Richard E. Burke Libri

In 1971 Richard Burke, a freshman at Georgetown University, volunteered his services to the offices of his political idol, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Through ability, hard work, and dedication, Burke rose in the next four years to become one of the Senator's closest staff members. In 1977 he was made Kennedy's personal assistant; after his appointment in 1978 as administrative assistant - the youngest in the Senate - he came to know Edward M. Kennedy perhaps more intimately than anyone outside the closed circle of the Senator's family. He was often the last to see the Senator at night and the first to see him in the morning. This book is the account of what Richard Burke witnessed and experienced during his decade at the Senator's right hand. It is neither a full biography nor an examination of Kennedy's long career in government. Rather, it is the history of a young man who shared the Senator's professional and personal lives during a time marked by exhilarating public achievements and tragic secret misconduct. His story is not only the chronicle of a shattered idol, but of Richard Burke's own fall from grace, and eventual recovery. Burke does not shrink from confronting his own faults, and he agrees with the Senator: It is time for him to confront his.

This is a love story about Richard and Cherie and how their love stood the test of time when his naval duty took him away to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf for seven months in 1962. It is a story of Petty Officer Richard Burke and his life aboard an American destroyer as he sailed seas from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf and the many countries and foreign ports they visited. It is a story about the Fred T. Berry (DD-858) and its involvement in the Mercury Program and its part in the recovery of the space capsules that paved the way for the early space flights that would eventually take our astronauts to the moon. It is a story of the fears and uncertainty of the men that served aboard the destroyer Fred T. Berry on patrol during those thirteen days in October 1962 when President Kennedy blockaded Cuba during the missile crisis. It is the story of their search for the Thresher, the loss of our first nuclear submarine off the coast of New England. In 1972, the Fred T. Berry DD/DDE was sunk off the coast of Key West Florida to build up the reef. In June of 1972, a twenty-one-foot minisub dove on the wreck of the Fred T. Berry and got hung up on her, and although there was a rescue attempt by divers in heated diving suits, all men aboard the minisub perished when they ran out of air.