“The dream shall never die.” But the man behind the dream passed away today after a valiant battle against cancer, Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy.

For my entire life, “Ted” Kennedy was the senator from Massachusetts and a true lion of the senate and for many of us called to public service, both an example and an inspiration. As the icon of a legendary and tragic Irish-American family, Kennedy fascinated me from an early age.

His death this morning, although expected for some time now, hit me hard and in a deeply personal way.

Make no mistake, Kennedy was a flawed man — although few of us could live through what he lived through without losing touch with reality — it is his public life that we celebrate today.

When someone asks any of us why we are Democrats, invariably, it is because of the issues that Kennedy often spotlighted and championed — including more than 30 years of fighting for affordable and universal health care coverage for Americans. He fought for those who had little voice and little power, the average person struggling to get by. In the end, he fought for us.

He fought for voting rights — something still under attack here in Chester County, as we saw in Lower Oxford Township in 2008 — he fought for civil rights, workers rights. education reform and immigration reform and issue after issue that matter to all of us and he strove tirelessly to improve the lives of average people.

How do we honor that legacy?

We must collectively pick up the torch and make our tributes to Ted Kennedy not in words, but deeds. We must pick up the fight and keep our sights on those issues that Kennedy championed so valiantly for so long. We must redouble our efforts for health care, for quality education, for jobs and opportunity for all, not just a few.

Although, Sen. Kennedy suggested that the torch had been passed to a new generation with the election of President Barack Obama, with his loss, we must all assume that mantle and show his courage, his conviction and his will to fight for the things that matter. Each of us must strive to make a tiny fraction of the impact Kennedy made, so that collectively we are able to continue the good fight.

This can be the end of an era, or the beginning of a new and better one — but that depends on all of us, whether we will carry on the fight, or allow a glorious legacy to fade to black.

That is the choice, my friends, the choice we all have to make. We have a chance to renew ourselves, renew our country with a new sense of purpose and meaning and focus our efforts to help those who need our help most.

I end here with Kennedy’s famous words at a time of painful defeat, after losing the presidential nomination to President Jimmy Carter in 1980, words filled with both pain and hope. We must share Kennedy’s determination and keep his dream — our dream — alive:

“For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”