Edward Kennedy Delivers Eulogy at Brother Robert's Funeral
Ted spent much of the night before Bobby's funeral driving around New York with his close college friend and former aide, John Culver, who was now a congressman.
By now, Culver knew that as garrulous as Ted could be in happy times, in grief he turned inward and quiet.
Ted stayed strong as he delivered the eulogy to his brother, his voice cracking only near the end. "Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today," he said, "pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world."
“Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.
This is the way he lived. 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.”
— Ted Kennedy
