SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Kitty Dukakis, the former first lady of Massachusetts and an outspoken advocate for people with mental illness and addiction, has died. She was 88 years old. She spoke publicly about living with addiction and depression as far back as 1987, when her husband, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis launched a campaign for president. From member station WBUR, Lisa Mullins reports that Kitty Dukakis created a legacy both despite her mental health problems and because of them.
LISA MULLINS, BYLINE: Katharine Kitty Dukakis wasn't born into politics. Her father was a beloved conductor of the Boston Pops. She studied modern dance. Kitty was thrust into the political spotlight when her husband ran for president. That's when she revealed she had been addicted to diet pills for years. It started in college. Michael Dukakis lost the election in 1988 to George H.W. Bush, and Kitty spiraled down into depression and drinking. And again, she went public.
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KATHARINE DUKAKIS: I speak from experience. As all of you know, I'm a drug addict and an alcoholic.
MULLINS: Here's Dukakis at the Women's National Democratic Club in 1990.
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K DUKAKIS: Alcohol and drug addiction strike women and men, and yet our society still attaches a special stigma to the female alcoholic or drug addict.
MULLINS: Kitty Dukakis released a bracingly candid memoir. She wrote about the times she was on a desperate search for alcohol. She settled instead for rubbing alcohol, mouthwash and even nail polish remover. Dukakis knew her voice could make a difference on a range of issues. Her friend Anne Hawley is a Massachusetts arts leader who worked on cultural causes with Kitty Dukakis.
ANNE HAWLEY: Kitty instinctively understood the power that was afforded her by her position as the first lady of Massachusetts, and she really knew how to use it, and she did use it for other people's benefit, not for herself.
MULLINS: Among those who benefited - people without homes. Kitty Dukakis co-chaired the governor's advisory committee on the homeless. She got to know people in shelters and with the help of her activism, the number of state-funded homeless shelters in Massachusetts increased dramatically. She was also passionate about her Jewish heritage and sat on a presidential Holocaust commission, and she embraced the plight of refugees. She worked to bring many of them to the U.S.
PICH HOUT: Without her, I wouldn't be sitting here today.
MULLINS: That's Pich Hout, who's from Cambodia. He lost most of his family to the regime of dictator Pol Pot. His one surviving sister was taken in by a couple from Massachusetts. She wrote a letter to ask first lady Dukakis to rescue her brother from the border camp where he was living as a teenager. Hout remembers the day this important woman arrived escorted by armed guards.
PICH: She kneeled down and talked to me at the level of my sight, you know? She's very calm and very, like, brave. She grabbed my hands tight. She never let go, you know, when she saw me.
MULLINS: One month later, Kitty Dukakis brought Hout to live in Massachusetts. Today, he works as a physician assistant. Kitty Dukakis kept changing lives even as she wrestled with crippling depression. Finally, in 2001, she found a treatment that changed her life, electroconvulsive therapy. ECT was controversial. It conjured up horrifying and misleading scenes from the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Journalist Larry Tye wrote a book with Dukakis about the treatment. He says many people who read the book emailed stories of their own mental health struggles.
LARRY TYE: I'd get the emails. I would be floored by them. I would forward them to her, and she would insist on getting in touch with everybody who had emailed to try to help them.
MULLINS: Kitty Dukakis became such a champion for ECT, she even let CBS's "60 Minutes" record one of her sessions.
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ANDERSON COOPER: You're OK with the treatment we filmed being broadcast?
K DUKAKIS: Yeah, I am. I'm convinced that if I can be that public, that it will help others.
MULLINS: Reporter Anderson Cooper described the scene.
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COOPER: Dukakis was sedated, and electricity was administered to her brain for a few seconds.
MULLINS: Kitty's son, John Dukakis, says the family never tried to dissuade her from being so public.
JOHN DUKAKIS: Talking my mother out of most anything was often a fool's errand. And, you know, ECT - my parents feel very strongly about - saved my mother's life. So the idea of kind of sharing that message more broadly - there was never any question about it.
MULLINS: Friends of Kitty Dukakis universally recall that conviction and courage and her empathy. One friend said Kitty turned her demons into possibilities for others. For NPR News, I'm Lisa Mullins.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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