As President Barack Obama signed historic healthcare legislation into law, the widow of legendary Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) was on hand to celebrate the passage of her husband’s legacy into law.  In a statement released after the legislation’s passage, Mrs. Kennedy said that her husband’s goal of healthcare reform was an example of when a “cause becomes more than a dream, it becomes America’s commitment.” Ted Kennedy’s son, Patrick, a Democratic Congressman representing a Rhode Island district, left a note on his father’s grave written on his congressional stationery Monday morning.

Although the ultimate bill does not achieve the universal coverage and complete overhaul of the healthcare that Kennedy championed throughout his long Senate career, Vicki Kennedy believes that her husband would be at peace with the compromises required to pass the reform bill.  Writing in The Atlantic, Christine Russell – who covered Senator Kennedy and his healthcare reform efforts for years – says “I spent countless hours on Capitol Hill and traveling the country with Senator Kennedy and his crack health team, listening to heartbreaking stories of mothers, fathers and children without health coverage.  At that point, Kennedy was uncompromising in his support of a cradle-to-grave national health insurance plan that would be run by the government.”

Although the compromise Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act isn’t precisely the legislation that Senator Kennedy had originally envisioned, Vicki Kennedy says “When Ted stood with Barack Obama in 2008, he said he had new hope that we would break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American – north, south, east, west, young, old – would have decent, quality healthcare as a fundamental right and not a privilege.  And now they do and from now on they will.  In the last words he wrote, Ted said that ‘if you persevere, stick with it, work at it, you have a real opportunity to achieve something.  Sure, there will be storms along the way.  And you might not reach your goal right away.  But if you do your best and keep a true compass, you’ll get there.’  Ted knew we would get here, and all of us who loved him and shared his hopes for America are deeply grateful.”