Remembering Sargent Shriver

good afternoon I'm Tom Putnam director of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and on behalf of Tomic knot executive director of the Kennedy Library Foundation and all of my library and foundation colleagues I thank you for coming and acknowledge the generous underwriters of Kennedy Library forms lead sponsor Bank of America Raytheon Boston Capital the Lowell Institute the Boston Foundation and our media partners the Boston Globe and WBUR I am one of the many who can say that the genius of Sargent Shriver changed my life at a formative moment I worked one summer as a counselor for Upward Bound a federally funded program launched by Sargent Shriver to help low-income students become the first in their family to attend college after experience the power of that work I was hooked and I went on to work for Upward Bound for 16 years first in rural Maine and then in the inner cities of Hartford Springfield and Holyoke before coming to the library there are countless others who could say the same either those who lives were transformed by the services provided by the many programs that mr. Shriver created or those who worked or volunteered for those organizations having long revered Sargent Shriver I was deeply affected by Mark Schreiber's new book a good man rediscovering my father which is on sale in our bookstore and Mark would happy happy to sign your copies after today's form and how fitting it is to have mark here with us this Father's Day weekend since this book provides insight not only into mr. Stryver's professional accomplishments but also his role as a father a husband and a friend the book is a touching tribute from a devoted son of the timeless lessons he learned from both his parents the durability of faith the endurance of hope and the steadfastness of love an appropriate that we gather here for Sargent Shriver played a crucial role in the Kennedy administration some historians suggest there would not have been a Kennedy presidency saved the advice mr. Shriver gave to JFK to call Coretta Scott King just days before the vote a decisive moment that shifted the election in Kennedy's favor as President Clinton stated in his eulogy a whole generation of us understood what President Kennedy meant by looking at Sergeant Shrivers life our moderator this afternoon is Richard Parker an Oxford trained economist and senior fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University and the co-founder of Mother Jones magazine he writes extensively on public policy and is the author of the biography John Kenneth Galbraith his life his politics his economics as you might imagine I read a lot of biographies in this job but to stand out in my memory the first is Richards book on ken Galbraith which one reviewer described as fittingly capturing the oversized life of the eminent economists philosopher writer and diplomat and the other is Scott stossel's book on Sargent Shriver both volumes tell the fascinating backstory of these two happy Warriors who played crucial roles and launching the new frontier and then served as the conscience of our nation during all that was to follow on a personal note I lost my own father around the same time that mark lost his and like many sons including as you learned and then this new book mark Shriver I often grapple with whether I live up to the model provided to me by my father whose life like Sergeant Shrivers was tempted by his experience in world war ii as a young man and who went on to live life to the fullest having survived that maelstrom the title of the book comes from how frequently after his father's passing mark heard friends and admirers comment that Sargent Shriver was a good man quote I heard it so often during the funeral he writes that had passed from a cliche to a haunting refrain in reading this book I thought of another cliche that might be appropriate describe what we learned about Mark Shriver when reading this powerful new book when it comes to good men it takes one to know one please join me in welcoming Mark Shriver and Richard Parker mark I want to start by asking you to say how this book came about this is your first book you have spent your life in politics and progressive change working on anti-poverty programs working on inner-city counseling what what about your father's years caused you to write this book well as thank you for the question and thank you for agreeing to come out today Richard really honored that you're here and Tom thank you for that very kind introduction particularly the last sentence that was really very very thoughtful of you so thank you I mean as Tom said what happened was I never had planned to write a book much less a book on my father so what ended up happening was I heard this time and time again that he was a good man and at first as I wrote and as Tom just read I thought it was something nice that people said to you when your father died and then I realized that they were really they meant something different than the fact that he was a great man and when I really started to dig in try to figure that out I think it was because he was married to the woman of his dreams for 56 years he raised five kids all of whom loved him he had countless friends and not just President Clinton who spoke at his eulogy or Cardinals or senators but two women who waited in line at the funeral home for 40 minutes who literally said me your father was a good man and they were the waitresses at his favorite restaurant the guy from the USA our counter at national airport who I know a little bit who told me that your dad was a great he said you know your dad is a great man I was a good man and he turned around and walked out of the church and I talked to him later and he told me that it was because when he used to take that for the security system lines when he was older that he was always dad was always asking him how he was doing instead of talking about himself or talking about his Alzheimer's so you have these examples that come back to me that start to show why he was a good man and obviously the fact that he went to Mass every day of his life literally I remember checking into hotels here in the United States and anywhere around the world and the first thing dad would ask is what time is the math scheduled do you have a mess for tomorrow what how can I get to mass I wanted to dig in and figure this out you know my wife Jeannie and I are raising three kids and we're trying to balance faith family friends or jobs trying to make a difference in our community trying to make a difference in Maryland or the country and it's tough you know families are pulled in so many different directions now and dad somehow managed to balance all of those competing interests to be a good friend to have a daily relationship with God to make a difference in the world to be a good husband and I wanted to dig in and figure that out I my dad used to write me letters almost every day and when I was in high school he'd slip them under the door and they could be from the night before conversation we had a dinner they could be an article about a Red Sox Oriole game it could be some cases he'd flip a book under the door by Elie Wiesel or an article by Bob Woodward in the newspaper and I would dug into those notes to try to see if I could glean out of some of the notes what it meant to be a good man and that's what the book is about it's a story essentially of a bunch of stories how I learned how he became head of the Peace Corps and created the Peace Corps out of nothing how he created the war on poverty out of nothing how he worked with my mom spreading Special Olympics around the world but more importantly how he balanced being a father being a husband being a son of God being a friend and doing it all with such joy and I could read a couple of letters and you know as we go through this but he really was joyful I mean he got fired up every day and was ready to take on the day whatever it was and there's there's a piece in there you know I asked him when he was suffering from Alzheimer's and it was about four years before he died and I thought he would had a moment of clarity and I said to him dad you're losing your mind how does it make you feel and without missing a beat he turned to me and said I'm doing the best I can with what God has given me and I think that's the way he lived his life whether was fighting in World War two whether it was surviving the depression whether it was creating the Peace Corps or whether it was being a husband or whether was you know writing us notes whether it was hitting fly balls whether it was having a vodka tonic with my friends in a cigar and telling stories he was doing the best he could with what God has given him and I learned that as I reflected back on the writing of this book and I hope that the stories in here are insightful to folks as they balance these different competing interests of fatherhood friend relationship with God relationship with your spouse and obviously for women as well so that's a long answer to your question it's a thorough answer that's worthwhile thank you maybe we should just stop right now let me press you a little farther that's okay we let anybody else has questions or use it later later no I get to on the stage for the next few minutes why you've got friends planned out the audience now I don't you're a professor right yeah yes I get nervous around professor I'll give you an A let's talk okay the only one I would ever regard we take care of Kennedy school people here I said you're okay good talk a little bit about the Shriver family I think for so many people one associates the Kennedys with Boston and Irish Catholicism but that's not where the Shrivers come from yeah I mean dad's family had been involved in the state of Maryland's history both politically and economically for over 200 years here's I'm going to butcher this but his great-great great-grandfather was one of the original signers of the Maryland Constitution and his great-grandfather excuse me his grandfather okay his grandfather took Jeff Stewart to the Battle of Gettysburg as a 16 year old as a 16 year old so you know dad always talked about the Civil War and he used to have on his counter bullets from the Civil War that he found as a kid in the Schreiber homestead and we are you know what when I really step back to reflect on this his grandfather took Jeff Stewart to the Battle of Gettysburg stunning right and that guy then after the war drop and went into the seminary I wanted to become a priest dropped out because he got sick went back into the seminary dropped out a second time because he got sick but became very good friends with a guy named James gibbet who would become the second Cardinal in America for Baltimore James Cardinal Gibbons and that was dad's godfather and his mother and father who were second cousins I said dad God you're crazy what my parents were second cousins what did you expect one was from Western Maryland one was from Carroll County which is the western part of Maryland as well but that man whose dad's grandfather was in the Maryland House of Delegates in the Maryland State Senate and the Shrivers ran a very prominent milling facility milling operation in Union Mills and dad said that when he was a little kid he used to look out the window and he'd see the horse-drawn carts bringing up the corn to be milled and in that area which was the post office for Carroll County was in the Schreiber homestead so people would come and collect their mail dad was there as a little kid seeing this people would come and talk in southern and you know they'd sit on the front porch they'd go on their rockers and talk about politics about the economy so he had this great experience of a couple hundred years of a very prominent family in Maryland very strong Catholic they were split between the north and the south dad's mother's side of the family was Catholic and with the south his father's side was Protestant in with the north and literally the day before jeb stuart showed up the Union troops showed up and they went up to get his bird so he had this great history and that faith I think is really the bedrock of his life and tell me your your grandmother warned your father when he went off to Yale to be careful about Harvard in Boston yes what's the you know they lived in this civil war and there were bullets you know literally Civil War slugs in the family homestead there so when dad used to say that when he came up and tried to play baseball against Harvard which he did do it when he was at Yale that his mother wouldn't allow him to spend the night because Boston was the heart of the north you're not allowed to hang around with the Yankees so he'd have to get back on the train and go back to a new hey the safety of New Haven that's ironic yeah a safety no yes I love the idea yeah sure I love it too your grandfather was a successful businessman who then was hit very hard like so many men in business by the depression and yet nothing about what you described about your father gives the sense that he in turn was crushed by his father's difficulties huh how did your father and grandfather get along so essentially they got along I think very very well I my dad just to give everyone a look quick history on it the Schreiber family was in Western Maryland they moved into Baltimore to going the banking business it went very well and my father would tell stories about his mother and father working with the poor feeding the poor in Baltimore City clothing the naked in Baltimore City and I think their faith was a very active faith it was the faith of the call to social justice and then in the fall of 29 of course the worst timing possible he moved grandpa Shriver moved the family up to New York to start a bank and a couple of years later declared bankruptcy and dad had has written and there's some notes in this book about it as well as in Scotts tassels excellent biography about the fact that the Depression really crushed other it other died a few years later actually in 1942 but was never the same with this thing amount of energy dad had to work himself through grants and scholarships through high school at Canterbury through Yale on graduate and through Yale Law School so I think that faith was tested during the Depression it was tested he went into the war signed up literally went into the Navy the day after his final exam from Yale loss Harbor so here was a guy and he fought in the South Pacific through brutal combat came out of that with his faith even stronger I think than when he went in you talk about faith but there's another dimension of faith in a sense which was the connection between your father and your mother he met her apparently he fell in love with her immediately and there was a little hesitation maybe a couple of days or a couple weeks before your mother would consent to marry your father tell us a little bit about this is Harvard professor trying to be funny mommy they dated for seven years right so what are you saying weeks or months in being funny but a new kind of but a particular kind of faith right so it is yeah somebody said to me the other day you know the first three sections of the book or the first section of the book is built into three areas its faith hope and love because what I really distilled in kind of trying to figure out what made dad a good man is the fact that he believed in those three principles and those were the guiding principles of his life the faith that he had that demanded acts of Hope and love and some guy joked to me the other day the greatest example of Faith Hope and love for your father was the fact that he had faith that your mother and he hoped that your mother was gonna fall in love with him it worked out it worked out over so faiths right I took seven years they knew each other they met after the war in New York City my father had gone to school with a Canterbury for a year with Jack Kennedy for Jack Kennedy left Canterbury so he knew him a little bit and then he knew my mom's older sister Kathleen who died a couple years after the war or in an airplane crash and I think they were in those you know circles in New York City after the war and they met at a party and then your dad met your grandfather separately and your grandfather hired your dad so what happens is yeah my mom and dad meet my father tries to take her out on a couple dates and then he gets a call from Joe Kennedy he's a junior editor at Newsweek and he gets a call from Joe Kennedy and says can you come over here I want to talk to you so of course my dad's like oh my god I somehow agitated Joe Kennedy and at that point you know grandpa was a you know big businessman and a big tycoon and whatever I guess I probably shouldn't say tycoon but he was a big he's a big businessman at that point and he got called in and grant he had been the head of the Yale Daily News which was at that point and still probably the best student newspaper in the country so he was you know smart guy who worked himself through Yale College and then Yale Law School and grandpa asked him to look at these letters that Joe Kennedy had written grandpa during World War two to see if they were worthy of being published and dad met with him at a hotel nervous comes back a couple of weeks later and says he doesn't think the letters are good enough which is probably required a good amount of guts to say that to Joe Kennedy and mr. grandpa said I agree with you and then calls him back a couple days later and says would you like to go run the Merchandise Mart which Joe which grandpa owned at that point its biggest building in the world and he goes to work for grandpa and then courts your mom and finally persuades her yes very seven years later that's great now in terms of your father's interest in politics he was apparently active in politics in Chicago even while he was courting your mother and in particular in early civil rights activity and say something about that and then how that connects with the 1960 election and the crucial african-american vote in Illinois yes of your uncle's election so essentially you know my father's parents when they moved to New York worked for something worked on something called the New York City Catholic interracial council and it was an effort in that time started by the Catholic Church members of the church to try to deal with the issues of segregation and the tensions between african-americans and whites and to foster dialogue better understanding and try to solve some of those issues so when he went to Chicago there had just started up something called the Chicago Catholic and racial council and dad became involved in that I was again keep going back to faith and it's something you'll hear if I talk to any longer hear about that consistently because that was that I think the driving factor of his life so when he moves to Chicago in the mid 40s late 40s rather he goes and gets involved in the Catholic and racial council he's running the biggest office complex in the world at that point so he's a big businessman and gets to know daily and works with and the daily names him the head of the Chicago Board of public education and dad works on the issues of integrating the Catholic High Schools and the Catholic churches exceeding the Catholic hospitals in the Catholic high schools in Chicago with Cardinal strick who was actually very progressive on the issue of racial issues in the u.s. and he was a cardinal in Chicago so he has these relationships he introduced his King at an event in Chicago he has bricks thrown through his office will window at the Catholic the Chicago Catholic and racial council because of his work on racial issues so he is you know working on these issues in the 40s and into the 50s and then when Uncle Jack decides to run for president in 1959-60 dad is named the head of the civil rights unit of the campaign and he works on that with a guy named Martin who was publishing African African American publishes newspapers Louis Martin Louie Martin is his name and Harris Wofford who had done a lot of work on the issues knew King very well knew Gandhi and they are running the civil rights unit which is to issue these position papers on it but also to get out the african-american vote and they had been told countless times during the campaign if you say and if Kennedy says anything good about Khrushchev Castro or King the Southern Democrats going to throw their votes behind Nixon so what happens is Newton gets arrested and a couple weeks before the election which Tom alluded to and people are fearful for his life and mrs. King obviously credits Scott King as well and they come up with the idea that Senator Kennedy should call mrs. King and expressed concern and the campaign structure didn't want to do it because of the threat of losing the south and dad gets the idea in a conversation with Wofford Martin and racist Jack's hotel room in Chicago and there are folks in the room this is how Harris is told and I've read it a couple of other ways and the room starts to empty out and dad is kind of loitering around there in Eddie Martin know any Martin Eddie Martin more than the Kenny O'Donnell sorry Kenny O'Donnell it's nice to have Tom in the front row Kenny O'Donnell who is senator Kennedy's closest aide goes into the bathroom and dad says to Jack you ought to call credit Scott King and just express your concern and he says okay that's a good idea how do we get her on the phone dad pulls it up around dolls are talked for about a minute Donald comes out of the bathroom and says oh my god you've just lost this the election and that there's you know 48 hours of a lot of confusion and chaos and then daddy King Martin Luther King's father comes out and says I used I was going to vote for Nixon I'm not throwing my votes behind Kennedy and at that point he was a Protestant minister Republican and said I'm going to throw all of my votes to Kennedy because he had the courage to call Coretta and wipe away the tears from her eyes and a whole series of african-american ministers come out in support of Jack over the course of the next 48 hours dad produces what they called the blue bomb which is a series of quotes from folks like Abernathy and King and other folks in support of uncle Jack's move and the african-american vote moves in such a direction increases in enough numbers to push the election to Kennedy and particularly important in Illinois where the yes the black vote was so crucial in swinging that state because it was so it was so close and it didn't alienate evidently didn't alienate any of the traditional southern Democratic votes so he holds that base and then gets enough of the african-american votes in higher percentages to win the election and a lot of people who said you know as a shrewd political move and I really don't see it that way I mean it may have been but I really think that deep down inside again it's it's an act of faith that he is trying to deal with the issue of racial and justice in this country he knew King he had been involved in these issues for years and he I think saw it as a way to help mend the relationship between african-americans and white people in this country and it had great political implications obviously but I think it was really a gesture of hope and that's the idea and a significant moment in American political history doesn't have a major candidate speak out on civil rights when so often the democratic party had had to curb its voice on these issues absolutely so so now begins the 1960s and early 1970s were in some sense this is the peak of your father's public career your uncle appoints him to head up staff or cabinet selections for the Kennedy White House and then charges him with creating the Peace Corps talk about what that was like for your father I think you know again you said it but I think it bears repeating I mean the best and the brightest which everyone knows is associated with the kennedy cabinet was recruited by dad so he goes out and Uncle Jack gives him the task of being the head hunter essentially for the kennedy administration and i think he got that job as i wrote in the book because dad had the the widest array of acquaintances of anybody in the kennedy circle so he went to Yale Law School and Potter Stewart was his classmate he was the Supreme Court justice the other guy who would become a Supreme Court justice by name Mike Kennedy is wizard wizard wise one who had played in the NFL and he was one of dads friends from law school he knew King he knew Cardinals he knew you know folks all around the country and he recruited you know McNamara Dillon all of these people to come onto the into the Kennedy administration in itself is a pretty amazing accomplice so he takes after that's over the day after Kennedy sworn in he's asked to come create the Peace Corps and dad had had experiences working on something called the experiment for International Living sure how would he had done when he was in college so he knew the power of sending young people abroad and knew the power of what they would learn and bring back so he was asked to create the peace crowd of nothing no blue plant no budget no place in the government and he creates it which I again shows this incredible brain power strategy you know he's a guy that was very shrewd as far as getting things done from nothing and he did this again with the Johnson administration against the war against and the war against poverty creates it out of nothing and it endures for 50 years and a lot of people think it's the greatest you know hallmark in the Kennedy administration well it was the decade when poverty fell most sharply as when its entry from 65 to 75 the and you know talk about this the child poverty rate was almost what it is today 25% one in four kids living in poverty the senior rate was a little higher 28% ten years later they had both been knocked down by ten percent today the percentage points ten percentage points are yellow and then the today the senior rate of poverty is under ten percent and the kid rate children under 18 is back up where it was in 1965 which to me shows if you have a political will and you invest in these efforts to eradicate poverty or lower poverty rates it can be done we just don't have the political will today and the track record shows it you know from 65 to 75 substantial drop in rates for both senior citizens and kids and so when he leaves first the 60s behind him he then accepts an invitation from George McGovern to run for vice president he's never run for public office before right I mean this is that's great he and he's inaugurated into running for public offices vice Prez the United States that's fairly bold in in and of itself for him to take on and yet he's self-deprecating about the whole process because he knows that other people had been talked to there was a wonderful phrase about your father used can you he he he was evidently the seventh pick for McGovern and there were seven of us in the family and my father always called us the lucky seven so right after a campaign with soap he bought a boat a little motorboat and he called it the Lucky seven which everyone thought was ironic is he had gotten crushed in the campaigning with McGovern but as he said to McGovern after the 72 race we may have lost the election George but we didn't lose our souls and the people that beat him were out a couple years later with Nixon and Agnew were both gone so they clearly got whooped except for Massachusetts as a kid I just went over that bumper sticker that said don't blame me I'm from Massachusetts Wow a couple people um the only other place was DC but I didn't see any DC bumper stickers I guess it you know I want to talk to you about two other things about faith again and then about your father's Alzheimer's and how you cope with that but I'd like to take a break just for a couple minutes and show a short clip that tells the audience a little bit more about your father and lets them see him okay yeah we've got this to monitor down here to shriver do you really believe that poverty can be wiped uh yes I do I disagree with those who feel that grinding poverty the kind of poverty I mean is the kind of poverty where you have very bad medical care very bad housing some Washington insiders called him a boy scout an unabashed dreamer his enthusiasm his idealism were unadulterated but beneath his buttery surface read one reporter was a second skin of Steel he was the best all-around politician I've ever seen yet today he's all but forgotten overshadowed as an in-law of the nation's most powerful political family there are too many Kennedys in public office right now how do you personally answer that question well I say my name is Shriver Robert Sargent Shriver from the summit of privilege and power he dared America's youth who work among the poorest people in the world and live out their country's most revolutionary ideals letting their actions speak for their hearts and for their minds and for this country there was the sense of something new was emerging and that whatever it was the Peace Corps was in the vanguard the Peace Corps became the symbol of American idealism abroad but when Shriver was asked to fight poverty at home his methods became a threat to politicians everywhere for the first time they hit to this country poor people actually have a place and a way in which to express themselves he fed the attack dogs that when yapping incessantly after the establishment he was the golden boy and all of a sudden he's running into political resistance from every quarter it doesn't Maxwell with me that more that rebellion you had down there and I don't apologize to anybody anywhere all these curses are coming out if you're doomed to fail you're too messianic it was a time of hope and change I'm in a decade of conflict and rage war and rebellion and from deep within the political establishment Shriver launched a string of social inventions that shaped an era and allowed a generation to live out its ideals Peace Corps Vista legal services to the poor Head Start he's probably had an effect on more Americans and more people across the world than anyone who hasn't been a president or a world leader and probably even more than some of them go around the campus and now there is more anti-hunger groups on the campuses more housing programs you should start with where you are right here in your campus for Shriver the Peace Corps the world poverty and America were acts of the imagination they were ways that we should see and therefore be in the world very bad housing very bad education that kind of poverty does not need to exist in the United States any longer it can be wiped out talk to me about your father's illness about Alzheimer's and how that came into his life and what it did to him and to you and your family I'm happy to do that can I comment on that thing are we gonna go back I just want to point out that the guy that said that he was the best politician he had ever seen was Bill Moyers who was LBJ's right-hand guy and who worked obviously for dad and for President Kennedy so it's a pretty incredible you know comment from lawyers the other thing is that the concept of that threat to politician you know the political structure just want to say one thing about that cuz I it just jumps at me you know the one thing I did learn in this book as I was writing it I'd never really contextualized even though I was a history major I never really contextualized what it must have been like in the mid-60s to give federal money to poor people right I mean you're giving money federal money to poor african-american people to teach their kids to get into kindergarten ready to learn and headstart and they had been you know shortchanged in the education system for forever and the universities were segregated right and he was giving money directly to them bypassing the political structure and giving it to poor people and that's why senator Stennis there is going crazy because he didn't get his hands on the money and the governors didn't get his hands on his money I did a little book part of the other day and a guy in the front row said I was a mid-level staffer for headstart in Arkansas in 1966 and the governor out there reamed me yelled at me oh he wanted the money couldn't believe I was given it to African American people and I was in the went to the headstart office and your father didn't know who I was and he got a phone call from the governor and he said yep yep yep that's fine thanks very much he'll be doing exactly what he's doing and he hung up on him and I got word that here back your father had backed me up and told me to keep giving the money to the poor people and forget the governor that took guts I mean you talk about the audacity of hope' imagine giving poor people right the ability to sue have a lawyer that they could never afford and the government's paying for that lawyer and the lawyers then turning around and suing the government because the government has been unfair and unjust I mean that is pretty radical and you know people say he's a as I said very nice guy and like a Boy Scout but to try to take those efforts to help poor people educate their kids have legal rights in this country have job opportunities through Upward Bound takes a lot of guts and to give them power and given power yeah and people know and we know that people that have power don't like giving up power and he went against the political structure to give you know poor people those rights and those that chance in life which is really important and I just want to note that as far as Alzheimer's it look it's a brutal disease it is devastating you know tens of thousands of families in this country right now both emotionally and financially and it was no different from us I was in charge of dad's legal and medical issues for the last ten years of his life and I clearly couldn't have done you know that without the support of my entire family you know my brother's sister their spouses nieces and nephews my kids my wife Jeannie it's a family thing or else it just is devastating and as a country we don't spend enough money on in you know investing to find a cure for Alzheimer's we spend hundreds of millions of dollars which is a lot but when you look at the financial implications it's devastating and we need to do more on that there are also you know these moments of you know great insight that you get in Alzheimer's or I got in Alzheimer's and I tell a story in the book of being in church once and you know my father had this thing where he used to blow in his hands all the time you blow his nose and you know he sometimes he'd have tissues sometimes he wouldn't and you kind of go oh god you know it's brutal and I remember being in Mass and he you know started blowing his note his nose and just thinking oh god I'm gonna get it cold and the kids going to get a cold and the whole thing's gonna you know take a month it's gonna be terrible and he put his hand on my knee and I just looked at it and then he turn to me like two minutes later and just I love you so you know it's like oh you know that's a powerful thing for uh whatever I was 46 year old me and realized that his father still loves him and still you know trying to be a father despite that stuff so Alzheimer's is brutal but it also has these moments of insight that are really profound Thanks I want to invite the audience to come forward and ask some questions on any of the things that we've discussed and if I get them wrong the Harvard professor will he handsome correctly Harvard degree holder over here so I'm not gonna buy that at all so nobody's got a question nobody's got a quote I think we have questions coming come on over to the microphones hello go ahead um so my name's ray Sean I just graduated from Babson College with the amount of information that's available at their fingertips today it's really easy for young people to become cynical what suggestions do you have for young people to kind of get involved in affect policy around poverty both here and abroad so I think there are a lot of you know there is a lot of information out there that's become cynical there's also incredible amount of information not to become cynical and a lot of the young folks that I talked to you know want to change the world and they see technology as a way to do that and I don't know and you know about technology because I'm old you know the whole Twitter thing you'll love the Telegraph we'll talk a favor our professor was numeron today so I think you know the bottom line is I was in elected office for eight years if you go down to a state government if you are interested in making change in state government and you get a couple of your friends involved in that you can really change policy on a state level because there is nothing that politicians pay more attention to than votes and dough right and if you can show up with other people who vote and will do something to threaten their existence or get them reelected they're on you and the other way is to put money into the local system and if you just graduated from Babson I don't think you're probably writing a check for a million dollars like the guys in Vegas are doing so I think the way to make a difference is to mobilize and it's it's discouraging and if you have five or ten people it may seem like you're not making the difference but I can tell you as a state rep when you know five or ten people show up at your door and say they're interested in X or Y you listen so I think young people can make a humongous difference but you got to get involved and you got to be tenacious about it I mean one of the things about dad is he was when he was on it he was really on it and focused and worked you got to really work and you got a stay after politicians a lot of politicians will not lead they'll follow and because they don't they're afraid to get in out front on an issue we're in a place in honor somebody who got out front on issues but most politicians don't and you know President Kennedy did but most will follow so they're going to follow your example if you if you get to him over here I think there's got to be some Peace Corps volunteers here I don't know I didn't take roll call but I bet you there are I was in the Peace Corps from 67 to 69 in Malaysia grant I saw President Carter at a book signing and I said to him I was in the Peace Corps and he instantly said to me how'd you like it my brother liked it and he was so sweet but I bet this I would think to some Pisco of all my nephew was in the Peace Corps recently for three years in Panama and I love my nephew anyway but I loved him for doing that thank you and he was a step always got going quicker when he was around Peace Corps volunteers he loved the Peace Corps and loved the work that they were doing all around the world it was a it was in Malaysia that I was and it was a very progressive country I think it is still today and dad was always very proud of mrs. Carter - she was a little older when she went into the beach that's a dear thank you thank you for sharing that bill over here mark I'm interested in how your others example influenced your choices of how you're spending your life in your career etc and your recent work with Save the Children so just for full disclosure I know Brad and he's on the board a Save the Children so he's uh this is one of the plants if you were talking about why do we good idea where do we go to the audience I got it no idea I didn't know and you missed the meeting yesterday on a book tour I apologized and I did not know he was gonna be here I think you know when you admire you know parents and my mom and dad both gave two different examples of how to make a difference one worked within the government creating headstart Job Corps legal services the Peace Corps as part of the federal government the other one worked outside of the government creating Special Olympics with no government funding so I think there are all sorts of different ways to make a contribution and I've tried the nonprofit route where I'm now working for Save the Children I started a program for juvenile delinquent kids in Baltimore City and I've tried the elected route you know being in the state legislature in Maryland for eight years and I think they're being elected is a great honor and you can make a difference it's also got a lot of constraints on it that I don't think it had in the 60s or 50s so I think there are all sorts of different ways so I'm enjoying what I'm doing now which is being in the nonprofit arena I'm working in 200 schools across this country teaching young kids how to read all of whom are living all the kids of living in poverty and making sure that they're trying to live healthy lifestyles so I think it's a step you know in the same vein as what my father did but obviously to create and do what he did I have no illusions that I'm going to do that which I'm totally fine with you know as he said to do the best she can with what God's given you and they say the children is an obviously a wonderful organization has been around for over 80 years but when you see two people doing that it does it you know does encourage you or push you into that area over here thank you my name is Hana I'm originally I was born and raised in Ghana and I'll just curious whether you know why I got was selected as the first country to receive the Peace Corps service in West Africa M it makes such a great positive impact but I also want people to know that I think the sensitivity that President Kennedy showed towards poor people and the role that your father played was just so key because most African countries supply a lot of raw materials around the world and I think it's a world of interdependence and so I'm after even though Ghana was d'affaires together independence it was planting - a lot of poverty because of the way colonization was like 100 years of common life British colonization so in that aspect I was wondering is that the reason why Ghana was selected first and and and the fact that I think fellow Americans have to know that we depend so much on other countries for raw materials and it's appropriate when we exchange services what's a great question and I'd honestly don't know the answer to that I don't know why I was chosen I mean I gave a beautiful explanation but I don't know I'd for sure and I'm happy to look into that and get back to you but I don't know the answer ok thank you thank you though well hi there and I really love both your books actually Galbraith - and mr. Shriver your book was incredible I think anybody reading it good a relative with Alzheimer's can barely get through it without getting quite choked up actually and I love that - great books on your father have come out in the last few years I'm wondering though is anyone going to do that for your equally extraordinary mother is anybody working on a book on her at all do you want to write it or I mean she deserves it I think the really interesting thing about my mother and father was that they never you know wanted to write a book about themselves and somebody asked me this yesterday I was over at City Year and Michael Brown the head of City Year actually gave some beautiful words on dad and said that they were so proud when they first started up they had a bumper sticker that said City Year the Urban Peace Corps and about three months after they had created that bumper sticker the Peace Corps called him up and threatened them and they were so so excited that the peace or even though they existed so the answer it and somebody else asked the question about and I said you know my parents never talked about a legacy they were never worried about how the history would treat them they weren't worried about getting their story out there about writing their perspective on things which in a certain way is beautiful and the other way it's too bad because they didn't get to say it for history sake to help the rest of us try to figure it out there are people that are now writing a biography on my mom but nobody you know within our five siblings are looking at it right now at this point I don't you know this thing really did my brother as as I mentioned after Dad died I was like you know what happens now what do I do all these people saying he's a good man I don't know what to do and my brother Timmy said we'll start writing and that's what this is it was just you know writing to try to figure it out writing to look at his letters and you know that may happen with one of my siblings I hope it does because she my mom is incredible unique story unto herself don't and a very good woman as well thank you for the question now I'm David Squire and I had the honor of running the Job Corps sorry Iver hired me asked me to come down and do that and I used to spend off on Sunday nights at timber lon I don't think you were born but your little siblings I was around were there I was little huh this was in 1966 I was - oh you thought I left it impression I think you were you're in bed he was upstairs reading that's vitaly's and i apologize i don't have a question but i do need to make a couple of comments you know when Sarge Shriver ran both started Lea as you say the war on poverty and the Peace Corps he actually ran both at the same time he'd spend the morning over at the Peace Corps and it's a few blocks away and then he'd be back at our shop for the afternoon he was the most inspirational man sorry for me uh thank you he uh he was a great listener he was a devil's advocate where he probe everything kept asking question that was hungry for information thirsty for it took it all in didn't feel that he had all the answers but he had all the questions he was he had that amazing ability thank you I was really if I could just say one thing on that I mean I think thank you for those comments really appreciate them and you're absolutely right he he would listen and a lot of people you know Jeannie main who you may have met work for dad from actually 72 on said that she worked for him for whatever there was 35 years and I said that's a long time and she said you know I worked there are a lot of people big power high-powered lawyers in Washington that never listened to anybody that works in their office much less the secretary never listen to their ideas your dad always asked me my opinion on things and you didn't do what I suggested all the time but he listened I think that was a that's a really important point and particularly a lot of you know great men and great women when these lights go off and the TV cameras are away they don't listen to really anybody they don't you know treat people the same way they do as when the lights are on and he was very consistent on that so thank you a great point hi my name is Cynthia Baracus during my adult life my voting time I have seen the Republican Party morph into something very different recently Jeb Bush commented that his own father and President Reagan would not be embraced by today's Republican Party and I'm wondering have you seen the Democratic Party have a similar shift to what extent and how do you feel that your dad and his generation of Kennedys would fit in with today's Democratic Party so I think I think that what you saw with my father was obviously a guy who believed in the Democratic Party although as I tell in the story as we alluded to he was born in Maryland which was a states rights place and his Heroes at that point were all limited government people and as he told me countless times the reason the federal government got is involved and they as they did in issues like the Peace Corps or poverty as US legal services was because no one had stepped in to provide legal representation of poor people didn't have lawyers the education systems was so broken down that the federal government had to stand in and do something about it I think what you find what I believe is that the people both Republican and Democrats 4050 years ago had differences campaigns were brutal always have been in this country and it's the the arena where you exchange ideas and you fight for your ideas so I don't want to sugarcoat that and say in the past it was nice because it wasn't they were tough but I think in the past when push came to shove and the country had a problem I think people were willing to compromise in order for the good of the country and I think what today we see on both sides is the question you know am I better off today than I was four years ago and although there's a strain in this country clearly of individualism I think that individualism was always tempered by an approach to what was best for the community and the community being the country and the people this is a place where anybody can do whatever they want but ultimately we were all you know more concerned about how the country was doing rather than my bank account and whether it was better today than it was yesterday so I think there was more willingness on both sides you know president first president Bush talked they talked about that and this is a movie on him I think you know and Tip O'Neill and Reagan would go out and have a drink and try to hammer things out you know they're not they don't agree everything politically but I think there was this more more of an effort around community and I want to say community I mean the country so I think that they would you know my dad I think was disappointed that it was this you know splintering on both sides and there wasn't this conversation going on and I hope we can get back to that you know your father's biographer Scott Stossel observed that his wife is Roman Catholic said to him once that there were two kinds of Roman Catholics in America Shriver Catholics and Santorum Catholics and we needed more Shriver Catholics in America to rebuild that sense of community let me if I can just say one thing that the the dad's idea of faith he was clearly Roman Catholic but what I think and I put I found this speech in there that I never seen before and he said it in 1966 and he called on the end about it was a discussion of the separation of church and state and he said the law was there so that the government wouldn't get in the pulpit not that the people in the pulpit wouldn't get out and help the poor and as the head of the government Ward to eradicate poverty he was calling upon rabbi Hirsch father Kelly and Reverend Smith to get involved in the fight to do our fathers business capital o capital F and I wasn't wow that's pretty you know radical crazy stuff in there and I think what he was always interested in was if you were interested in the you know essentially they call the social justice feeding the hungry clothing the naked sheltering the homeless he wanted to work with you and he didn't care whether you were Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or Muslim or agnostic or atheist I think Scott his biographer is an atheist he said it publicly so I'm not letting it out of the bag but the bottom line is daddy wanted to work with you if you were interested in doing the work that made a difference in people's lives whether it was helping the poor in this country or abroad or knocking down the walls of prejudice and misunderstanding against people with developmental disabilities at what he did with Special Olympics I mean he rolled special olympics into communist china and the games were international special Olympic Games were in Shanghai before they were in Beijing and he negotiated that he was willing to do work with with the Communists of China as long as they were trying to help people with developmental disabilities which they had not done a good job and he advocated for that over here oh hi my name is Caroline my sister is now with the Peace Corps for the past three years in Costa Rica and thank you very much to you to your family and to the Peace Corp for having such a outstanding an interesting thing to be able to bring the base of America into places where the people need more help and more education etc my question is said that you are going to be elected president not United States and I would like to know what do you will do in order to make education and health care better and how people can know a little more to help about Alzheimer's did you say if I got elected president I said okay well that's a nice question but my grandmother which I told in this book which you might recall used to walk around grandma Kennedy would walk around and say is it if I were president or if I was president and then we kids would all go if I was president because that sounds right and then she go no if it's contrary to fact it's work and now she pause and go dear you're not president yet so I'm not president yet so I don't have any answer to your question I mean I think on the issue of Alzheimer's let me just answer that I think you know there's a great association the Alzheimer's Association my sister's done a couple of movies and shows rather on it on HBO and getting the awareness out you know when my father was formally diagnosed in 2002 mm late mm they gave him put him on aricept which is a pill that's supposed to slow it down but they don't even know if aricept effective and it was wow we don't know anything about this disease and we've made some progress in it but there's still so much unknown that I think we really as a country need to put more demand the guy that asked the question about what kids could do if your family's impacted by it you ought to go tell your representatives about it and that they ought to put more money in these research I think we spend as a country 700 million dollars in research which sounds like a lot of money but when you compare it to cancer which i think isn't around the 7 billion dollar mark hiv/aids I'm off on my numbers a little bit but we it's really nothing and it's what it's doing financially to this and if countless families both those that have money and those that don't it's going to really bankrupt us thank you thank you thank you for your comments about this this will be our last question that I want to ask mark one final I have the great honor of working for the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and you spoke recently at our event in Boston I would just wanted you to know how important your father's legacy is to the work of legal services today and I just had the great experience just this week of showing a clip from that video which I use a lot in our training programs to let the current generation of legal services lawyers know what our what our history is and so my question is really what would your what is your advice or what would your dad's advice be for the legal services movement today it's lost some of the steam it had when when when he founded it but we many of us still look back to that and and want to really transmit those values so I'm just wondering what what he would I love that did you show the video we saw that first clip when the guy goes with I think it's Walter Cronkite goes do you really think you can eradicate poverty and without missing a beat he goes yes I do right that that I love that I remember talking my dad and when he said you know Kennedy said we're gonna put a man on the moon everybody thought he was crazy but the country rallied around that goal and I think when President Johnson you know said we're going to eradicate poverty or declare a war on poverty people rallied around it it may have been short-lived you can argue whether the money was spent well but the bottom line is the rates went down and they went down on kid poverty rate and a lot of politicians to go back to your question you know talk about how important kids are they're our most important you know resource and then they don't invest in programs that will make a difference in kids lives so I think if that's what you're alluding to my point was is that if we don't hold them accountable politicians to really investing in our poor kids we're just going to have this continuing separation between the wealthy and the poor and that's going to affect the entire country and I think that's what's outrageous right now is it the richest country in the history of the world one in four kids almost is living in poverty mark I want to thank you for coming here today I learned more about your father and believe that you're absolutely right that he was a good man I think he has every reason to be a proud father too thank you thank you we you

Channel: JFK Library

Views: 10,495

Rating: 4.8125 out of 5

Keywords: A Good Man, Sargent Shriver, Peace Corps, Mark Shriver

Id: NRfcRerpbqE

Length: 58min 54sec (3534 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 19 2012