Triple D — Deacon Dr. William Ditewig — posted a fascinating personal remembrance of Ted Kennedy on his Facebook page last night. He told me he wrote it for his family. But with his permission, I post it below:

I was serving on the senior staff of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops when first Hurricane Katrina and then Hurricane Rita slammed into the Gulf Coast. Immediately after Katrina, the bishops formed a Task Force to coordinate their response, and I was assigned as the staff coordinator for the Task Force.

Not long after, I received a phone call late one afternoon from our Government Liaison director, telling me that I needed to be on Capitol Hill the following morning to meet with a number of Democratic Senators to discuss the funding options for hurricane relief. Not the bishops of the Task Force, but me. The meeting was to be held in Senator Dick Durbin’s office. Since the rest of the Government Liaison office was going to be there, too, I thought my role would be to sit in one of the “cheap seats” and field any questions they couldn’t about the activities of the Task Force. Was I wrong!

The next day I arrived and met the liason team and we headed up to Durbin’s office. We met with Senator Durbin and he escorted us into a room that looked a lot like a living room: fireplace, a couple of nice couches, a few easy chairs, coffee tables, end tables. I made for the back of the room, but Durbin said, “Oh, no, please Dr. Ditewig, please have a seat there on the couch.” He and I chatted a bit while other folks came in. I told him I was from Peoria and we talked local issues for a few minutes. By then Mary Landrieu from Louisiana had arrived, along with Tom Harkin from Iowa and several members of their staffs. Meanwhile, I’m the only person sitting on the couch. All the other senators were seated on the other couch and chairs, with staff standing around.

We began talking about the hurricanes and the actions the bishops were taking to respond to the critical and immediate needs of the folks in the region. About ten minutes into it, I heard a door open behind me (the same one we had all entered), but the conversation continued. Then Senator Durbin said, “Oh, Teddy, so glad you could make it. Have a seat next to the deacon there.” I stood to meet him. He gave me the Kennedy smile with a “Wonderful to meet you, Deacon. Teddy Kennedy.” I remarked to him that I believed we had a close mutual friend (a classmate of mine in diaconate formation was a close personal and professional friend of the Kennedy family, going all the way back to Jack Kennedy). He immediately responded to that and we spent a few minutes sharing stories of our mutual friend. Then we got back down to business.

The senators, with Kennedy now taking the lead, wanted to work with the bishops in finding ways to fund hurricane recovery efforts without gutting social programs to pay for it. They were very concerned that the first proposals being floated by the Administration were going to take money from poverty programs to pay for hurricane recovery. We discussed possible ways in which we could work together — Catholic bishops, Democrats and Republicans — to find other alternatives, because the current proposals were simply unacceptable on all fronts.

Throughout the meeting, I was taken by a number of things. First was Kennedy’s genuine concern and his powerful presence in the room. Even though it was a room full of Democrats, he didn’t let the conversation devolve into partisan sniping. Whatever we were going to do, he insisted that it had to “reach across the aisle” to find the right approaches. In short, he wanted EVERYONE involved to do the right things for the right reasons.

Second was just the way he approached the whole gathering. He was clearly respected by his peers and colleagues, and his attitude was consistently positive, even when others wanted to turn negative. Not only was there absolutely no arrogance or condescension in his manner, he was clearly there to work among equals, which included those of us who were just there “visiting” for the day. I’m not one given to being “blinded” by celebrity, but I was truly impressed by Teddy Kennedy.

I consider that day one of the most special of my life.