Rights issues. Shes also chair of the institutes Human Trafficking advisory consults. This is vickie kennedy, an accomplished attorney and a nonprofit leaders. She advises government issues and regulatory issues. Shes the president of the board and the cofounder of the Kennedy Institute for the study of the senate and a nonpartisan and nonprofit, dazzling and a beautiful building here in boston that educates the public of the unique role of the United States senate in our democracy. Theyll be in conferring with gary hill. Those of us in massachusetts know of her public leadership and Lieutenant Governor, she was the president and a former resident fellow here at the institute. Join me welcoming Lieutenant Governor healy and mrs. Mccain and mrs. Kennedy. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for those kinds introductions. I am so excited to be able to have this conversation with both of you today. I think with the backdrop of everything that is going on with the country right now. One of the most interesting legacies of both of your husbands is they got along and they were fearlessly partisan. There is no doubt about that. They wanted to win but how was that relationship both in public and in progress . You have to remember at the time the senate was a much different place. It was a body of leaders that were obviously passionate of what they believed in and their home states and constituents and etcetera and the world. They were also friends. Scarce debates took place especially between my husband and vickies husband because they believed what it was but they were never enemies. They were friends and walk off for many times did we see them slapping each others back and go laughing all the way off the floor. It is a different time and i am sad about that. Vickie, how do you remember it . John himself said that he does not like teddy very much when he first met him. He said you know i really saw a lot of myself in him. I dont think that he said he grew to respect him. They were in the Armed Services committee and he saw in teddy and teddy saw in john real patrioti patriotism, love of his country. Even though they came at it from a different place, they both knew they cared about the country and they loved it. They just developed a bond. They found these little nuggets of Common Ground where they can Work Together. It was a sea power is one of the things they worked on, it was immigration. They were both passionate about. They would sometimes really love to go at it on the floor. They would go at it. Then they would walk off the floor and oh, that was pretty good, was it . It was never personal. Boy, do i wish those days were here. You are talking as though this was a really long time ago. It is not that really long. When did you see the change in the senator in congress in general . Personally for me when teddy passed, we begin to see the subside in all of this. And with older members that did not run again or did pass ultimately. It just changed and twitter and facebook and all social media have really not just changed whats going on but in a very bad way. This instance where you can instantly whack someone verbally on twitter or facebook is not a good thing. Both of you talked about the fact that you knew each other, that spouse knew each other and members knew other spouses. How do you think that modulate the conflicts . We have a Senate Spouse lunch and Senate Spouses would go to lunch and get to know each other. I found that if i develop a friendship or have work on a committee or do something with the Senate Spouse that teddy in variably would go to the husbands, primarily and say our wives are having lunch. What do you think theyre talking about or theyre doing. And kind of tease and they would develop a closer friendship. They would find something they work on. It was an on trade relationships of the spouses was one way that you could develop and begin to have something to talk about with someone on the other side of the isle and start to develop the relationship. It was all about Relationship Building and having a facetoface conversation with someone and getting to know them as a person. Getting to know their families. Thats where i think is missing because if you dont know someones family or dont know someone is a person, it is really easy to have a caricature. Just to say this person is one dimensional caricature. We are all humans in the end. Not only getting to know one another and it is a unique situation in washington. Thats an under statement. It is a unique situation in washington and it can be daunting at times and i will use the word sister hood because it is primarily women. It was very important and didnt matter which side of the isle you are on. A friend is a friend. Both of you have a really heavy responsibility as the keeper of your husbands legacies. These are profound legacies. They both had long and varied rich careers that focused on any numbers of areas. You can write a list as long as that table. How did you when you are approaching the speedometrespon of preserving your husbands legacies, how did you choose or how did you know what perhaps, of what he wanted you to do and what role did it play in terms of what interested you as well. Well, i feel fortunate, we had the edward and Kennedy Institute for the United States senate on columbia point. It is something that teddy helped to create and think through long before he got sick. So it was something way back in 2002 when we started thinking of. He basically wanted people to love the senate as much as he did. I dont think it is possible. He thought particularly young people can come in and understand how the senate worked. He wanted a full scale replica of the chamber which we have and he could walk in and feel all the men and women of goodwill and both parties facing the greatest challenges and addressing the greatest challenges that we had in our nation. He thought they could come in and feel that and that they would be inspired to do it again. Thats really what the whole goal was. And working together. Solving problems and understanding how our government works. He thought if we can inspire people to do that then we would want to vote and care about our country and go back to their communities. That really helps to develop. Senator mccain was in many different things. He and i did plan this and this was long before we found out he was ill. It was definitely a joint participation with both of us because we knew that his character and the kinds of leadership exhibited in tough times and making the tough decisions that were not popular, it takes a certain kind of person to stand up much like teddy was and others to make those decisions a tough one. If he knew if he first of all bring people from around the world and not politically but to learn the whats important and why you have to make a tough decision to become a leader and a country. Maybe those people would have a little bit of an input. Tell us a little bit of that problem and how thats structured . We call the next generation leaders. We bring people from mid career from around the world and they spend a year in washington. We place them in various and sometimes in their professions and sometimes not in their professions around the country. We get together five or six times a year. It is proourven to be successfu. The things that matter is foreign defense and Foreign Policy and freedom of the press and Security Issues and of course my issue which is Human Trafficking. So we used to joke about it, my side Human Trafficking is what we are doing today. That was not the way it was. So, we have that time to talk about it. We have that time to really plan and really do what his vision was for all of this. Why do you think he was inspired by or motivated to try to train these Global Leaders and what was he hoping they were going to discover during their year here in the u. S. . I hope they have discovered and i believe they have discover the important of character in government because john, like teddy dealt with some thugs around the world and guys that did not make the right decisions concerning their people and etc. You know the people i am talking about. It was important to him that the young people that he at least inspire them in one way or another to help them be better leaders. Wh what did you think senator kennedy really wanted to do . I know he also wanted to inspire civility. How is that connected and how do you evoke that . I would say we wanted to inspire civility more than he said he wanted todd inspire civility quite honestly. Thats your part. Yes. I would say thats really kind of the spirit of teddy. Really creating the institute, he says this is not about me. It is about the senate or the government. He wanted to explain how government worked or legislation happened. But, i wanted to infuse it with the spirit of teddy. How do you do that. And so thats where the civility and working across the isle come in. Everyone knows he was a passionate partisan and he lo loved he worked across the isle to get things done and finding that negative Common Ground. Thats really such a key part of what we do. What would a typical visitor be or an experience be . We have a big wait list. School to get in a Popular Program called or simulated program. Students come in up to 100 students and they prepare, two or three hours experience. They come in and become senators. Theyre assigned a state or a party. They are forced to put themselves in someone elses shoes. They understand what their constituents believe and what their party believers and they have a piece of legislation or amendment that they have to adopt based on either a current topic or historic topic. It could be a compromise of 1850 or immigration or healthcare or could be we even had the foreign bill or other pieces of legislation. They have to Work Together to be able to get this pass. They have to put aside their own believes in a lot of cases. They have to listen to other people and we do it in a fast pace in a lively way. They got technology. They have to meet each other and talk and work and facilitated. Thats where the civility comes in. If it is my way or the highway, nothing gets done. I know you focus on the learning piece of this. It is important for them to be on the persona. Do you tell them they should be civil or they wont succeed. I think they figure it out quickly. They know they have to talk, we have an exhibit that shows if you only get the youngest children, it is how you pass a piece of legislation on what the National Topping is for ice cream. And the senate has yummy things but the house that is things that are not so tasty. If you only go and compromise what the senate wants and not toppings of the house, things like raising or arms slicing and opposed to sprinkles and whipped cream, you dont get legislation passed. You find out quickly that you have to come together and listen to other people. Din cindy, your institute is focused on experimental and putting people out to have experiences. It is really the only way you can learn and the way of both they have done and what we are trying to do is exactly the same thing. It is easy to be a monday morning quarterback at home in our arms chair. When you experience with these young people and of course they know and realize it is important to compromise but it is also important to lead the character. I will say too with regards to what we do at home. Our institute is a completely open source. Everything we experience with and Human Trafficking and etcetera for schools, everything is online and it is open book and it is free of charge which is exactly what john wanted and what i wanted, too. The experimental part spreads that way. If i can ask you something more personal, i would like to talk a little bit about the grief and how that changes people. I am interested in how did your loss change how perhaps you saw the world or perhaps what you wanted to do with this next part of your life. Well, grief everyone experiences it differently. Everyone has a different experience no matter what it is. For me, beginning portion of it i felt very loss and i felt like there was no safety net for me. That was not true. It was just how i felt. What inspired me to do even more now is not just continue johns legacy but make sure that for the longterm we are in it for the longterm and make sure the legacy that we survive and thrives in all of this. Thats a large part of what i do now and not just his legacy but our institute and the library that we are building, too. Vickie. I think one thing you realize that grief is very personal but at the same time it is universal. Everyone goes through grief and they go through it in a personal way. Cindy and i and as shocking as it is that both of our husbands died on the same day. Thats mind boggling to me. They happen to die on the same date. That to me is mind boggling. The four of us are bound now. We are just bound. It is unbelievable. So with all of that similarities and our senators and spouses and connections and communications are all individual and personal but again universal. I think grief makes you take stops and focus on whats important. When i am at my best, it makes me more patiencpatience. I try to do that. The same disease took both of our husbands and we both had to deal with this in front of the world. There is a whole different element in dealing with it and having to do it and make sure you hold it together for your family and other things that you endured at those times. It is hard for everybody. It changed your role tremendously. Well, you are both enormously accomplished in your own lives, you have these very prominent and highprofile spouses and then suddenly it was your responsibility in some ways to fill their shoes. Thats true. I think both of us are roles alike. How did you fill that feel that public attention differently . I kind of think i was in a fog. I was too. There was a lot i remember about it and a lot i dont remember about it. It just like everything your mind has a way of protecting you. A great deal. I think once you come out to the other side and the new normal hits. It is a new normal now. And getting used to that new normal and getting used to your family, too. It was complicated things in some ways because he could not spend time with him because he was overseas. Vickie, i understand that when joe bidens son died, you passed along a note of advice to him from your family, would you mind talking about that a little bit . It was not really advice, i wrote him a note about bo died who happened to die the same date as our husbands. It is unbelievable. I shared with him a letter that meant a lot to teddy that his father who had lost two children of his own. He lost three children during his lifetime but he wrote this in the late 1950s after he lost two of his children. One son and world war ii and a daughter and plane crashed together. He wrote this and to his son. I cant tell you i know how you feel because no one can tell me, no one knew how i felt. But what i can tell you that when i didnt know life had meaning, i found meaning in what i thought my children would have done with the rest of their lives. And maybe thats what makes it all worth it. Something to that effect. I just share those words with the Vice President and he has said and shared those words again and it meant something to try to find meaning and what bo would have done with the rest of his life and ins separatipirati him. Both senator mccain and senator kennedy were optimistic. They showed a lot of perseverance. I want to hear your thought where people can find that sense, that reservoir of optimism today . I think much of it came actually from his deep religious days. It was something that was profound. It was something that kept him grounded. And kept him perseverance. It was absolutely who he was. He kept his focus on this is something important and this is something i am going to do and i am going to keep going. I will tell you a wonderful perseverance story that makes me smile to think about, in the spring of 2009, teddy threw out the first pitch for the red sox. He was sick. It was ex shilarating. He could not believe how wonderful it was. Opening day first pitch and not just any game. He had practiced. You are not going to be on the mound, you will be a little short thing and you got jim rice, hes going to catch and it is going to be terrific. Hes decked out and ready. He had his little thing and he gets out there and they put him on the mound. This was different. Because he had a brain tumor and coordination was not quite he threw the first pitch and it went to the ground. Teddy said, i want to do it again. All right. One more. He did it again. He told our grandson that night, i would have stayed out there all day until i got it right. And you know what he would of. Thats what we do. We stay there all day until we get it right. That was his life. He was just going to stay there until he got it right. He was really fantastic. Obviously senator mccain was epiphany of optimism and perseverance. He learned that as a young man as a prisoner of war. It does not get much worse than being tortured everyday in the place that was so hostile to him. When he got out, look, i got nothing else. Thats as bad as it is going to go. I am happy all day long. He was. He would find humor and grace in things that i would be kicking the wall because i was angry about it. This is great. Dont worry about it. It will be fine. Thats part of who he was. He saw joy in things. Much like teddy he just rebelled in it and loved it so much. It was infectious. Dont you think thats something they connect each other. They both have that same perseverance and sense of humor. Wicked sense of humor by the way. Exactly. Well, i will end them on a story of your husbands good sense of humor when we were signing or when romney was signing the healthcare bill, i remember your husband was looking on and he put if both romney and i are supporting the same bill, one of us must not have read it. On that happy note, i would like to move questions to audience. I am sure everyone is anxious to join the conversation. We have four microphones in different places. I see one there and i see one over there. Please identify yourself if you will like to join the conversation and limit yourself to one question thats a question with a question mark at the end. And