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Kennedy, Kopechne: May they rest in peace
My first thought after learning of Ted Kenney’s death last week was that his death was really the end of the Kennedy era. In fact, the end of a whole generational era.
So many American memories are tied up with the Kennedy family. Good memories of space walks and civil rights, John-John and Caroline, touch football and the beauty and dignity of Jackie. And, of course, Chappaquiddick.
The next thing I thought was that hopefully Gwen, Joe and Mary Jo Kopechne and Ted Kennedy are all now at peace.
Our family will cherish the memory of Mary Jo and we will miss her always, just as we all miss those loved ones who have gone before us.
I can’t begin to understand why things happen the way they do in life.
I guess that some things you just have to leave in God’s hands.
Family voices gratitude to the lion of the Senate
The passing of U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy saddened my family and me. Such melancholy is due to what he did for my mother and my father.
When they arrived in the United States in 1989, my parents had fled the theocratic regime of Iran, which had imprisoned my mother three times, tortured her and threatened her with the death penalty – simply for dissenting against the government. After enduring significant brutality at the hands of the government, she and my father sought a better life.
My parents came to America with travel visas and were hoping for political asylum and protection against a government that had sent a letter to the U.S. State Department insisting that the United States return my mother, citing her as a “traitor against Iran.” Therefore, they contacted Senator Kennedy’s office for help, given that he was the only senator whose name they had heard of before arriving in America.
Kennedy and his staff contacted the State Department and worked out all the necessary steps and loopholes with them to ensure my parents would be protected against Iran’s regime, putting my parents on a path to receive their green cards for permanent residency by 1990.
Two years later, in 1992, I was born in Silver Spring, Md., making me an American citizen by birth. Today, my parents also are proud citizens of the United States; they passed the citizenship test in 2001. I am proud to have been born in this great country, as I have a deep passion for serving our democracy in public life in the future.
Had it not been for the work of Ted Kennedy, my parents would have had a much more burdensome process to endure and potentially might not even have been here today.
For that, I will forever be grateful to the lion of the Senate. My father put it best, saying he “deserves a beautiful place in heaven.”
Rest in peace, Teddy.
A wish for an unending season for boys of summer
It was with much interest that I read of the reunion of the boys of summer, players from the Plymouth Little League of 1959 (“Boys of Summer reflect, Aug. 24).
I had the pleasure of having Joe Pechulis and John Galazin on my team in 1964 in the old twilight league. It was obvious from the start that those two knew how to play the game. Joe Pechulis was unbeatable in that league.
I am sure that those two coaches, who are deceased, were “at” that reunion.
May the boys of summer have many more happy reunions.
Reader sees moral decay as rejection of God’s will
I am 85 years old and have seen so much moral decay in our nation.
There has been a falling away from God’s will. It has affected our churches.
We are told in the Bible there will be a falling away of our churches. It is already here, the way we have been doing things our way, whether right or wrong. And we are suffering for it.
Wake up to these facts.
Experience proves to family that health reform needed
Our health care system is broken, and American families and businesses urgently need a solution.
Congress must pass real health insurance reform in 2009. If we fail to act, more Americans will lose their coverage, more businesses will close their doors and rising costs will continue to explode our deficits.
Within a decade, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care.
The amount our government spends on Medicare and Medicaid will eventually grow larger than what our government spends today on everything else combined.
My wife has had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) for the last 15 years. Five years ago, doctors said they could do no more for her. They told me I had two choices: put her in a nursing home or take her home to die because the insurance company would no longer pay to keep her in the hospital.
I decided we would take care of her ourselves. Our doctor said keep the air clean around her. I started research on air cleaners and found a company that had purchased the rights from NASA to take its technology and develop it for home use. We purchased a machine and started on our journey to save her.
By first cleaning the air in our home, our lives changed completely in six months. She had regained her strength and we started to do away with some of her medications and turn to nutritional products.
We are now in our fifth year of making changes with our lives. Jean is healthy even with only 30 percent of one lung functional. She uses only three medications, plus her nutritional products and inhalers.
We have not been in the hospital in the last five years. Our doctors tell us to keep up whatever we are doing.
Something needs to be done to stop insurance companies from playing doctor or God. When a doctor tells you to have a test done, at times, you have to fight with the insurance company to have it done. And they should start looking into technology and nutritional products.
There’s nothing amusing about health care debate
Vince Mannina says he finds amusement in watching the GOP in this health care debate. After reading his letter to the editor (Aug. 12), I think he is the kind of guy who is amused by watching traffic lights change color.
Thugs apparently beat up a man at a town hall meeting last month because of his beliefs. It seems Nazi brownshirts have changed to the color purple of the health care service union goons.
I did find the reference to the Florida recount amusing, although Mannina didn’t specify which one – there were so many. Was it the one with hanging chads, or without or half-and-half? Or was it the real recount?
Florida 2000 and “Floridized” (as he puts it) are nothing more than the buzzwords of the deluded.
Make no mistake about it, we are being “ized” all right, but not Floridized. When this president and his crowd of speed-reading, nitwit congressmen get done with us, we won’t even get a kiss.
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