What This Border Boy Saw in Ted Kennedy
I met Ted Kennedy one breezy autumn afternoon in Boston’s North End. I was surprised to see him alone, striding across the street with one hand in his pocket and his trademark jaw jutting up towards the slate grey sky, looking every bit the sartorial Senator.
Without hesitation, my pulse quickening with my pace, I changed course to intercept him as he reached the corner and waited to cross. In my early 20′s, probably wearing my school uniform of torn jeans, who knows what he might have expected me to say as his curious, twinkling blue eyes pierced mine.
I offered my hand and blurted out, “Senator Kennedy, my name is Rudy Ruiz and I’m a student at the Kennedy School of Government. I just wanted to meet you and thank you for all that you and your family do.”
There. I’d said it. My cheeks were probably flushed redder than his, but we were both smiling. He warmly replied in that classic accent, “It’s good to meet you, Rudy.”
For him I was but one of probably hundreds of thousands of people he met throughout his long and illustrious career, eager to shake his hand, admiring of his towering achievements, frankly in awe of his family’s legacy. But for that moment, he paused and genuinely fulfilled my wish to converse with him, granting me a lifelong memory I’ve always cherished.
With his passing, I’ve remembered that moment poignantly. And I’ve marveled about how much Ted Kennedy and the Kennedy legacy has meant to me in my life, a phenomenon that at first glance I found rare but upon further reflection makes perfect sense.
Born on the US-Mexico border – in Brownsville, Texas – what could a small town boy who didn’t speak a word of English when entering kindergarten relate to within the persona of Ted Kennedy and the mythos of his wealthy, powerful family of New England aristocrats?
As a child I was first drawn to the Kennedy mystique while devouring biographies in my elementary school library. Somewhat of a nascent policy geek, I appreciated and admired the stories of great American heroes much like any other child growing up anywhere in our nation. When I read the book about Teddy’s older brother, John, I was moved to tears. I must have been about 10 years old and – like many full-grown adults to this day – I could not understand how someone with so much promise could be so ruthlessly cut down in his prime, robbing all of us and the world of his vision, charisma and heart. John F. Kennedy’s formula for success, though, shared a variable with several other Presidents who also made an impression on me, including John Adams, Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The common denominator was Harvard, one that Ted Kennedy shared as well. In the pages of those books, the seed was planted in my mind that in order to achieve my fullest potential and contribute to my country I should start at Harvard.
When I asked my mom about John F. Kennedy, she mournfully recalled the day he was assassinated.
“I was working as a teller in a large bank in Mexico City the day it happened,” she said, a faraway look in her eyes. “When they announced in the lobby that President Kennedy had been killed, everyone stopped what they were doing. It was completely quiet. And then everybody broke down crying.”
I asked her why people in Mexico were so affected by his death. To which she explained, as if I should have known at birth, that the Kennedys had always been loved in Mexico, that they were also great friends of immigrants, and they were simply good people devoted to helping others. A devout Catholic, my mom naturally attributed much of this commitment to serving humanity to the Kennedy’s faith. She then told me that John F. Kennedy had faced great challenges overcoming prejudice against Catholics to win the presidency.
I was stunned. I had learned in school about the struggles of African Americans to gain freedom and equality, but I had no idea Catholics or Irish Americans had faced prejudices as well. When I asked her why people were afraid of having a Catholic as president, she replied it was because they worried that he would be subject to the Pope’s influence and thus undermine American sovereignty.
I found it hard to believe, but my appreciation for the Kennedy family was only heightened by the discovery of those two commonalities: their experience as an immigrant minority and their religion. The fact that they had overcome prejudice in ascending to prominence also fueled my own aspirations to rise beyond the circumstances of the border, with Harvard as the gateway to that future.
When Teddy ran for President in 1980 I was twelve years old but followed it as closely as I could, enamored with the possibility that the shattered dream of Camelot might be poetically restored via the youngest brother.
And when the Senator’s fatal flaw doomed his candidacy, I found him strangely more compelling a figure, tragic in his own right, enigmatic. He was a sobering reminder that – regardless of our childhood dreams – not all of us can be President. Most of us probably do not manage to reach the pinnacle of our dreams. But that doesn’t mean we should give up on doing good for the world. That’s a lesson to be learned from Ted Kennedy. For despite all of his name recognition, family wealth and connections, Kennedy failed to capture the brass ring of the Presidency. And, while he wavered at times, in the end he persevered in his efforts to quietly, consistently deliver on the idealistic promises embodied by his clan.
Looking back at his most famous speeches, two seem to stand out: his eulogy at brother Robert’s funeral and his concession speech at the 1980 Democratic Convention.
At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, he said of his brother Bobby: “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it…”
Later when conceding defeat to Jimmy Carter, he electrified the crowd with his rousing sentiments as he proclaimed that despite his defeat, “…the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”
As memorable as his words were in those moments of loss, more memorable is the manner in which he forged those values into law in the decades that followed, touching millions of lives via his authoring and support of far-reaching legislation in the areas of civil rights, immigration reform, health care and social services.
He failed. He wavered. But in the end, he persevered in doing good work.
Coincidentally, those were his parting words to me that crisp, cool day in Boston’s version of Little Italy. As he stepped off the curb, he looked back at me and cheered me on: “Keep up the good work!”
Speechless, I stood there with a goofy smile plastered on my face as I watched one of my heroes walk away.
When I graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School I was inspired by the Kennedy legacy to apply myself to the betterment of society, to serving diverse communities and individuals in need, and to search for creative, entrepreneurial ways of doing so.
Since I didn’t reply to the Senator then, I’ll do so now as I join the world in watching him walk away with his head held high:
Senator, thanks to you and your family’s inspiration and accomplishments. In transcending race, religion, class and nation of origin, your ideals and spirit were truly the essence of America. For that reason, they resonate with people from Boston to the border, from Latin America to London. And regardless of whether I realize the fullness of my dreams, whether my shortcomings slow my progress, whether I waver at times, I will keep up the good work. Hopefully, thanks to your example, many others will do the same.
Rudy Ruiz has been hailed as a cultural visionary. A published author and multicultural advocate, Ruiz is an acclaimed multicultural communications entrepreneur. He founded Red Brown and Blue as well as Interlex, one of the nation’s leading advocacy marketing agencies ranked by Ad Age as one of the Top US Agencies across all disciplines. Prior to that, Ruiz earned his BA in Government at Harvard College and his Masters in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
