August 26,2009
Today Karyn and I feel the deep loss of a personal friend. In our lives Ted Kennedy was more than the legislative lion of the Senate. He was the proud sailor who introduced our sons to the spiritual element of sailing on his beloved wooden sailboat in Nantucket, the young senator I first met as a college intern in 1972 as he patiently found the time to lay out the fundamentals of universal health care to our summer class, the proud step-dad who with Vicki beat Karyn and me to every afternoon high school baseball game while our sons played side by side, and the masterful legislative colleague who never sacrificed his liberal principles standing for the everyday person as we joined each other on the health committee in writing and passing bills on health care disparities among the poor, emerging infectious diseases like HIV and avian flu, and preparing the nation and the world to fight bioterrorism. His death is a loss not just for Massachusetts and the Senate, but for all of mankind.
--Senator William H. Frist, M.D.