Media vigil continues at Mass. General for Senator Kennedy

(George Rizer/Globe Staff)

Victoria Reggie Kennedy walked into Massachusetts General Hospital today to be by the side of her husband, Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

By George Rizer, Michael Levenson, and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

More than 50 reporters and photographers kept their eyes and cameras trained today on Massachusetts General Hospital, keeping vigil as the nation waited for any update on the condition of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

President Bush telephoned the Democrat's hospital room this morning to check on the 76-year-old liberal icon, who suffered a seizure Saturday on Cape Cod.

"Take care of my friend," the Republican leader told Kennedy's wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, who answered the call, according to a family spokeswoman.

Kennedy and Bush occupy opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, but the politicians have worked together, most notably on the No Child Left Behind education law.

"The senator and Mrs. Kennedy were very appreciative of the call," said spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter in an e-mail. "The senator had a restful night, and will be undergoing further evaluation today. It is unclear whether anything definitive will be known today or tomorrow, but the doctors will let us know when there's something more to say about the cause of Saturday's seizure."

Outside the hospital, there was a flurry of activity in the media scrum at 9:45 a.m., when Victoria Reggie Kennedy stepped out of a black sport utility vehicle on Charles Street and walked into the hospital’s Warren Entrance. She had left the hospital complex 45 minutes earlier, slipping out a door near the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Victoria Reggie Kennedy did not speak to reporters.

Clusters of video cameras on tripods are staking out three hospital entrances, ready to catch a member of the Kennedy clan coming or going. Reporters have come from across the media spectrum, from local newspapers and television stations, to CNN, and even Extra, the television entertainment magazine.

Nine satellite vans were parked near the main entrance to the hospital with antennas extended high into the sky. Cameramen lingered on a nearby sidewalk, including one who napped in a folding cloth chair.

The senator spent Sunday watching baseball and movies from his hospital room. He fielded calls from friends and fellow political leaders, including Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama. The Illinois senator told the Globe Sunday that Kennedy surprised him with his vigor and sense of humor.

"He sounded great," Obama recounted in a telephone interview from the campaign trail in Portland, Ore. "He sounded like the Ted Kennedy we know and love. He joked a little bit about [how] this happens when you get an old politician going out there on the road."

Edmund Reggie, father of Kennedy’s wife, said today that he telephoned the senator from his home in Louisiana Sunday and teased him about the media coverage of his hospitalization.

"I told him, 'People go to the full extent to get their names in the paper, but this is going too far,' and we laughed about that," Reggie said in a telephone interview today. "He was 100 percent himself -- 100 percent."

Reggie said Kennedy had just returned from walking his beloved Portuguese water dogs, Splash and Sunny, on Saturday morning in Hyannisport and was getting ready to eat breakfast when he was suddenly stricken with what doctors later determined was a seizure.

"He was standing and he sat to make sure he wouldn’t fall," Reggie said. "He felt something happening."

Kennedy was transported to Cape Cod Hospital and then flown by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he has undergone a series of tests to determine the cause of the seizure.

Reggie said his daughter stayed overnight with Kennedy last night to comfort him.

"Teddy and Vicki have a great love affair," Reggie said. "She’s reassuring to him, and he’s a tower of strength for her, so it’s mutual."

Globe correspondent Matt Collette contributed to this report.

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