Legions he aided now praise Kennedy

Ordinary people recall his extraordinary help

After her husband was killed, on Sept. 11, 2001, Cindy McGinty didn't know where she would find the strength and support to go on.

She never expected it to come from Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Yet the senator was there for McGinty. He called her, and every other Massachusetts family that lost someone that day, to offer his help. So when the Navy balked at sending an honor guard to her husband's funeral, she called, and he fixed it. When she felt overwhelmed by paperwork, she stood up at a meeting Kennedy hosted and told him he needed to do something.

Within days, McGinty said, he created a family advocate program, assigning a helper to every family that wanted one.

"People told me he got in the car and said, 'I don't ever want to hear that Mrs. McGinty has a problem again,' " she said. "Who am I, Cindy McGinty from Foxborough, Mass.?"

Kennedy is best known as a legislative powerhouse, a tireless legend at courting allies and cutting deals, and as the battle-scarred face of the nation's most famous political family. But out of the spotlight and behind the scenes, his constituents say, the senior senator and his staff have cut through red tape to change countless individual lives, advocating for even the narrowest personal needs with a ferocity and attention to detail that still inspires awe in those on the receiving end decades later.

Few causes, it seems, have been too small to warrant his aid, be it helping an Ethiopian maintenance man seek immigration papers for his family; encouraging the activism of a young diabetes patient from Plymouth; or calling top officials in the military to stop a Westford stepmother from being deployed to Iraq.

As the well-loved senator begins his fight against brain cancer, people who have benefited from his service said they are praying for the recovery of a man who heard their cries and answered when it seemed impossible amid the din of politics.

"If not for him, I would not have any faith in Washington," said Brian Hart of Bedford, who worked with Kennedy to advocate for armored military vehicles after the death of his 20-year-old son, Private First Class John Hart, in Iraq in 2003. "It came down to the fact that he returned our call."

The stories of Kennedy's interventions go back decades in his 45-year Senate career. Veterans remember how he negotiated with the Vietnamese government to bring home the body of Marine Corporal Charles McMahon Jr. of Woburn, killed in action in Saigon in April 1975, on the last day of the Vietnam War, after the young man's remains were accidentally left behind by evacuating forces. Recovering the body took almost a year, but the soldier's parents finally buried their son in his hometown.

Some Jewish families who emigrated from the Soviet Union to Boston in the 1970s carry a lasting debt of gratitude to Kennedy, who negotiated directly with Communist leader Leonid Brezhnev to help them win permission to leave the country. Boris and Natalya Katz of Cambridge were among those refused the right to emigrate. They waited anxiously for exit visas as their baby daughter languished, suffering from an illness that hampered her digestion.

The family made it to Boston, where they settled in 1978. Today, Natalya Katz said, her daughter is 30, working for the City of New York.

"There are people who can fight, and [Kennedy] is one," she said.

His battles have been often waged for powerless children - in legislative crusades affecting millions, but sometimes on behalf of just a handful. Jack Cradock, president of the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center, said the center is indebted to Kennedy for his help over the years. A decade ago, when the institution faced an $8 million deficit and filed for bankruptcy, Kennedy stepped in to save it. But Cradock is also grateful to Kennedy on a personal level: In the 1980s, when Cradock sought to adopt 10 siblings from Costa Rica, Kennedy worked to win the foreign government's permission.

"That's him, you know?" said Cradock. "He's a very busy guy, but once you get his ear and he hears the situation, he responds."

David Beanland of Westford said he also owes his happy, intact family in part to Kennedy. Beanland's wife died of breast cancer in 2002, leaving three young daughters. Beanland remarried in 2004, his wife adopted the girls, and the family seemed on its way back to stable footing. But a year later, Beanland's wife was ordered by the Army to deploy to Iraq for 12 to 18 months, he said, though she had just two months left in her military obligation.

Beanland, a former Army surgeon, was convinced her departure would devastate his children, whose anxiety was "palpable," he said. But the Army rejected his pleas for leniency.

A colleague suggested he try Kennedy. His daughters wept on their first visit to his office, said Beanland - and so did the senator's aide. From that moment until the day word came of a reprieve, Beanland said, he was astounded by the attention lavished on their problem.

"They made us feel like we were the only ones they were dealing with," he said. "They never asked me if I was a Democrat or a Republican. They never cared."

Julie Primeau called Kennedy's office after the death of her brother Christopher, a commercial diver from Fitchburg who was killed while working underwater construction last August. For months after the accident, Primeau said, federal investigators rebuffed the family's questions, giving them only the sketchiest details. Kennedy's office filled a painful void, providing reports of two investigations into the accident by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

"He was the only person who helped us," Primeau said. "For once, someone cared what had happened to my brother."

Moira McCarthy Stanford has marveled in recent years as Kennedy has mentored her daughter. Lauren Stanford, 16, who has diabetes, has become a vocal advocate for research, with the senator inviting her to testify before Congress and writing her notes of encouragement.

"Where does he find the time?" said McCarthy Stanford, of Plymouth. "To me, a cure for diabetes is the world, but a lot of other things go on."

McGinty, widowed in 2001, said Kennedy still calls or writes her every year on the anniversary of the tragedy. She said he took her family sailing, and called to check on her when her son was in the hospital.

Hart said Kennedy has been there for him since November 2003, when the senator attended the funeral of Hart's son, who had voiced concern about unarmored Army vehicles before his death. Kennedy went on to fight for, and win, huge increases in funding for such equipment, Hart said.

But he also offered quiet personal support, in private visits side by side with Hart at his son's grave.

"I would never have asked him," said Hart. "He just did it."