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By Gregg Sangillo
I started at NARAL in 1985, and Senator Kennedy was one of the first senators who I met. He went out of his way to call me to welcome me to Washington. And shortly thereafter I went over to meet him. And I told him that I saw his brother, John, while I was a college student at the University of Michigan. I remember saying to Ted Kennedy that, in some ways, by having him part of our lives we didn't lose all that idealism when his brothers died.
When Robert Bork was nominated [in 1987], we knew that this was going to be a problem. We believed that he would be a real threat to the long, hard journey that women had been on for full equality, including reproductive rights. I hadn't really led yet, and I hadn't had the opportunity to work side by side with leaders like Senator Kennedy. And after Kennedy made his very important statement on the floor of the Senate warning that Robert Bork was a danger to our constitutional rights, we had a meeting with some of the heads of grassroots organizations with Senator Kennedy. And after everybody left, I hung around a bit to have a word with him privately. And I said, "You know senator, I'm a little nervous because I've been working very hard to get NARAL ready to really be the force that it needs to be, and I just hope that we can achieve that." And he looked at me and he said, "You have no choice. You can't be afraid, because the only fear one should have is not doing the right thing. This is important."
He was a force larger than himself, and he never failed to inspire me personally or to care about me personally. When my husband got very sick, he called one time quite late at night to ask how my husband was. There aren't Ted Kennedys in the world today. There are millions of people in this country who don't yet even realize what they don't have any longer.
The other thing about him which had no small measure of meaning was Ted Kennedy as a Roman Catholic, which I was and I guess you always are. It had large meaning for Ted Kennedy to take a very strong position that a women's right to decide when to become a mother was a fundamental right of her equality, even though the church was a very strong part of his background and life. But he had a willingness to do the right thing always, at whatever cost.
