Dave Hackett, Kennedy pal, youth advocate, dies

As the executive director of the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime under John F. Kennedy, Mr. Hackett was tasked with finding new ways of effectively dealing with troubled youths. It would ultimately become the staging point for the Kennedy’s and later administration’s war on poverty.

During his four-year tenure under President Kennedy, he brought together the best and brightest minds to study the causes of youth crime. Dubbed "Hackett's Guerillas," his team came to a consensus that the problem of juvenile delinquency could not be distinguished from the broader issue of poverty.

“Kennedy installed him in an office right next to the attorney general’s office. They would bring in people from in and outside the government, and about a year into it, he realized what they were talking about was poverty,” said Peter Edelman, a Georgetown University law professor and a former legislative aide to Robert Kennedy. “It was really the place for what turned out to be the planning for the war on poverty took place. Dave was at the heart of that effort and took the first steps in the process. He spent the rest of his life working on it.”

In 1962, Mr. Hackett also took the lead in the National Service Corps, a two-year pilot program, envisioned as a domestic equivalent of the Peace Corps. The program eventually became today's Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program.

“One of the really critical things Dave did was he gave shape and focus to the issue, said Adam Walinskay, Robert Kennedy’s former speechwriter. “He was one of the very first people to put forth the idea to say you’re not going to solve this problem with an army of social workers. He was the guy who said you have to get these people involved with solving their own problems. It was a basic elemental insight, but it ran counter to a century of social engineering in the United States.”

It was a fresh time in the field, and Mr. Hackett and others in the administration felt like they were venturing into uncharted waters with regards to their ideas about issues of youth crime and poverty.

“In the fight against poverty, there wasn’t a greater warrior in that role than David Hackett,” said Joseph P. Kennedy II, Robert Kennedy’s son and former Massachusetts congressman. “His dedication never stopped. David just continued the work he dedicated himself too. It’s a beautiful thing."

Mr. Hackett died April 23 in a hospice in Rockville, Md. of complications from vascular disease. The Bethesda, Md. resident was 84.

Born in Dedham, Mr. Hackett attended Milton Academy, where he excelled at football, baseball and hockey. At Milton, a school with hardly any Catholics, he met a young Catholic boy who would change his life: Bobby Kennedy.

While some students dismissed the young Kennedy, Mr. Hackett took a liking to him, and the two quickly became best friends. From an early age, the two began to question their privileged lives, and both noticed the inherent inequity in the world outside of the elite prep school. The two remained dear friends until Kennedy’s death in 1968.

“There was no question that my father’s closest friend was David Hackett,” said Joe Kennedy. “They had a beautiful, competitive, fun loving but at its heart serious friendship. They always had a blast together. It was always an enormous amount of fun when Dave came over. He just had this unique and wonderful personality; he would make you have fun."

During a summer term at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in 1943, Mr. Hackett struck up a friendship with John Knowles, who would use Mr. Hackett as the model for the character Phineas in his classic novel, “A Separate Peace.” Like Phineas, Mr. Hackett was popular, energetic and a bit irreverent but nevertheless immensely charming.

One year shy of graduating from Milton, Mr. Hackett enlisted in the US Army. He was commissioned a private first class in the 11th Airborne Division and was stationed in Japan in the aftermath of World War II. After the war, Mr. Hackett left the army in 1946 and enrolled at McGill University in Montreal. There, he excelled on the school's hockey team, once scoring 3 goals in 48 seconds. He was selected for the US Olympic hockey team in 1948 and in 1952, but was sidelined by a broken ankle.

After leaving McGill, Mr. Hackett later played for the Baltimore Clippers, a minor league hockey team. In Baltimore, Mr. Hackett attended a performance of the London Festival Ballet and became smitten with Judith Williams, a dancer. He was rebuffed when he went back stage to ask her out. Undaunted, Mr. Hackett followed her to other cities and eventually to England, where she finally agreed to marry him. The two were wed in a ceremony in Dedham in September of 1956.

Inspired by a magazine he and some friends had started in college, Mr. Hackett returned to Montreal in 1957 and founded a magazine called the Montrealer, modeled after the New Yorker, that specialized in long-form journalism and fiction. He was soon called back to the US, when Bobby Kennedy convinced him to join his brother's presidential campaign in 1959.

During the 1960s Democratic primary, Mr. Hackett managed an extensive delegate-counting operation for the future president known as "the boiler room." In the days before computers, Mr. Hackett tracked the often-changeable political preferences of delegates. He used his personable and friendly demeanor to great advantage.

“He was a rolling ball of energy,” Seigenthaler said. “It wasn’t just that he had a marvelous work ethic. He enjoyed what he did. He was a very effective organizer and worker. He did a terrific job recruiting young people to the campaign.”

Following President Kennedy's assassination, Mr. Hackett stayed on for about a year under President Johnson, before he left to work on Bobby Kennedy's 1964 New York Senate race.

After helping his childhood friend to a well-fought victory in New York, Mr. Hackett formed David L. Hackett & Associates, a Washington, DC-based consultancy group, dedicated to developing innovative approaches to poverty, employing ideas such as affordable home construction, the use of modular housing and computer assisted learning.

Mr. Hackett stayed in private practice until he was called back to the campaign trail, when Bobby Kennedy launched his 1968 run for president. Mr. Hackett reprised his delegate wrangling role. He was with the senator in Los Angeles, when he was shot to death in June of 1968.

Mr. Hackett was a pallbearer at Kennedy’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

In 1974, Mr. Hackett assumed the role of Executive Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, a nonprofit organization focused on anti-poverty and human rights efforts.

“He was a person of enormous commitment. There wasn’t any doubt. This was a person who cared deeply about what he was doing,” Walinskay said.

“He really was that genuine, that unselfish. A person of the absolute finest personal instincts; and all of that came out in his work.”

Mr. Hackett leaves his wife, Judith; his daughters, Louisa of Montclair, N.J., Kimberly of Cambridge, and Victoria of Beverly; his sons, Christopher of Bethesda, Md., Robert of Princeton, N.J. and 11 grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held on May 11 at 3 p.m. in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.