True Compass by Edward M. Kennedy

So, yeah, this is Ted Kennedy's memoir. I probably would not have picked it from a shelf, but someone loaned it to me and said they'd enjoyed it. Now I can't remember who loaned it to me. I thought it was my friend Sally but she says it's not her. I can picture her face in my mind telling me she'd gravitated to the biographies and picked this up -- but I've got the wrong face in my brain. Hopefully it'll come to me or someone will ask.

Anyway, I did enjoy the book. It was interesting to read about him growing up in that nearly mythical Kennedy family. Ted was quite a lot younger than Jack and Robert but he was highly influenced by them. And they did a lot for him.

I liked the tone of Ted Kennedy's book. He wasn't bragging and he wasn't being defensive. He seemed to be trying to be honest. I believe that by the time he was writing this he knew he was near the end of his life.

I wondered what he'd write about the "Chappaquiddick incident." He didn't go into a lot of detail, but he did tell the story. I actually never heard any accounting of the whole story -- only the bits about how he had gotten himself out of the water but not the woman he was with, Mary Jo Kopechne.

He wrote that they were only acquaintances who'd met that night at a gathering. When she needed a ride to the ferry, he was happy to have the excuse to leave. Then there was the accident and the car slipped off a bridge into the water. He says that he can't even remember how he got out of the car and he dived back in for Mary Jo many times and couldn't see her. He hoped she'd gotten out but was afraid she hadn't; he got help and others also dived in and could not see her.

About the hours after the accident he wrote that they have been "copiously recorded....my devising and rejecting scenarios with Joe and the others...; swimming across the channel...; elaying in reporting the accident. My actions were inexcusable." He also said he's lived with the guilt of causing an innocent woman's death for years and felt that he should atone for it.

After reading about all that he did and tried to do, I think it's a shame that he was not able to make the big changes in healthcare that he was working for. I wish he would have succeeded. Our healthcare is so terribly messed up, and he did honestly seem to have devoted most of his political life to trying to ensure that everyone, regardless of their income or status, would have the basic health care that everyone needs.