Tragedy Fuels Mental Health Parity Bill

"There is no simple solution," Paula said of mental illness. "It has a huge ripple effect and sadness that is tied to someone you love."

In the 1980s, when Domenici and his wife Nancy began attending a NAMI support group, they heard stories of families going broke, splitting up and mentally ill children ending up on the streets, in jail, or dead.

"I'd stop by the meetings on the way home from work and meet up with 10 or 12 parents," Domenici said. "They were so passionate and the government was not doing the right things."

After a few speeches here and there, he invited Wellstone – a Minnesota liberal – to help him push for health insurance parity.

They nurtured alliances, finding many others had their own touchstones. The niece of former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Colo., and the father of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had committed suicide; former Vice-President Al Gore's wife Tipper had suffered from depression and Newt Gingrich, then the Republican speaker of the House, who didn't block passage of the bill, had a mother who suffered from bipolar disorder.

They passed a 1996 law that banned insurance companies from setting lifetime limits on mental health care treatment and teamed up again in 2001 on an earlier unsuccessful version of the 2008 law.

'Finding Common Ground'

"They were good friends – my mom and Nancy [Domenici] and Pete and my dad," said Wellstone's son, David. "Even though they were politically worlds apart, they found some common ground on a personal level."

In October of 2002, Wellstone died at the age of 58, along with his wife Sheila and daughter Marcia, in a plane crash. His sons picked up their father's work with Kennedy and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.

"It's been a roller coaster ride," Wellstone, now 43, told ABCNews.com. "I'm ecstatic."

Working to pass parity legislation was "healing" for Wellstone, who later formed the group Wellstone Action to support his father's political causes.