Sen. Ted Kennedy Dies At 77

Channel 5 News BOSTON (AP) - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate and haunted bearer of the Camelot torch after two of his brothers fell to assassins' bullets, died Tuesday. He was 77. He died at his home in Hyannis Port after battling a brain tumor, his family said in a statement. He died just weeks after his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver's death on Aug. 11. For nearly a half-century in the Senate, Kennedy was a steadfast champion of the working class and the poor, a powerful voice on health care, civil rights, and war and peace. To the American public, though, he was best known as the last surviving son of America's most glamorous political family, the eulogist of a clan shattered by tragedy. 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, he put his imprint on every major piece of social legislation to clear the Congress. His own hopes of reaching the White House were damaged - perhaps doomed - in 1969 by the scandal that came to be known as Chappaquiddick, an auto accident that left a young woman dead. Kennedy - known to family, friends and foes simply as Ted - ended his quest for the presidency in 1980 with a stirring valedictory that echoed across the decades: "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die." The third-longest-serving senator in U.S. history, Kennedy was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor in May 2008 and underwent surgery and a grueling regimen of radiation and chemotherapy.