on, and will not
lose hands and arms and legs.
His light shone here at home into neighborhoods that are too often free-fire
zones, where 15 American children are killed each day by bullets. He
founded Stop Handgun Violence with John Rosenthal to crusade for state
and national laws to end the carnage.
From Walden Pond to South America, he fought for the environment - to
preserve Henry David Thoreau's woods and to halt the speculative oil drilling
that threatens the world's greatest rain forest.
It was a life at full tide, a light burning intensely, a reach of concern as wide
and deep as his courage on the playing fields.
But there was one place where that light shone most brightly. You could see
it in his face when Michael the master pumpkin carver got ready for
Halloween with his kids. His one unbreakable appointment was to coach
their soccer and baseball teams. Those of us who knew him know how much
his three children meant to him - and how much, how enduringly, for all the
hurt, he loved his wife Vicki.
I remember, after my father died, the desolation I felt, the endless ache of
missing him. I discussed it one night with my sister Kathleen, who said:
''When times get really tough, or I'm unsure what to do, I still talk to Daddy -
and he's there.'' To little Michael, to Kyle, and Rory - you can still talk to
your father. And I will, too, countless times in whatever time I spend on
earth.
And remember, too, that Michael Kennedy fulfilled the greatest wish of all of
his sisters and brothers - despite any shortcoming or human frailty, to live up
to the words of our father:
''Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others,
or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and
crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring,
those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest wall of
oppression and resistance.''
Michael, you sent forth so many tiny ripples of hope. Your energy and daring
eroded mighty walls of indifference, poverty, and suffering. Your impatient,
restless compassion set currents in motion that will continue to sweep across
the ocean of life. We cannot believe you are gone, but we have so much to
treasure that you have left behind. We miss you. We love you now - and
always will. Goodbye and God speed.
Michael's eulogy delivered by his brother, Joseph II
To Vicki, and to little Michael, and to Kyle and to Rory, to my mother, my
brothers and sisters, and all of our family, and to each and every one of you
who knew Michael or helped him in some special way, I want to thank you
for being here to honor his memory. I want to let Vicki and Michael, and
Kyle, and Rory know how much love there is for you here and how much
love will be there for you all your lives.
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