Category: Jean Chemnick
Chief Justice’s Wife Talks About Life Since Holy Cross
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 – Jane Sullivan Roberts, wife of John Roberts who was confirmed as Chief Justice in September, received media attention during her husband’s confirmation hearings because of her involvement with Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion feminist group.
Ms. Roberts, 50, is a partner at Washington’s Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm and the mother of two children, Josie, 5, and Jack, 4. She is an alumna of the College of the Holy Cross and serves on its alumni board. She recently was interviewed by Telegram and Gazette Washington correspondent Jean Chemnick.
Q: Tell me a little bit about growing up in the Bronx.
Jane Sullivan Roberts: Well, I had two sisters and a brother, and we grew up on the same block where my father grew up. He was born in the house next door. It was a neighborhood with many, many families with three generations of the same family living on the same block. Some families even had four generations.
It was very cohesive. It was almost exclusively Catholic, and life revolved around our church and our school.
All my grandparents were from Ireland, and my mother was from Ireland, and our neighborhood was Irish and Italian. We had many relations there, and people who knew each other from Ireland or got to know each other in this country. Irish and Italian got to know each other in this country. All the generations lived together.
Q: Why did you decide to go to Holy Cross? I know you were in the first class that included women. Did that seem kind of daunting?
A: [I was] hardly aware that it had been an all-male college. It had great academics. It was in New England, it had a strong sports intramural program. It was Catholic, and it seemed to be a caring place.
Q: Once you were there, was there any resentment from the guys that there were women around?
A: No I didn’t feel it at all. I felt incredibly welcomed. As soon as we got there, we had a floor by floor meeting in the dorms, and the head [resident assistants] who had transferred to the school, were asking us at the behest of the administration “what can the college do to make you feel more comfortable?”
And it got down to details like different kinds of soap dishes in the bathrooms. In the library-the way the old library was set up-to get downstairs, to the stacks where you might get a very quiet desk, you had to walk down the main hall, the main reading room, and there were oak tables lined up. As a young woman as you walked down the aisle, heads turned and that was a little embarrassing. And we mentioned it. It wasn’t a complaint, but we mentioned it, and a new staircase was opened up. It took some construction to do that.
They changed the food. They were used to feeding big men, and we all put on ten pounds the first semester and we went home and our mothers complained. They changed, and they offered skim milk, yogurt, salads. You felt that the college was really trying to accommodate us at different levels.
Q: You played intramural sports, didn’t you?
A: I did crew, yes. Everything was new, and we got the cast off boy’s [junior varsity] boat. We had to raise money for a boat, right? We didn’t have a boat. We got the cast off, and we had a coach. And likewise, the women’s basketball team was kind of scrambling for resources.
The college was figuring out how to accommodate all of us. They didn’t have a master plan worked out before we got here, in these details, you know like sports. But you know, the country was figuring it out. Title IX came out, and the country, along with Holy Cross, was trying to figure out how to provide more facilities for women.
Q: What was the most fun you had in college?
A: Dancing. I love to dance. We went lots of places. The dorms had parties, and we could dance in the dorms. So that was regular weekend fare. I would go-generally late in the evening-and dance for a couple of hours. And then we had a few formal balls-about three or four each year-and we’d get dressed up, long dresses, and we danced. And we had the Boston Navy Band play big band music-it was just fabulous. Instead of just waiting . for some guy to ask us to the dance — more importantly, a guy who couldn’t dance — what we did is, we invited the guys to the dance, and as a condition, we said that you have to practice for a week with us. So every night at 11 o’clock in our dorm we would hold a practice session. So by the time we got to the dance everybody was primed, and we just had a great time.
Q: Did you consider yourself a feminist back then?
A: Yes, I did. I certainly did. I believed in equal opportunities for women. And I think I lived it out. I would attend feminist meetings-we had a feminist group on campus. I wouldn’t call myself a leader of that group, but I think I might have been considered a leader of women, if you get the distinction.
Q: You were a math major, but you studied education in Australia. Did you think you wanted to be a math teacher?
A: I wasn’t quite sure, I was just good [at math] and liked it. I wasn’t very career oriented in college. Most of my contemporaries were not very career oriented in those days, compared with today’s students.
Q: When did you decide on your career?
A: My mother decided I needed to decide. I went [to Australia] for one year, and then I decided to stay for a second, I was having such a great time and I stayed a third, I was having such a great time. She wrote me a letter, “when are you coming home and getting on with your life?”
Q: What did you study in graduate school at Brown?
A: Applied mathematics.
Q: Did you know you wanted to go into technology law when you were at Georgetown law school.
A: Fast forward a little bit through law school. When I first came here [to Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman] I was assigned to litigation cases involved in the nuclear industry, because they thought “well math, you must know something about technology, science.” Well of course I didn’t, but I could learn. I guess what math taught you is that if you look at a text book at the beginning of the year you could hardly read it, at the end of the year you’d mastered it. Math taught you you could learn anything.
Q: So, my understanding of what Catholicism taught, at least traditionally, was that women should be a wife and a mother, and not necessarily have a career. That seems to conflict with feminism. Is there a conflict?
A: Going back to the early days of Christianity, women joined the church in droves because what it allowed them was an avenue, apart from marriage and children, to join a religious life, a respectable alternative to marriage and children. I’m not saying that’s a good or a bad thing, it’s really a calling-what your calling is in life. I think it’s a misperception that the Catholic Church said a woman’s only role is wife and mother.
And if you fast forward. to the beginning of the 20th century, where could a woman head a hospital, or a primary school or college, but in the religious? If you went to the secular, it was all headed by men. So the Catholic church for women provided one of the few-I don’t want to say only, that’s too strong-few avenues for the use of women’s other talents.
There is a calling, a certain internal nature for women, our biology allows us to be wives and mothers. We don’t have to choose to be a wife or mother, but its something we can do, and most women do in fact choose that.
Pope John Paul has written about this extensively, that women should be allowed to express their other talents, consistent with being wives and mothers. Women want to be wives and mothers, and also want to express other talents that are not necessarily called forth as a wife and a mother, and what Pope John Paul says is that we need a restructuring of our society to allow women to express those talents in ways consistent with being a wife and mother as well, for the full satisfaction of the woman.
And its very like what a number of feminists have said, as well, about I think the yearning of many women today who are in fulltime jobs and are feeling very, very pressed in their roles of wives and mothers. And [many] women who are home, [feel] that they don’t have an outlet for their other talents. Women who are part-time seem to be able to strike a balance.
Q: But you’re a partner. You must have worked full-time at some point.
A: I worked full-time until the children arrived in 2000. I worked very hard.
Q: Why did you decide to adopt?
A: We couldn’t have children biologically. I had always wanted to adopt, anyway, but I had envisioned it as being part of maybe having eight children, and some would be adopted. I had read a book as a child called the family that nobody wanted where they adopted 30 or 60 children, I don’t remember how many.and I thought, whatever family I had, we could always make room for another child.
Q: How did you and Justice Roberts meet?
A : In a beach house in Delaware. I love to swim, and I love the ocean. . [In 1986] I brought a number of friends from Shaw Pittman, and we joined a beach house that had been started by a friend over at Hogan and Hartson [the law firm for which John Roberts worked].
But he was not really quite the beach-goer that I was. He preferred to play golf, so we didn’t meet until ’91.
Q: When did you realize you were falling in love with him?
A: When I came back from Australia in ’93 we met again. A friend was going into the Clinton administration, and we were having a dinner party to celebrate her-she was going to be deputy general counsel for [the Department of] Energy, which was a big deal-so the beach house group. had a dinner here to celebrate and that’s when I met John again, and I liked him. And we started to date.
Q: Did you know ahead of time that your husband was being nominated to the Supreme Court?
A: He knew at 12:35 the day it was announced on TV. It was announced at 9 o’clock that night.
Q: What advice do you have for young women, who maybe are graduating from Holy Cross now?
A: Do what you like and what you love and you’ll be best at that and happiest at that. There’s no one right path. If the right man comes along right away, don’t turn love down. Have your children. If the right man doesn’t come along right away, prepare yourself for an otherwise productive life. You can’t predict your path. But do what you love.
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Redistricting Reform Has Strong Advocates, Foes
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - In 1812, a Massachusetts governor named Eldridge Gerry redrew the state's congressional districts to benefit his own Democratic-Republican Party and keep the Federalists from gaining power in statewide elections. His districts were extremely odd-looking. One, which stretched from Marblehead through Lynn and Andover and around to Amesbury and Salisbury, avoiding everything in the middle, resembled a salamander so closely that the name stuck. The term gerrymandering was born.
Over the course of United States history, politically motivated redistricting has disenfranchised political and racial minorities, protected incumbents and guarded the perceived interests of states in preserving and enhancing its members' seniority and power in Congress.
In Massachusetts in the past two decades, congressional and legislative redistricting have been at the center of a string of court cases, as advocacy groups challenge the district maps drawn by the state legislature after each decennial census.
The voter advocacy group Massachusetts Common Cause has spent the past year pushing to transfer responsibility for redistricting from Beacon Hill to an independent panel of seven commissioners chosen by the executive and legislative branches of the state government.
The effort to pass this plan, known as the "Fair Districts Initiative," began with voter approval of a non-binding question on the 2004 ballot in 15 state legislative districts, and a bill introduced in the House early this year by Rep. Richard T. Moore, Democrat of Uxbridge, which failed to gain the approval of the legislature's Joint Committee on Election Law.
Common Cause and its partner organizations-including the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, the NAACP's New England Conference and MassVote-next launched a petition campaign to start the process to amend the commonwealth constitution, but fell short by 6,000 signatures. The advocates plan to resume their fight through the legislature.
Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr., Democrat of Worcester, who chairs the Senate Election Law Committee and opposed Mr. Moore's bill, said that he had no problem with the state legislative districts being set by an independent commission.
For congressional districts, however, he said Democratic Massachusetts should not "unilaterally disarm" when Republican strongholds like Texas continue to redistrict along partisan lines. Power in Congress is often based on seniority, and loss of seniority can mean a loss of valuable chairmanships and payoffs for the home district or state in the form of funds for public projects.
"I'd hate to see us lose a seat on an important committee," Mr. Augustus said, especially since Massachusetts may soon lose one House seat because of relatively slow population growth.
U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, Democrat of Worcester, said. "It's an issue of clout for the state." If the late Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. were still Speaker of the House, for example, he said, Massachusetts wouldn't want to redistrict him out and lose a powerful advocate.
Pamela Wilmot, executive director of Massachusetts Common Cause, said congressional and legislative districts are drawn based on who is on the political in with the speaker of the state House and not on who has the most seniority. Besides, she said, if state districts are drawn to protect incumbents because they are powerful, "we might as well abolish all elections."
"You can't have it both ways," she said. "Districts belong to the voters."
She said the proposed independent commission would not protect incumbents, making them more accountable and boosting competition within the Democratic Party. Incumbents in Massachusetts had "very little to fear" from the loss of privilege, she said, because Massachusetts is so heavily Democratic.
"We're likely not to see too much change in competition," Ms. Wilmot said.
"That's a strange argument for a reform group," said Rep. Barney Frank, Democrat of New Bedford and the sole congressional endorser of the Fair Districts Initiative. Mr. Frank said that while he still supports the initiative, he has since decided it would be better to have all states change at the same time from redistricting by state legislatures to independent commissions, and he is endorsing a bill to do that introduced by Rep. John S. Tanner, Democrat of Tennessee.
Ms. Wilmot is not optimistic about the chances for a national bill and said that election law is a state matter.
Ms. Wilmot said her group's initiative was patterned on Iowa's redistricting commission, which she called "the most successful one in the nation." In fact, there are some significant differences between the plan proposed for Massachusetts and the one that has served Iowa for three decades.
After a court challenge to its post-1970 redistricting plan, Iowa instituted the Statutory Redistricting Process, which has been in place ever since. This system calls for the majority and minority leaders of the state House and Senate to each nominate one nonpartisan commissioner, who then collectively nominate a fifth commissioner, who chairs the panel. The commission advises the Legislative Services Bureau, a nonpartisan staff of bureaucrats.
The Legislative Services Bureau draws the maps, based on criteria including federal population and antidiscrimination requirements, respect for county and municipal boundaries, contiguity and compactness. The bureau is directed not to pay any attention to political considerations, such as where an incumbent lives.
After it receives census data, the bureau is given two months to draw a map and must conduct public forums on it around the state. It then presents the map to the legislature for an up or down vote, with no amendments. If the first map is rejected, a second is drawn, and then a third. If the third map is rejected, the legislature can amend it.
"Our philosophy is that a blind process is reasonably fair to all parties," said Ed Cook, legal council for Iowa's Legislative Services Bureau. He said that the fact that Iowa is pretty evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans plays a role in that fairness. Since it doesn't favor either party, legislators are generally "pretty happy with the process."
As far as congressional districts go, said Mr. Cook, there aren't many maps that can be drawn. The Iowa Constitution forbids dividing counties to create congressional districts; so, with 99 counties in the state, there are only 99 "pieces of the puzzle" to work with. Add to that the federal "one person, one vote" requirement, established in the 1960s, which mandates that districts be roughly equal in population, and options are limited.
Nonetheless, the system has had an impact on Iowa politics. Every 10 years the districts are redrawn from scratch, with no reference to where the old districts were. Sometimes incumbents are paired in a new district and have to run against each other. Sometimes they lose their district altogether, and have to move.
"It's our version of term limits," Mr. Cook said.
The party in control of the state legislature changed after the redistricting that followed the censuses of 1980 and 1990, partly because incumbent advantage was largely removed. "There's potential for more change," Mr. Cook said.
The Fair Districts Initiative differs from Iowa's model in that final authority for redistricting would lie with the commission, not the legislature. "Political realities are different" in Massachusetts, Ms. Wilmot said. She said that unlike in Iowa, where there is a tradition of populism and government reform, Common Cause's assessment of the Massachusetts legislature is that it would reject all the commission's maps and draw one of its own in the old way, to serve political interests.
Another difference is the guidelines for nominating commissioners. The initiative would mandate that the governor appoint someone from academia; the attorney general nominates a retired judge; the secretary of the commonwealth picks an expert in civil rights; and so forth. Michael Ferrari, a spokesman for Mr. Augustus, said some members of the legislative committee, which rejected Mr. Moore's bill, were concerned that this constituted writing special interests into the Commonwealth Constitution.
Common Cause's proposal would be similar to Iowa's, however, in that it would not make competitiveness a criterion for redistricting. Ms. Wilmot said that "natural competition" was likely to come from not tailoring districts to fit office holders.
David Skaggs, director of the Council for Excellence in Government, a Washington-based nonpartisan organization whose goal is to improve government's performance on all levels, said that Iowa was "the gold result" for redistricting in the country but that it owed much of its success to its "peculiar political culture," which was largely incumbent-blind already.
Following a conference held jointly in June with the Campaign Legal Center, another nonpartisan group in Washington that works in the areas of campaign financing, communications and government ethics, the two organizations published a plan for redistricting that Mr. Skaggs said they were trying to sell to states all over the country. It calls for increased competitiveness in districts to be the first priority of independent redistricting commissions.
Mr. Skaggs, who has served in both the Colorado legislature and Congress, said the dwindling number of competitive districts around the country was partly responsible for the growing polarization in Congress and state legislatures.
In districts dominated by one party, he said, primaries become the most important contest, with perhaps 10 percent of the most committed partisan electorate turning out to choose the candidate who then easily wins the general election. There is no incentive for candidates to be moderate.
Ms. Wilmot said that with only 13 percent of Massachusetts voters registered Republican, making competitiveness a criterion was impractical.
The federal Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 to prevent the disenfranchisement of minorities, has two provisions that concern redistricting. Section 5 requires states that practiced discrimination in the past to submit their redistricting maps to the Department of Justice for approval.
Section 2, which applies to every state, declares that if a minority community is large and compact enough for a district, votes as a group and is regularly defeated by white voters, it can challenge a map that denies it its own district. This happened in Massachusetts in 2003, when the U.S. District Court ruled that a plan drawn by the legislature under Speaker Thomas Finneran, which reduced the number of African-American legislative districts in Boston, was guilty of "sacrificing racial fairness to the voters on the alter of incumbency protection."
Ms. Wilmot said Worcester's minority population is "quartered" right now, divided into four legislative districts, both urban and suburban.
Jeffrey M. Wise, who studies redistricting and is a former counsel to the Massachusetts legislature, said it was an issue of competing interests. "You can't say 'because it's in the interest of one party, let's ignore the Voting Rights Act,' " he said. Protecting the votes of racial minorities is an important principle that has taken a long time to establish.
Another concern voiced by some legislators who opposed Mr. Moore's bill earlier this year was that an independent commission was not elected by the voters.
Alan J. Rom, a lawyer with Massachusetts Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, said he sympathized with the groups calling for an independent commission. "I, better than anybody, understand why they're doing this," he said.
Mr. Rom was the plaintiff's attorney in a series of lawsuits in the 1980s and 1990s brought against the state of Massachusetts for manipulating legislative districts for incumbent benefit. In 1983 and again in 1988 he represented minority political action committees suing over district maps that broke up their communities or packed them all into a few districts to minimize their influence.
Even with his experience with legislative gerrymandering, however, Mr. Rom agrees that redistricting should be left to the people's representatives.
"Who's to say commissions would do any better," Mr. Rom said. Even if the legislature is more apt than disinterested parties to let political considerations influence it, its members can be held accountable by the voters. Unelected commissioners cannot.
"People should hold their representatives accountable," he said. If they don't, they are to blame for their lawmakers' actions.
Mr. Skaggs said redistricting was such an obscure topic that most voters didn't realize its impact. He thought it was unlikely that any election had ever hinged on a legislator's role in redistricting legislation. "If you can find one," he said, "I'll eat my hat."
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Holy Cross Grad Makes a Career of Working for Children
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7-Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said his family was surprised when his nephew, Mark Shriver, married because they thought he was the likeliest in his generation to become a priest.
Sen. Kennedy said Mr. Shriver was particularly attentive to children. "He always had a special magic with them."
Mr. Shriver, 41, who has devoted much of his life to children's issues, is now the head of U.S. programs for Save the Children, a nonprofit organization that focuses on child welfare at home and abroad. His department runs literacy and nutrition programs in 12 states aimed at children in rural and impoverished areas.
A graduate of College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mr. Shriver credits his years in Jesuit schools with nurturing his commitment to helping people. "They're drilling it in your head that there is a need for social justice," he said. "It's part of the church's teaching, and it's part of what we're called to do."
While an undergraduate majoring in history, he tutored kids in a Worcester public school as part of a program called "Community Cares," which he said sought to bring values into the schools.
During the summers he worked for his brother, Timothy Shriver, who directed the Connecticut Precollege Enrichment Program at the University of Connecticut campus in Hartford, which was one of the "upward bound" programs that their father, Sargent Shriver, had helped start.
The program tutored "high-risk, high-potential" kids, said Timothy Shriver, who currently is chairman of Special Olympics, which his mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founded. There were classes, but there were also canoeing trips, and basketball and softball games.
During the summer, the tutors-which included the Shrivers' brother, Anthony, and their cousin, John F. Kennedy Jr.-lived in dorms with their charges, and friendships developed, Timothy Shriver said. There wasn't much age difference between the college tutors and the high school students they worked with.
"It was a high-impact experience for Mark," said Timothy Shriver, who said his brother was enthusiastic about the work from the beginning.
One of the friendships Mark Shriver developed was with a high school freshman named Derrick Campbell. His single mom "worked about 50 jobs to keep us in line," Mr. Campbell said.
Mr. Shriver was his English tutor, Mr. Campbell said, and "he was hard on me. We butted heads for a while." When the summer ended and Mr. Campbell returned to school, Mr. Shriver wrote him a letter from London, where he was studying, asking about his progress in English and trying to motivate him to do well.
"It struck a chord with me," Mr. Campbell said. He said Mr. Shriver's attitude was, "Hey, you can have it, too.. You have just as much right to do these things as anyone."
When he graduated from Connecticut College years later, Mr. Campbell was persuaded by Mr. Shriver to put off starting a business career for a year or two and instead to work on "turning the tide" for underprivileged kids. Mr. Campbell is now a financial services adviser in New York City.
Mr. Shriver worked for Gov. William Donald Schaefer of Maryland, who had begun the process of deinstitutionalizing juvenile delinquents in the state, finding other ways to rehabilitate them, according to Mr. Shriver.
He left that job in 1988 to start the Choice program, which worked to rehabilitate children who had been in trouble with the law .
In 1994, Mr. Shriver was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates. "He had a lot of credibility on children's issues," said colleague Peter Franchot, who like Mr. Shriver represented Montgomery County and sat next to him in the chamber. Del. Franchot said Mr. Shriver became the legislator everyone looked to for guidance on children's issues.
In 1999 Mr. Shriver became chairman of the Children, Youth and Family subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee.
"He represents the people the powerful forget are there," Del. Franchot said.
In 2002, Mr. Shriver ran for Congress in Maryland's 8 th district and lost in the primary to Chris Van Hollen, who defeated the Republican incumbent in the general election. The next year Mr. Shriver joined Save the Children.
Jeanne-Aimee De Marrais, Save the Children's director of external affairs, said Mr. Shriver, when he came aboard, introduced the literacy initiative as an extension of his work in the legislature, because "for children to overcome poverty they have to learn to read."
Mr. Shriver said his department at Save the Children concentrates on literacy and nutritional after-school programs because "we wanted to do a couple of things exceedingly well." He also was involved in child welfare efforts in the Gulf Coast this fallin response to the displacement of so many children by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Investment in children and education is a passion for Mr. Shriver, and he said that legislation that focuses only on accountability is not enough. "If we were really serious about children being our most important resource we'd be investing in early childhood education, investing in our K-12 system," he said.
Mr. Shriver and his wife, Jeanne, have three children, Tommy, Molly and Emma. He said they inspire him to help other kids. Emma, who is nine months old, "has a mind like a sponge," he said. "If you work with them, they'll do great in school," he said.
"Kids in poor areas are just as talented" as his own children, he said, and they deserve the opportunity to succeed, too.
Timothy Shriver said his brother was "crazy in love with his kids," and devoted every moment he could to them when he wasn't traveling for work.
Both Timothy Shriver said Sen. Kennedy describe Mark Shriver's commitment to social justice for children as emotional, not intellectual. Mark Shriver himself quoted Martin Luther King's sentiment about the "paralysis of analysis" and the Jesuits' call to be a "thinker in action" as an explanation for his philosophy. Rather than studying child poverty, he works with it.
Mr. Shriver said he had not ruled out the possibility of returning to politics some day, "but I'm not dreaming of it." His brother, Timothy, said he'd be "surprised if he didn't find a way back in over time."
Their uncle, Sen. Kennedy, said his nephew seems absorbed in his current work. "He gets a great deal of satisfaction from helping children," the senator said. He didn't say whether he thought Mr. Shriver would reenter the family business.
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Doctor Who Dedicated His Life to AIDS is Now the Head of the Department Preparing for Avian Flu
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 -- Anthony S. Fauci credits his Jesuit education with teaching him social responsibility. His years at Holy Cross College, and earlier at a Jesuit high school in his native New York, were long on philosophy, languages and ethics, but relatively short on sciences.
"I loved it," said Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health for more than 20 years.
In selecting a career, specifically medicine over science, Dr. Fauci said he was guided as much by the fact that he was a "people person" as by his aptitude for science.
"I particularly like the idea of discovery and problem solving, and that intellectual philosophy that goes along with science," he said.
Dr. Fauci is now a science administrator and lab director, as well as a policy adviser to the highest echelons of the U.S. government on such topics as AIDS, bioterrorism defense, and flu. If the much-discussed bird flu becomes a global pandemic, he will be one of the top advisers to the president. However he continues to see patients in the institute's clinic twice a week, a commitment that is all but unheard of among directors of the NIH institutes.
"Every institute director says they do some [patient care]," said Samuel Broder, former director of the National Cancer Institute, "but it's ceremonial." He said Dr. Fauci was the only institute director who still dons a white coat and treats patients on a regular basis.
"My fundamental identity is as a physician," Dr. Fauci said. "I cannot not see patients." His continued involvement with patients also makes him a better medical administrator, he said, and keeps him in touch with reality.
But his demanding schedule leaves him little time for seeing patients. As institute director, Dr. Fauci must oversee and advocate for research on a very broad spectrum of health issues. A typical week will find him talking to Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," for example, or speaking to National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" on its "Science Friday" show.
Perhaps because of his background in the humanities, Dr. Fauci is regarded as a good communicator by his colleagues and friends. They say he is exceptionally good at explaining complex ideas-like the differences between bird flu and seasonal flu, for example, or the need for long term preparedness for cyclical epidemics of influenza-in terms that are easy to understand.
Charles A. Dinarello, who worked with Fauci at the institute and is now a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, calls him "a layman's spokesman." Whether he is speaking about HIV or pandemic flu, said Dr. Dinarello, Dr. Fauci is able to talk at the public's level, offering "knowledge without fear."
Dr. Broder echoed Dr. Dinarello's praise, noting that Dr. Fauci does not talk down to the public, and that people sense they can trust him.
As the institute's director, Dr. Fauci oversees many projects, but his own lab work is focused on AIDS. He has been an AIDS researcher since the disease was nothing more than a puzzling group of symptoms showing up in gay men from major U.S. cities.
In 1981, Dr. Fauci was researching the immune system at the institute, studying autoimmune diseases like lupus and vasculitis. In June of that year he read about the first few cases of what would be called HIV in a report put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By July, it was clear there were enough cases that the disease was not a fluke.
"That was the turning point of my career, if not my life," said Dr. Fauci. He stopped his former research, to the dismay of many of his colleagues, and his lab began to focus solely on HIV.
It continues to be the focus of his lab work to this day. For the past 21 years since the virus HIV was discovered, Dr. Fauci has been studying the mechanisms by which the body destroys the immune system, hoping to find a way to stop it.
Dr. Fauci called finding a vaccine for HIV "one of the most difficult scientific problems." He explained that the best vaccine is a small dose of the infection itself which the body then fights off and "remembers," storing antibodies that will make it resistant the next time it meets that virus. That idea of a vaccine assumes that a majority of people can spontaneously recover from the disease in question. No one has ever spontaneously recovered from HIV.
Dr. Fauci said that is why his lab is working to understand what makes the body incapable of fighting HIV. Until that is found, there will be no vaccine.
The frenetic pace that Dr. Fauci's work requires has its trade-offs. "I don't sleep very much," he said. He works "outlandish hours," he said, coming in to work at 6:30 a.m. and often working until 10 or 11 p.m. six days a week.
When his three teen-aged daughters got old enough, the family made it a point to start eating together at 9:30 every night, a practice Dr. Fauci described as "not particularly healthy," but which allowed him to finally have a nightly dinner with his family. Lunch can be a tiny carton of Ben and Jerry's "Cherry Garcia" ice cream between meetings.
"We've kind of gotten used to it over the years," said Dr. Fauci's wife Christine Brady, a medical ethicist at NIH. She works full-time as well, and the family had a live-in babysitter for many years, she said.
Drs. Fauci and Brady met when a patient of Dr. Fauci's needed a Brazilian Portuguese translator and Dr. Brady who had spent time working in Brazil, spoke the language. A few weeks later Dr. Brady was walking down the hall and Dr. Fauci asked her to see him in his office before she left for the day. She thought it was about the patient. Instead, he asked her out to dinner.
Dr. Fauci is generally admired by his colleagues as someone who cares deeply about his work and the people it effects, but there was a controversy in 2002 concerning the ethics of some research the institute was involved in.
This centered on nevirapine, a drug administered to women with HIV in Africa to prevent them from passing the disease to their infants. A doctor inside the institute, Jonathan Fishbein, contended that research done on the drug in Africa was so flawed that health officials had to take blood samples from patients to determine whether they had been administered the drug. He charged that top officials, including Dr. Fauci, had information about side affects from the drug that was not reported to the Food and Drug Administration and the White House in a timely manner.
A panel from the National Academies' Institute of Medicine, a non-profit organization that advises the nation on health matters, examined these claims this year, and determined that while there were flaws, they did not lessen the effectiveness of the drug in stopping the spread of AIDS in Africa. "They agree with what we originally said," Dr. Fauci said.
Dr. Fishbein, who was terminated, said he could not comment because of a pending law suit.
Despite this controversy, Dr. Fauci is regarded by many of those who work with him as a dedicated scientist and humanitarian. Clifford Lane, acting deputy director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said of his boss, with whom he has worked since 1979, "As a scientist, Dr. Fauci is motivated to discover new things, as a physician.to improve the health of his patients, and as an institute director, he is strongly motivated to make new developments in medicine."
Sidebar
"There's a constant, metaphorical battle between microbes and human beings," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, "And every once in a while you get a potential for real catastrophe, like pandemic flu."
Flu, Dr. Fauci said, is totally unpredictable. History can provide a guide, but no guarantees. Every year the world population is exposed to what he calls "seasonal flu," which changes slightly each year, a process known as "drifting." Since 1968, the seasonal flu going around has been H3N2.
To keep up with drifting, Dr. Fauci said, vaccines change slightly year to year.
But ordinarily the changes in the virus are small enough that past years' exposure offers people some protection, and there is no major public health risk. Even so, Dr. Fauci, 36,000 people are killed each year, just by seasonal flu.
A pandemic occurs when "a brand new virus, to which we've never been exposed, attacks the human race," said Dr. Fauci. This has happened three times in the last century. In 1918 there was a catastrophic pandemic, which caused 50 million deaths worldwide, half a million to 700,000 in the United States. It was the worst pandemic mankind had ever experienced, including the Black Plague, he said.
The years 1957 and 1968 saw pandemic flu as new strains of the virus emerged, but each was relatively mild compared with 1918.
The bird flu, which has killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia and recently appeared in China and Indonesia, is a "potential candidate for pandemic flu," he said, because the human species has never been exposed to it. It is H5N1, a wholly different strain from seasonal flu. If it mutates to be spread efficiently from person to person, he said, it could be a threat.
The likelihood of a pandemic arising any one year, Dr. Fauci said, is very small, but the likelihood of it happening sometime is virtually inevitable.
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A Liberal Senator and Conservative Judge Meet
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15-Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, met with Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Tuesday, the day after Judge Alito's 1985 job application letter was made public. In that letter, Alito said "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Sen. Kennedy is a member of the. Judiciary Committee, which must vote on judicial nominees before they come before the entire Senate for approval. The committee's confirmation hearings are set to begin on January 9.
After the meeting, Sen. Kennedy said that while federal appeals court Judge Alito was intelligent and capable, "the real criterion for a Supreme Court nominee is a core commitment to constitutional values," which he said included the right to privacy, and therefore the right to an abortion.
The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established the precedent for legal abortion, stated that the right to privacy included the right to have an abortion.
Judge Alito's judicial record on the subject is mixed.
Sen. Kennedy's list of "core values" also includes, he said, the right of the accused to a fair trial and "the authority of Congress to deal with challenges" ranging from age discrimination to affirmative action to the Family and Medical and Leave Act, which allows family members to take unpaid leave to care for a sick child. The Supreme Court upheld the act by a 6-3 vote in 2003.
In his 1985 letter to then-Attorney General Edwin I. Meese, Judge Alito said he believed in "the legitimacy of a government role in protecting traditional values."
He also criticized reapportionment decisions written under former Chief Justice Earl Warren, which found that the federal judiciary had a role to play in assuring that voting districts should be roughly equal in population. Alito sided with the opposition, which held that districting was a political matter, not properly to be decided by the courts.
Sen. Kennedy said that this precedent, set by Baker vs. Carr in 1962, and other decisions of the Warren court constituted "enormous progress advancing liberty, [and made America] a more fair nation."
He was reluctant to say whether his view of Judge Alito had been affected by their meeting. The senator said the judge indicated that his views on constitutional protections for abortion and on other issues had "matured" somewhat.
Of the judge's statement that the letter to Mr. Meese was part of a job application to join a conservative administration, Sen. Kennedy said, "Why shouldn't we consider that the answers given today are an application for another job?" He said Judge Alito's views on these issues would be examined during the confirmation hearings.
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Worcester Historical Museum Makes a National Project Local
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - On the morning of October 10, 1943, Nathaniel Mencow awoke at 3 o'clock.
The day began at an airbase in Framingham, England, the town the namesake of Framingham, Mass., close to his home town of Worcester. After three hours of briefing, the 185 planes in his wing took off to bomb the railroad yards in Munster, Germany.
Mr. Mencow was in front, navigating the lead plane of the 390 th Bomb Group, as it led the whole wing across the English Channel. From the moment they entered European skies the B-17 bombers came under heavy fire from German aircraft and deadly, ground-based anti-aircraft artillery, known as flak. It was more than a year before D-Day, and the German air force still "ruled" the skies, Mr. Mencow recalled. Even at five miles above the ground, planes were dropping on all sides.
Mr. Mencow, in an interview this week, said each mission was "a horrible experience.shear terror." This mission was particularly deadly, however: Munster was very heavily defended and as they reached the designated "initial point," his group peeled off and dropped their bombs, then flew to the "rallying point." They would wait there, he said, "to see whichever planes were still living" at the end of the mission, and lead them back to England.
Many planes-and men-didn't return to Framlingham. Of the 17 planes of 390th, only nine came back. The 100 th -a sister group in the same wing-only saw one plane return. "I knew a great many friends who were lost, and I miss them terribly," Mr. Mencow said.
Mr. Mencow was discharged with five Air Medals and two Distinguished Flying Crosses later that year. One Distinguished Flying Cross was awarded for completing the required number of missions, he said, and the other was for the Munster mission, because of its difficulty and danger.
A brother, Lt. William Mencow, was shot down and killed in 1944, "a great tragedy for the family," Nathaniel Mencow said. Five Mencow brothers fought in three branches of the U.S. Military in World War II. After the war Mr. Mencow served for 23 years in the Air Force Reserves and retired as a lieutenant colonel.
Mr. Mencow, who is 87, is one of approximately 70 Worcester area World War II veterans who have been interviewed by Robyn Christensen, librarian for the Worcester Historical Museum. Their stories eventually will be transcribed, and copies sent to the Veteran's History Project at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
The Veteran's History Project, which is now in its fifth year, is the largest oral history project in the country, boasting more than 40,000 archived stories which are available for study and will be preserved for future generations. Veterans of conflicts from World War I through the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan told their stories. Diane Kresh, director of the project, said the goal is to collect one million personal accounts.
Ms. Christensen came to the idea of interviewing veterans on her own, before she knew about the Library of Congress project. Her interest in World War II and the men and women who lived it dates back to childhood, when she watched war movies with her father, a Marine. He had a great respect for veterans, she said, and passed that reverence on to her. Ms. Christensen's father had seven uncles who had fought in different theaters of World War II. All passed away before she could really interview them and preserve their stories.
Ms. Christensen studied military history in college, and after graduate school went to work at the Worcester Historical Museum. She said she didn't feel she could approach veterans for their stories on her own, but with the museum behind her she began collecting pictures, uniforms, and even one or two diaries of people who served in World War II.
Having a story to go along with the artifacts makes a huge difference. "If you don't have a story behind it, 'Oh, it's just a Purple Heart,'" she said.
All veterans' stories are equally important, Ms. Christensen said, but she finds the accounts of former Prisoners of War particularly compelling. One gentleman told her the story of being imprisoned in a German camp one winter. The GIs were given Christmas decorations by their captors to celebrate the holidays, ornaments they hung, happy for the distraction. The Germans showed up with movie cameras, however, clearly planning to use the relatively cheery scene as proof they were treating their prisoners well. "It took them three hours to put them up and about five minutes to take them down," said Ms. Christensen, recalling her interviewee's words.
She is taking a break from interviewing veterans right now, because the cold and dark of November is keeping many of them at home. Ms. Christensen said she plans to resume the interviews in the spring and is hoping for grant money to help with the cost of cataloguing and digitizing the stories before they are sent to Washington.
The stories are available in audio form to anyone who wishes to go to the museum library and listen to them, provided they call ahead. Ms. Christensen said she could use some volunteer help transcribing the interviews, and perhaps collecting them as well. She said she plans to expand her collection to include veterans of other wars, but has not yet had time.
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Kennedy, DeWine Introduce a New Bill to Help the Working Disabled
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 - Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, Wednesday introduced their third bill aimed at helping persons with disabilities work outside the home while still receiving federal benefits.
The Community Living Assistance Support and Services Act of 2005 would be a public insurance program, funded by a voluntary payroll tax of $30 per month. Workers who have contributed to the program for at least five years would be eligible to receive $50-$100 a day in assistance if they became disabled, even if they continued to work.
Sen. Kennedy said the money could be spent as the recipient chose, on services ranging from transportation to personal home care.
Sen. DeWine said that many disabled people were unable to purchase private health and disability insurance because of preexisting disabilities. People who become disabled frequently are "forced to bankrupt themselves" to get federal assistance, said Jeff Sadosky, a spokesman for DeWine. The bill would help disabled people work and be financially independent, he said.
Kennedy estimated that seven percent of people with disabilities are currently unemployed, and they would not benefit from the new program. "It's not a perfect bill," said Kennedy. Instead, he said, it was intended to "build in the concept" of helping the working disabled, which could later be expanded to include the unemployed.
The payroll tax would be "progressive," with low-income workers receiving a tax credit for a portion of the monthly premium. Unemployed people with disabilities could be covered if they had a working spouse.
Bill Henning, director of the Independent Living Center in Boston, called the current system of aid for the disabled "counter-logical."
"It is a very complex system," he said, filled with "disincentives to be productive in the community." If a disabled person goes to work, Mr. Henning said, he or she is considered not to be "house-bound," and will lose eligibility for home assistance under Medicare.
Mr. Henning said the assumption is that if a person can work and support himself, he must not be disabled. In fact, he said, "you can be quite disabled and still work." Mr. Henning has three employees who require assistance at home with activities like cooking and bathing. In Worcester, this kind of assistance costs an estimated $22 an hour, or $28,000 a year, according to Kennedy's office.
Massachusetts programs provide this assistance to working people. Mr. Henning said federal assistance programs instead "guarantee you stay basically low income," by disappearing when a recipient goes to work.
Sens. Kennedy and DeWine also sponsored the bill reauthorizing the Rehabilitation Act in 1998, which funds employment training for disabled persons, and the "Ticket to Work" Act of 1999, which allowed disabled persons to join "employment networks" for placement assistance.
Mr. Henning said the second bill helped disabled people gain better access to health insurance, but the job placement component "hasn't worked as expected."
Reps. John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, and John M. Shimkus, Republican of Illinois, will introduce the bill in the House later this week, Sen. Kennedy said.
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LIHEAP Funding Increase Fails for a Second Time
WASHINGTON, Oct. 20--For the second time this month an amendment supported by most New England senators that has increased funds for energy assistance was defeated before it hit the Senate floor.
A group of senators, including John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy, Democrats from Massachusetts, attempted on Thursday to attach $3.1 billion in funds for the Low Income House Energy Assistance Program to the transportation spending bill. The funds would supplement the $2 billion already allocated for the program, bringing its total funding up to the maximum of $5.1 billion allowed in this year's energy bill.
In early October an amendment to the defense appropriations bill was defeated. In both cases, the amendments were proposed as emergency funding, but failed to achieve the 60 votes required to waive normal spending rules.
Earlier this week Melissa Wagoner, a spokeswoman for Sen. Kennedy, said it didn't matter whether the amendment was germane to the bills to which they are attached because the funds were needed so much.
In a press release Thursday afternoon, Sen. Kennedy said, " It's shameful that the Republican leadership have decided to use a procedural maneuver once again to block emergency funding" for the program.
Sen. Kerry, "lead cosponsor" of the amendment, called a lack of support among Republicans "criminal negligence."
David Fox, executive director of the Campaign for Home Energy Assistance, was disappointed with the result but said he was hopeful that the heating assistance would eventually pass.
"We picked up three more votes," he said, referring to the 53 senators who voted to bring the transportation amendment to a vote, up from the 50 who supported the defense amendment early this month.
Mr. Fox suggested that senators may feel the upcoming Labor, Housing and Human Services appropriations bill would be a more appropriate vehicle for the amendment because the program is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.
April Boyd, a spokeswoman for Sen. Kerry, said the senators are attempting to get amendments passed instead of waiting for the labor and housing bill because "families need the money now, and Sen. Kerry doesn't want to wait." She said that Hurricane Katrina showed that government should not wait until a crisis to act, adding that Kerry would continue to "attach the amendment at any opportunity."
New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu was one of the new "yes" votes, making his New Hampshire GOP colleague, Sen. Judd Gregg, the only New England senator to vote against the transportation amendment.
A recent report by Boston-based consulting firm Fisher, Sheehan and Colton said Massachusetts has the second highest gap in the nation between the projected cost of heating a home this winter and what low-income families can afford to pay for energy. The report puts that gap at $1,786 for the winter. Last year Massachusetts' poorest energy assistance recipients received $730 in aid, Worcester Community Action Council Executive director Patsy Lewis said earlier this week.
Handful of Worcester-area Businesses Make EPA List
WASHINGTON. Oct. 19-With regular gasoline prices in the Worcester area above $2.50 a gallon and President Bush urging Americans to drive less, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized 130 Massachusetts businesses, four of them in the Worcester area, for making an effort to reduce drive-alone commuting.
The EPA's "Best Workplaces for Commuters" program honored the Bay State companies this year, up from 33 two years ago. Businesses qualify by offering a variety of commuter benefits and incentives aimed at reducing the trips an employee makes alone. These programs range from "T" passes in Boston to shuttles and van carpools.
Lucy Edmondson, a spokeswoman for the EPA, said that even amenities workplaces provide such as an on-premises gym or drycleaner can help. "People choose to drive because they may need their cars later" to run errands, she said. Having services at or close to the workplace can eliminate trips and make carpooling more feasible.
Participating businesses are required to offer a guaranteed ride home to employees to eliminate carpoolers' concern that they may be left behind or not be able to get home in the event of an emergency.
Erin Emblock, a spokeswoman for Genzyme Corporation, a Cambridge-based biotechnology company with a Westboro campus, said the program encouraged employees to join a carpool. "We don't want them to be worried about getting home," she said.
Patrick Ward, a spokesman for Intel, which has a site in Hudson, said that while the company offered transit subsidies for its employees in places like Portland, Ore., which has a light-rail system, it has to rely on other mechanisms in central Massachusetts. For example the company has a software program that matches employees with others from their areas who wish to carpool, he said.
Mr. Ward said every employee at Intel has a notebook computer, and many arrange to work one day a week at home, eliminating trips. "It's also a life/work benefit," he said, in cases when an employee needs to be at home for some reason, like to let the plumber in. Mr. Ward said it solves "how can I be in two places at once?" problems.
EMC, a Hopkinton-based tech company with a campus in Westboro shuttles 2,000 of its 7,700 employees to the commuter rails every day. Paul Fitzgerald, director of faculty services, said the shuttle program increases worker productivity. "While they're in the van they're talking on the phone, following up on meeting notes" and generally making better use of their time than by driving, he said.
EMC also has three electrical cars for employee carpooling. Mr. Fitzgerald said the company is weighing the purchase of additional vehicles for the purpose, including hybrids or natural gas-fueled cars.
The EPA's Ms. Edmondson said there were fewer central Massachusetts companies on the list than Eastern or Western Massachusetts companies, perhaps because of a combination of fewer commuting alternatives and less traffic.
Mr. Ward and Mr. Fitzgerald both expressed some frustration with the commuter trains running west from Boston in the mornings, which are less frequent and convenient than those running the opposite way. Mr. Ward also suggested that perhaps higher property costs were to blame for a work force that is "spread thinly" and comes from all directions into work, making carpooling harder.
Ms. Edmondson said she hoped that next year there would be some Worcester businesses among the list of companies helping to combat the "twin problems of air pollution and traffic congestion" by offering their employees commuting alternatives.
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Kennedy, Kerry Try to Raise Heat Assistance Funding
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18-Massachusetts Senators John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy plan another attempt to increase federal funds for low-income heating and weatherization assistance.
More than 10,000 Worcester households benefit from federal energy funds, and with energy prices remaining high, the senators hope to attach increased funding to spending bills that figure to move through Congress in the next few weeks.
The energy bill that President Bush signed in August authorized up to $5.1 billion for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps pay the heating costs of households that fall below 200 percent of the national poverty line. But Congress currently plans to spend only around $2 billion for the program this year.
An effort to increase spending failed earlier this month because of GOP parliamentary maneuvering.
President Bush is "more worried about the politics of high energy prices" than high energy prices, Senator Kerry told reporters Tuesday, adding that the White House could easily persuade the Republican Congress to spend the full $5.1 billion. Instead, he said, it is a Republican "party position to stop this from happening."
David Fox, executive director of the Washington-based Campaign for Home Energy Assistance, endorsed the effort to increase spending. "We've got to have a higher [spending] number just to cover increases for this winter," he said.
Mr. Fox pointed to a recent Energy Information Administration study that projected a 32 percent increase in the cost of heating oil this winter. He said that with current spending levels, only about 15 percent of the 32 million households nationwide that are eligible for assistance could receive it.
Roughly 10,500 Worcester households benefit from the program, according to Patsy Lewis, the executive director of Worcester Community Action Council.
New England is the most expensive region in the country in which to heat a house in winter, with the average cost to consumers for heating oil projected to be as high as $1,925 this winter. Ms. Lewis said the poorest Worcester recipients of federal heating assistance last year received only $730, which, she said with a laugh, "doesn't even get a tank of gas in the Northeast."
She said that without additional assistance her agency's clients-one third of whom are elderly people living on a fixed income-may compensate for the cost of heating by not filling a prescription or going to the doctor when they need to.
Senator Kerry said he expects the next attempt to pass the extra funds to come this week.
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