Upon hearing that Senator Ted Kennedy had passed away earlier this week, Hopkinsville resident Mary Lou Roark went down into her basement.

After digging through a few old photos and other cherished items... she pulled out a picture of a young Kennedy with a faint blue imprint left from his signature nearly 40 years earlier.

In 1969, 32-year-old Roark and her college friend Ruth Lature decided to make the most of their trip to Washington, D.C.

"We had been sight-seeing all day and we were going to go home the next day and I said I want to go by and see Senator Kennedy" recalls Roark.

So the two women headed to the Kennedy's Senate office.

Cameras weren't allowed in the Senate building but Roark was determined to get a lasting memento of the lawmaker.

She happened upon a discarded picture of the senator in a drop-off box at the door and took it with her, hoping for an autograph.

"When we got in the building we started down the hall towards his office and there was just a mob of reporters and photographers. One guy had a bunch of big lights on his shoulders and he said he couldn't move because the senator was expected to come out of his office at anytime," she notes.

So Roark and Lature waited in a hallway near his office until he came out and followed the Senator and the mob to the elevator.

"Just before he got on the elevator, the reporters were all hollering at him and taking pictures and kept saying "no comment". I didn't know if I should say anything or not but I got brave and just before he stepped on the elevator, I said "Senator Kennedy will you please sign this picture for me?" and he looked around and said "OK".

Roark admits she didn't expect the Senator to oblige her request.

"I was expecting him to be more abrupt but he was just abrupt with the reporters and when he turned around to sign the picture, he kind of loosened up a little and smiled it and signed and then he was gone."

Something else struck Roark about her chance encounter with the "Liberal Lion".

"He was really good-looking because he was tall and dark-headed then," Roark says with a smile.

Although Kennedy is gone, the retired school librarian says the now slightly faded signature is something she treasures.

"I think it will remind me of all the good things he did for our country and everybody that he could help," Roark says.

The signature isn't Roark's only tie to the Kennedy family.

Roark's father owned a country ham business in Cadiz, and one of his most frequent client's he would ship ham to was the patriarch of the Kennedy clan, Ted's father, Joseph P. Kennedy.