Fundraising launched for Kennedy Senate Institute
BOSTON—Local officials are seeking up to $100 million to build a national institute focused on the U.S. Senate in general and the more than four decades of service to the body by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who is being treated for a malignant brain tumor.
The facility will be located on Columbia Point on a four-acre plot between UMass-Boston and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, itself a center for studying the presidency and the administration of the senator's late brother.
Tentative plans call for replica of the Senate chamber itself, as well as programs to train new senators and archives of famous Senate speeches. Construction could start next spring, after a fundraising drive aimed at generating $50 million in seed money and another $50 million for final construction costs and an endowment.
"The U.S. Senate is one of our forefathers' most brilliant democratic inventions," Kennedy said Tuesday in a statement. "To preserve our vibrant democracy for future generations, I believe it is critical to have a place where citizens can go to learn first-hand about the Senate's important roles in our system of government."
Kennedy, 76, is the second-longest serving member of the Senate, having first been elected in 1962. The Massachusetts Democrat is known as a liberal lion and famed for his work on civil rights and health care legislation in particular.
The senator also is a history buff, celebrated within his family for arranging tours of Civil War battlefields and other historical sites.
Kennedy has already made plans to have his official papers stored at the presidential library and has been been recording an oral history of his Senate career that will be maintained at the University of Virginia, where he went to law school.
In addition, he sold the rights to his memoirs in November 2007, with a targeted publishing date in 2010.
Plans for the Senate institute have been under discussion since 2003, when UMass beat out Kennedy's undergraduate alma mater, Harvard University, and other interested academic institutions. Aides said the senator favored the Boston campus, home to a largely commuter student body, because of its blue-collar roots and proximity to the presidential library. It overlooks Dorchester Bay and has a commanding view of downtown Boston.
The effort gained momentum after Kennedy's brain tumor diagnosis in May. He underwent surgery at Duke University in June and has been receiving almost daily chemotherapy and radiation treatments since at Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been recuperating at his family's compound on Cape Cod.
Last month, Kennedy made a surprise appearance on the Senate floor to cast a vote that gave a veto-proof majority to a Medicare bill. He has hoped to return when the Senate's summer recess ends in September, but his attendance will be subject to his condition.
Fundraising for the new institute is being led by Boston advertising executive Jack Connors, whom Kennedy recruited. He is being assisted by Paul Kirk, a former Kennedy aide who is chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. They have also enlisted fundraising "captains" including Kenneth Feinberg, a former Kennedy aide who ran the Sept. 11th Victim Compensation fund, and veteran Democratic strategist John Sasso.
Connors said he is seeking $5 million apiece from 20 or more people in the financial, defense, entertainment and medical communities, among others.
"After a couple meetings, I think we'll be able to pull that off by the end of the year," Connors said. "And that's not a credit to me; that's a credit to his life. People are so receptive to doing something in his name after he's done so much to help other people."
UMass officials believe the center will prove a boon to their Boston students, considered a non-traditional group in that many are older, immigrants or the first in their families to go to college.
"This will be like a presidential library but even better, in that it covers a longer era," said UMass President Jack Wilson. "And while presidents can do things by fiat, senators do it by creating alliances and a team approach. Both scholars and our students will be able to learn about that process, have access to the educational facilities there and the world-class speakers who will be attracted there."
