Ted Sorensen died last week at 82.
A recurring character in every book and account of JFK and RFK that I have read, his principal characteristic was that he was Young. That Ted and the one in the NYT obituary seemed to me two completely different people. The one I had read about was President Kennedy’s whiz-kid-in-chief: speechwriter, book collaborator and “intellectual blood-bank”, all of 32 when JFK won the ‘60 election. The one in the obituary had practiced for decades as a lawyer, been offered the directorship of the CIA, and had counselled Anwar Sadat and Nelson Mandela. He had spent fifty years – fifty years! – since that historic election and, by all accounts, had spent them well. How long a life can be, with eras spanned, people met and forgotten, opportunities taken and missed, things done and left unfinished. How different the person who starts from the one who ends.
Two completely different people indeed.