John Kerry: “at its best, the Senate is an extended family--we spend an unbelievable amount of time working here, Senator to Senator…”

“at its best, the Senate is an extended family--we spend an unbelievable amount of time working here, Senator to Senator, staff to staff. And in the course of those efforts, we get to know each other not as members of a party or as ideological caricatures or cutouts but as people. In particular, we get to know and appreciate on a personal level not just our staff but the staffs of our State delegations. There are staffers from the Massachusetts delegation who have been here as long as I have. And certainly on my late colleague Ted Kennedy's staff there were professionals I knew as friends and turned to as easily as Teddy himself did for so many years. That is why I know Ted himself would be here this morning doing what I am doing in his place, which is acknowledging with sadness the passing on Saturday, April 21 of Stacey Sachs--a longtime health care staffer for Ted--whom we lost to complications from a hard-fought battle with cancer. Stacey was just 50 years old. For many of us, Stacey was a steady and unchanging sight in this ever-changing institution. She spent more than a decade on Capitol Hill as senior health counsel on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, HELP, Committee. She came to the Hill to play a role in making universal health care reform a reality; her life's work--as it was for Ted--is a legacy she leaves behind that should be a gift to last. But it is not her only legacy.…”