A large number of dignitaries and friends from the Vineyard attended the funeral service of Sen. Edward William Brooke 3rd at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
Senator Brooke was remembered this week as the Island’s own — a man whose summers were spent at his home on Nashawena Park with family and friends, a skilled tennis player and a community steward and role model.
A former chief of staff for a U.S. senator who crashed a Chilmark fundraiser for then-Presidential candidate John Edwards in August pleaded guilty last Wednesday to two charges of trespass and a misdemeanor charge of breaking and entering and was sentenced to two years probation in Edgartown district court.
For 60 years the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy championed many liberal causes, from immigration reform to civil rights, but he regarded national health care reform as the cause of his life. After his death in August, many Democrats adopted the slogan “Win one for Teddy,” to revise their party’s flagging efforts for national health care reform.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the senior Senator from Massachusetts whose broad vowels were synonymous with Boston and whose liberal legislative record towered over all others, died late Tuesday night at his home in Hyannisport after a 14-month battle with brain cancer. He was 77 and had served in the U.S. Senate for 46 years. And he had long been a familiar presence on the Vineyard, where he is both credited for the infamy of Chappaquiddick and for the pioneering federal land trust bill that ultimately led to the creation of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
In the midst of a nationally-watched, closely-contested U.S. senate race, Elizabeth Warren came to the Vineyard this weekend with a message: there are two visions of America on the table for November’s election, she said, and stakes are high.
