When I was 8 years old, Democrat John F. Kennedy won his party's nomination for president. I watched a lot of the stuff on black-and-white TV, in part because my father was there in Los Angeles covering the convention for a newspaper chain. I never did spot him, though we did have a rather eerie moment some years ago when we were watching replays of old conventions on cable TV, and he was telling me about the 1960 convention and how he wound up at one point sitting next to Jackie Kennedy. At that moment in the story, we looked at the TV screen and right there was my old man -- sitting next to Jackie.

Kennedy would be assassinated three years later, and I got the word in the parking lot of Raleigh's Aldert Root Elementary School, and thereafter, Kennedy remained a martyr, a myth, and the touchstone for the beginning of interest in politics for many in my generation.

Years would go by, books would be written, movies made and those things, combined with adulthood, would alter the prism of the JFK memories. Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968 deepened the Kennedy myth, or legend, depending upon the point of view.

And yet today any story or show regarding the much-blessed and much-cursed Kennedy family will get rapt attention, even from those who weren't crazy about the Kennedys to start with. There's no mystery to it. The Kennedys were and are the movie stars, the royal family, whatever, of politics.

The attempt to dismantle the reputation of the youngest surviving Kennedy brother, Ted, didn't wait for his passing. Oh, he helped. A wild youth. Chappaquiddick. Family dysfunction. To boot, he was an unabashed liberal, and proud of it. Conservatives used his name almost as a epithet. Until a few months ago, he remained a favorite target of the zanies on talk radio.

Recently, to help the time pass on this stair-climbing machine at the YMCA, I've been reading "The Last Brother," a rather trashy tale written by author Joe McGinniss some years ago. It's rumor and implication mostly, gossipy. I have done the literary world a favor by sweating on it so much that it has been rendered useless.

This past Monday night at the Democratic National Convention isn't likely to help remainder sales, either. For there, only months after a grave diagnosis of brain cancer, was Ted Kennedy. First, revered in the words of his niece, the daughter of JFK, Caroline. Then, a film showing Kennedy and family out on a sailboat and interviews with the senator and family and friends. A nice tribute it was, but not maudlin or even overly sentimental. Conventioneers were prepared to burst into tears. Some did. Most didn't.

Then the old warrior made his appearance, despite cautionary words from doctors not to try it. He walked out on the arm of his wife to thunderous cheers, showing some effects of cancer treatment. We of the JFK generation have not seen other Kennedys in old age. Teddy is the only one who -- to use his expression in eulogizing his nephew John F. Kennedy Jr., killed in a plane crash -- "lived to comb gray hair." The physical vigor has of course been diminished.

But the passion in the words is as strong as ever. He might have used the occasion to milk the moment for drama or self-aggrandizement. He might have waxed on about the Kennedy legacy. He might have taken a tear-jerking nostalgic turn. He didn't.

He spoke about the cause of health care, strongly and emphatically, and vowed that he would be in office in January to carry out the agenda of "President Obama" in reference to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who has secured the party's presidential nomination. Any litanies of Kennedy accomplishments were left to others, and there needed to be several others to cover it all.

The bottom line is that Kennedy has had a hand in virtually every education and health care program in the last 40 years, has been the strongest voice in Washington on helping the poor, has been a master of parliamentary democracy and has even employed his merry Irish temperament to work with Republicans, including President Bush, to get things done.

He has lived an imperfect life but has steadfastly followed the philosophy he impressed upon his own children, that much is expected of those to whom much is given. Kennedy has in many ways devoted his professional life to fulfilling those expectations. Hearing him promise to carry on, there can be little doubt that in some way he will.

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