U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy dies (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)

77-year-old loses yearlong battle with brain cancer at Hyannis Port home

Kennedy joins Sen. Barack Obama during a campaign event for the Democratic presidential hopeful at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J.

HYANNIS PORT, Massachusetts - Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, has died after battling a brain tumor. He was 77.Kennedy's family announced his death in a brief statement released early Wednesday.

For nearly a half-century in the Senate, Kennedy was a dominant voice on health care, civil rights, war and peace, and more. To the American public, though, he was best known as the last surviving brother of a storied political family.


Edward Kennedy, right, and his brothers, John and Robert, at Hyannisport, Mass. He learned from his father and brothers how to be a complete politician.


Kennedy was elected to the Senate in 1962, when his brother John was president, and served longer than all but two senators in history. Over the decades, Kennedy put his imprint on every major piece of social legislation to clear the Congress.


Kennedy during an immigration rally on the National Mall on Sept. 7, 2006, in Washington.


In office since November 1962, Kennedy was in his eighth full (and ninth overall) term in the Senate. At the time of his death, he was the second most senior member of the Senate, after Robert Byrd of West Virginia, and the third-longest-serving senator of all time. He was best known as one of the most outspoken and effective Senate proponents of liberal causes and bills. For many years the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he was the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassinations, and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

Kennedy was born in Boston and raised in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, and England. He was educated at Harvard College and the University of Virginia School of Law. His 1958 marriage to Virginia Joan Bennett would later end in divorce. He was a manager in his brother John's successful 1960 campaign for president, then worked as an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Kennedy entered the Senate in a 1962 special election to fill the seat once held by John. He was seriously injured in an airplane crash in 1964 and suffered from lifelong back pain as a result. Kennedy was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2006.