All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Ted Kennedy once said of his legislative work, "I look at all the causes I'm involved in with a human face, and I think that is what has been enduring and continuing and inspiring."

Today, so many of those faces - belonging to the thousands of lives he touched- are gathering in Boston at his brother's presidential library where the Senator lies in repose.

And there are many others: an 8-year-old girl in Washington who was the Senator's last reading buddy - a 9-11 widow who found strength in a man who was no stranger to tragedy - and the parents of a fallen soldier who joined forces with Kennedy to ensure that men and women serving this nation get the armor they need.

Senator Kennedy wrote 25-hundred pieces of legislation in his 46 years in office, nearly 47, and passed hundreds of them into law.

But the legacy is not the paper - it's the people, the individual lives that collectively mourn on this day.

That's a page from our notebook.

I'm Jeff Glor, CBS News.

CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston is based in New York

There are some stories that are seared in a reporter's memory --images that never fade.

The release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison today reminded me of one of those stories.

It happened December 21, 1988 - covering the families and friends of Pan Am flight 103. Dozens of people rushed to JFK airport after learning the aircraft carrying their loved ones had crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland.

At the time, I was a correspondent at CBS's flagship TV station, WCBS in New York. The assignment desk sent me and my camera crew to the arrival terminal. Relatives and friends of Flight 103 were already there. It seemed that most knew what had happened.

There were tears, muffled screams, sobs, as husbands and wives, fathers, mothers and siblings learned the awful truth.

One woman collapsed on the terminal floor. I heard her before I saw her. As I watched her companions attempt to offer assistance, not for the first time, I felt awkward about the intrusive nature of my job.

One instinct said 'find the cameraman, get pictures'. But my personal sense of sadness, seeing so many grieving people, made me pause.

As I stood there, my photographer walked up. We talked about it and decided we had more than enough images of pain and angst.

Our competitors got the pictures of the lady on the floor. We didn't.
We didn't miss them. There was enough sadness in that terminal to last a life time.

Tony Huesman broke a world record every morning, simply by waking up.

You see, Tony was the longest surviving person with the same transplanted heart.

Growing up in Dayton, Ohio he was diagnosed with a weakening heart and by college he was told he had just three months to live.

On his own, Tony read about a heart transplant program at Stanford University - the only program in the country at the time. And at 20 he got a new heart he was told would last, at most, ten years. That was in August of 1978.

Since then, Tony married and had a job at a sporting goods store. But he also worked, tirelessly, to teach children about heart health and help other transplant patients.

These days, 130 hospitals perform 2,200 heart transplants every year.

Tony Huesman got 31 years out of his donated organ before he died last Sunday at the age of 51 from cancer.

His heart never gave up, and neither did he.

That's a page from my notebook.
I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.

With those words, Eunice Kennedy Shriver opened the first Special Olympics. It was 1968, and a crowd of about 1,000 people were gathered in Chicago's Soldier Field - about as many spectators as there were athletes.

Today, three million potential Olympians are training in 180 countries and Special Olympics is an international symbol of the hurdles disabled people have cleared - the heights they have reached since she began her mission.

As her brother, President John F. Kennedy, once said, "to whom much is given, much is required." But for Eunice, working with mentally disabled people wasn't an obligation. It was a true passion and a calling.

She changed minds, laws, and lives along the way.

Today we say goodbye to the lady, but the legacy is eternal. The lesson that bodies and minds may have limitations, but spirits never do.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

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For the past 7 days now, I have done nothing but cover the death of Michael Jackson and sleep (at least 4 hours each night). While I was always a fan of his music, especially the amazing hits from the 80's, I never closely followed the surreal saga that was his life off stage. However, I find the drama that has played out over the past week to be incredibly compelling. Some of it is tabloid for sure, but it is also a great human drama and tragedy. The other thing that has amazed me is how much of the "news" about Jackson is being driven by the celebrity web site TMZ. They generally traffic in all things celebrity and it’s far from what many would consider reputable journalism. However, TMZ broke the news of Jackson’s death and has basically been one step ahead of EVERY news organization since. Some are calling Jackson’s death the event that will "legitimize" TMZ. That remains to be seen, but right now they are out front.

Some thoughts on Diana Ross and Debbie Rowe:

When Michael Jackson's will was released today, there were two bombshells. First, he asked that his mother be given custody of his children. However, if she wasn't able to care for them, he wanted them to go to Diana Ross. Jackson's biographer, Randy Taraborelli, says the two were extremely close. In fact, when a young Michael Jackson first lived in Los Angeles, he lived with Ross at her mansion and she became a surrogate mother. He was able to see how she raised her kids and apparently decided she did a pretty good job. The two also memorably starred in the 1978 musical "The Wiz." However, Jackson’s biographer says the two have not been in contact in recent years. That Jackson distanced himself from almost everyone after his molestation trial in 2005. Taraborelli does say that he thinks Ross will be delighted that Jackson thought of her in this way.

As for Debbie Rowe, Jackson's former wife who gave both to two of his children, she was specifically cut out of the will. When Jackson signed his will in 2002, he and Rowe had split and were at odds over custody and visitation rights for the children. In 2005, Rowe was called as a prosecution witness in Jackson's molestation trial. However, many believe her testimony is what led to Michael Jackson's acquittal. Shortly thereafter, the two reached an agreement whereby she gave up her parental rights for a reported multi-million dollar settlement.

CBS News reported this week that despite millions of dollars flowing out from Iraq's rich oil resources every day, some of the country's social services, including basic hospital care, are sorely neglected. You can read the story here. Larry Doyle, our Baghdad bureau chief, saw the effects of this firsthand, when his friend and neighbor needed care. What follows is his story, told by Doyle.

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It was about 120 degrees the day I met Alfred. One of those furnaces-like Baghdad days that come blazing in every June. Alfred had found about the only relief on our rock-covered dirty street. He looked pretty comfortable in a worn, formerly white plastic chair propped in a little shade supplied by a 12-foot-high concrete blast wall.

Damn, I whispered, I’m melting. Why isn’t that chair?

“Salaam alaikum,” I sweated out in fractured Arabic.

“Sit, my friend, please sit,” was the perfect English response. And that simple exchange started a great friendship.

Almost exactly a year later, Faried Yacob George lay in an emergency room in Baghdad Hospital, one of five in the Medical City complex.

Faried was my friend Alfred. I never wrapped my tongue around his real first name so we decided “Alfred” would do just fine. Actually Alfred was in the emergency room two days and nights and eventually was given a saline IV the second day because he was dehydrated. Sitting a long time in a sweltering room will do that to you. It will do that to a healthy 20-year-old. My friend was 76.

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