Editors Note: Kristie Fink was the executive director of Community of Caring in Washington, D.C., and worked under Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Fink currently serves as executive director of the Utah Coalition for Civic, Character and Service Learning. She is a member of Saint Martin de Porres Parish, Taylorsville. by Kristie Fink SALT LAKE CITY — My first day in Washington, D. C., was a dreadful and amazing day. I arrived Sept. 10, 2001. I had no idea how to get out of the city. I had come by subway that morning, in fact, my subway stop was the Pentagon. When I got to work Sept. 11, I heard one of the twin towers had just been hit and our entire office was crowded into the board room to listen to the news. By then the second tower had been hit. As we listened in horror, the Pentagon was hit. Everyone helped everyone else find a ride out of the city, since most of us had taken the trains in. Out on the street there was pandemonium, but everyone was trying to help everyone else. I drove over the 14th street bridge with my ride, right past the Pentagon and it was surreal. I could see smoke billowing out but could not see where the plane had hit. My husband was back at our apartment just south of the Pentagon and heard the plane hit. He said the earth trembled momentarily. It was a tragic, dreadful day that I hope is never repeated anywhere. A little shrine to some of the victims was immediately put up on a knoll overlooking the Pentagon. It had many photos on the trees of very young people who were killed – so tragic. I first met Eunice Kennedy Shriver when she visited our Community of Caring program at my high school. I taught at Olympus High School in the Granite School District when Mrs. Shriver came to visit in 1995, and I was the lead teacher for Community of Caring. I then worked at the Utah State Office of Education as the state character education specialist from 1995 to 2001, after which I moved to Washington, D.C. Mrs. Shriver founded Community of Caring as a values-based teen pregnancy prevention program with a specific focus on including students with mental retardation in a caring school community. She always used the term "mental retardation" instead of intellectual disability, because she wanted to keep the focus on advocating for people with this specific disability to be more valued and included in mainstream society. She also believed deeply that all schools should teach civic and ethical values and grounded her program in those values. I moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation and serve as her Community of Caring executive director. They were exciting years, and I grew to deeply appreciate this intense, heroic, complex and larger than life Kennedy woman – the best of the best. I remember when I was hired, Dr. Robert Cooke, her long-time medical advisor (and a consultant to the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation for over 40 years), warned me that she would be incredibly demanding and exacting. I retorted that I had many Irish Catholic great-aunts and understood the breed. He laughed and told me that Mrs. Shriver would out-perform all of them. His words proved to be prophetic, although Mrs. Shriver never demanded more from her staff than she did from herself. In many ways she ran her office as she remembered President John F. Kennedy ran his administration – penciling in hand-written notes on her typed speeches, having intense turnaround times for work and emulating his approaches to problem-solving. She governed her staff through lessons learned from her father. She was proud of her brothers’ service as United States Senators, and I wrote many "Dear Teddy" letters for her when she wanted to follow up on something. Sometimes love letters from Sarge to her would be left on her assistant’s desk to pass on. She laughed often as well as scolded, and would come in to my office to eat cinnamon Altoids from a little tin I left on a table. I believe she expanded the moral periphery by tirelessly advocating to extend basic human rights to those often thought to be the least among us. She believed in the worth and dignity of every single member of the human community, although she sometimes struggled in person to person relationships. One day we took the train to Philadelphia to visit a school. Her beloved daughter Maria Shriver (now married to Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger), who she talked to almost daily, had written an article, which had just been published in a magazine. Mrs. Shriver hadn’t seen it yet. The school found a copy of it and made a copy for me. As we headed back to the train station, Mrs. Shriver wanted to go into the gift shop to look for the magazine, and once she found it, was excited to read it. I will never forget pulling out the same article to read along side her as we rode the train, glimpsing over frequently to see and enjoy her reaction to what she was reading. A porter came up to her, asked permission to speak to her, and told her that a great event in his life was when he waited on her and Sarge in a Georgetown bistro. I was surprised at his level of emotion as he expressed his personal feelings for her and Sarge’s life work, and what a difference programs like Special Olympics and the Peace Corps had made to so many. It was a story I heard over and over again in the years I worked for her. I also remember custodial and cafeteria staff spontaneously lining up to meet her that day at the school, as if they were paying court to royalty. They believed that her and Sarge’s work had made a difference to this country. Mrs. Shriver was deeply religious, attending daily Mass, and greatly admiring and keeping in touch with Mother Teresa when she was alive. She also supported a video project on the Virgin Mary’s life, and had a beautiful display case in the entry to her home that also served as a shrine to Mary. Mrs. Shriver always focused on "what could be," and brought light to that which is best about the human condition. Her work may not be finished, but she gave it a darn good start. May peace be with her.`
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