“If it was difficult,” Mr. Kennedy said, “Ted Sorensen was brought in.”

Ted Sorensen passed away earlier today, following a stroke he suffered a week ago.

The New York Times has an excellent obituary here, so I’ll simply say that I didn’t know very much about Mr. Sorensen before moving to Nebraska. After moving here in 2007, however, I was privileged to hear him speak on the UNL campus twice.

The first time, sitting with something like a thousand other Nebraskans in the Lied Center for Performing Arts, I turned to my wife (who had just moved here and had just begun law school) and I asked, “How did he get in the room? That’s the question we ought to be asking.”

Sorensen was 30 years old, a native Nebraskan and graduate of UNL for both his undergraduate and law degrees, and there he was, in JFK’s Oval Office.

I still don’t know the answer to my question, incidentally, and I sorely wish I’d had the opportunity to ask him personally.

That said, Sorensen is rightly a model for my students and, indeed, for anyone from a small Midwestern city who aspires to impact his or her country and the world at large. He will be missed, but nowhere as much, I’d guess, as here in Lincoln.