Awareness | Posted by Julie Z on 08/28/2009

RIP Ted Kennedy

This past Tuesday night, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts died at 77. 

Ted Kennedy really was a great senator, and accomplished some really incredible things. He authored more than 2,500 bills, several hundred of which have become Public Law. He was a huge fighter for quality, affordable health care, including the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990, the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997, and the Children’s Health Act of 2000 in addition to many others. 

Kennedy also played a role in providing better programs for women, specifically helping to establish the Women, Infants and Children Nutrition Program (WIC), which offers food, nutrition counseling, and access to health services for low-income women, infants and children. In it’s first year, 88,000 women and children participated in the WIC. Last year, 8.7 million participated. 

Kennedy also accomplished a whole lot of other really important things, which are listed here.

It’s really a shame that we’re losing a senator who really understood feminist values, in addition to a truly great person. RIP, Ted Kennedy. 

Here are some nice Ted Kennedy related quotes I found. 

“His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives — in seniors who know new dignity, in families that know new opportunity, in children who know education’s promise, and in all who can pursue their dream in an America that is more equal and more just — including myself.” President Obama

“Most people do not realize the extent to which he was, in the final analysis, a survivor. Both his oldest brother and his oldest sister were killed in plane crashes, but he survived the plane crash that broke his back and killed the pilot and co-pilot…I sat at his bedside, wondering if he would have the strength to go on. But he did, and for this last year I had hoped that somehow he would come back again and go on to even greater heights as a champion of America’s final effort to achieve accessible health care for all of its citizens.” Ted Sorensen – Special Counsel and Advisor to President John F. Kennedy

“The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.” - Ted Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, August 1980

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