The tragedies of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s life are usually thought of as assassinations, which claimed his two brothers, and plane crashes, which claimed a brother, a sister and a nephew.

But, like most American families, Kennedy’s family was also touched by cancer. His son and daughter both successfully fought cancer. And Kennedy himself died last week of a cancerous brain tumor.

That part of Kennedy’s story has a local angle. He received treatment at Duke Medical Center. As he had done when his children were sick, he did his research, and decided that Duke was one of the best places in the nation to be treated for a brain tumor.

Indeed, Duke is one of the best places in the nation for treating cancer of all types. Duke Medical Center is consistently ranked among the best hospitals in the nation for cancer treatment.

And it is about to get a major upgrade.

Construction has started on a new Cancer Center and Pavilion, expected to be completed by 2012-2013. These are huge projects.

The seven-story, 267,000 square-foot Cancer Center will be adjoined to the current Morris Cancer Clinic at Duke South. It will have 140 examination rooms, 75 chemotherapy infusion stations and an outdoor terrace where patients can go while receiving infusions.

The Duke Medicine Pavilion , an expansion of surgery and critical care facilities, will be a 580,000 square-foot, eight-story building, with 96 critical care beds, 64 intermediate care beds and 16 new state-of-the-art operating suites.

It’s comforting to residents of the area to know that they live so close to such excellent health care. And it’s exciting that, even in the current economic situation, Duke feels confident about proceeding with a project of this magnitude.

It’s tragic that more progress hasn’t been made in treating cancer, despite the passage of years and billions of research dollars spent. However, we shouldn’t forget that much progress has been made against some specific types of cancers, adding many years to lives.

This new Cancer Center at Duke will provide thousands of jobs and an economic boost for the entire region. And it will provide new hope for thousands of cancer patients.