Max Kennedy’s commentary

The following letter to The Globe was submitted on December 6th.

To the editor:

Max Kennedy’s commentary offers tragic illumination to the destruction of the values that make and keep America great, as well as dire threat to the rule of law that the Trump years have brought all of us.  For me personally, this portrayal offers bitter-sweet memories and “if only” regret. The Robert Kennedy I had the good fortune to see at work was brought to life by his son, his commitment to a just America and determination to end poverty, his driving force.  To explain: Through the efforts of a wondrous mentor, Dr. Mildred Otenasek, Maryland’s national committeewoman, a staunch Kennedy supporter, just before my junior year at Baltimore’s Goucher College, I was appointed delegation “page” at the 1960 Democratic convention, which led to meeting Max’s parents, as well as the future president, and a post college job at the DNC. During a White House assignment to work on the second Inaugural Gala, President Kennedy recommended social work to me as a profession.  I was in my first year of grad school at Catholic U when our president was assassinated. On June 9, 1968, I held up my daughter, less than a month old, so together we could pay respects to Robert Kennedy, assassinated on a likely road to presidency, as the train carrying him sped through Philadelphia, now my home.  Through the years that Lynne Abraham was DA (1991 through 2010), she referred carefully selected cases to me for intensive therapy, rather than incarceration. During this period, I had the privilege of seeing Max at work in his first post law school position — his deepest concern the link between poverty and crime.  Like Max’s father, his mind is golden, his soul one of a poet. May his words strengthen us in committed effort to save a democracy, which under the present administration is growing more fragile day by day.

Sincerely,
SaraKay Smullens
Philadelphia

Submitted to The Boston Globe, December 6, 2025