A Kennedy's legacy is reborn in Angola

LUANDA, Angola -- Catholic University of Angola is an oasis in one of the most hopeless corners of Africa.

With about 1,000 students, the seven-year-old university is smaller than many American high schools, but it brims with academic purpose: A beautifully inscribed ``Quadro de Honra" lists the students with the highest grades on a wall near the entrance.

The building itself dates from Angola's Portuguese colonial past, a pink stucco example of tropical architecture with its open-air hallways decorated with porcelain tiles and flowering plants.

The surprise for any American visitor to Angola's teeming capital is to learn that this small university -- now considered by many to be the country's finest -- has roots in Boston, and may never have been created if not for the efforts of Michael Kennedy.

Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, who died in 1997 at age 39, was the sixth of the 11 children of former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy. And to most people familiar with the Kennedy saga, Michael falls among those in his family who led tainted lives -- not those who nurtured great accomplishments.

Michael succeeded his older brother Joe as head of the nonprofit Citizens Energy Corpor ation that Joe had founded to help deliver affordable heating oil to people in need .

Unlike the garrulous Joe, Michael preferred to work behind the scenes, and most memories of him trace to the babysitter scandal of his final year. The revelation that Michael had maintained a long-running affair with his family's teenage babysitter led to his separation from his wife, Victoria, the daughter of former football player and announcer Frank Gifford.

The affair also prompted a criminal investigation into statutory rape charges. The charges never materialized, largely because the babysitter refused to cooperate with police.

The probe generated months of headlines, and became a factor in the withering of Joe Kennedy's political career. Michael's misdeed was among the factors in Joe's decision to forgo a 1998 gubernatorial run. In addition, Joe's ex-wife had produced a bitter memoir about his efforts to annul their marriage; though her account of Joe's behavior bore no resemblance to Michael's, both got added to a long list of examples of Kennedy men taking advantage of women.

Michael's death a few months later in a skiing accident prompted shock and sympathy, but its circumstances -- Michael was playing a high-risk game of ``ski football" when he hit a tree -- seemed to confirm the view of him as an overage juvenile with no self-control.

But his work in Angola, little-noted in the United States, presents a different image.

Michael had been a volunteer election monitor in Angola in 1992, helping in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to end decades of civil war. The war bled on for 10 more years before a durable peace could be achieved.

During his time in Angola, Michael took note of the countless millions of refugees living and dying in squalor on the outskirts of Luanda. Many of the refugees had been living in traditional African villages and got caught in the middle of the war between US-backed guerrillas and the Marxist, Cuban-backed government.

Angola's cardinal told Michael of his belief that a private university could be the first step toward rebuilding civic society. The government, which has done little to promote education on its own, nonetheless requires oil companies drilling in Angola to make contributions to the community.

With contributions from Citizens Energy, Mobil, and other oil companies, Michael created the Boston-based Angola Educational Assistance Fund in 1996, and used his famous name to promote plans to make the cardinal's vision a reality.

Michael's effort was akin to numerous other work-intensive charitable projects created by Kennedy cousins in places around the world, help that goes well beyond just writing checks or offering one's name to help a good cause. These little-seen but quietly ambitious charitable endeavors are the flip side of the daredevil behavior, womanizing, and addiction woes that are also a part of the family legacy.

At Catholic University last week, summer students stared intently at computers secured with funds from Michael's organization and read books donated from Massachusetts in the library, which is no bigger than that of an average American middle school.

According to the assistance fund's website, it's called the Michael LeMoyne Kennedy Memorial Library, but no sign revealed the name.

Still, its very existence is a tribute to Michael Kennedy's work, and proof that good deeds live longer than scandals.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.