Kitty Dukakis, wife of the former governor and presidential candidate, died at 88 years old

Brookline, Mass. – Kitty Dukakis, the wife of the former Governor of Massachusetts and candidate for the Democratic presidential election Michael Dukakis, who spoke openly about his struggles against depression and dependence, died. She was 88 years old.

Dukakis died on Friday evening surrounded by his family, his son said on Saturday, John Dukakis, by phone. She fought to improve the world, “sharing her vulnerabilities to help others face theirs,” her family said in a statement.

“She was loving, fiery and fun, and had acute sensitivity to people from all walks of life,” said the family. “She and our father, Michael Dukakis, shared an enviable partnership for more than 60 years and love each other deeply.”

Dukakis won high notes as a political activist during the presidential efforts of her husband in 1988, tirelessly for him. She was called a key influence in her decision to ask for the presidency.

She even thought in the first question of a presidential debate in 1988, when her husband was invited: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis was raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death for the killer?” Dukakis said he wouldn’t do it, and his emotionless response was widely criticized.

Earlier in the campaign, in 1987, Dukakis revealed that she had overcome a 26 -year dependence at amphetamines five years earlier after receiving treatment. She said she started taking diet pills at 19.

Her husband made an anti-drug effort a major problem and she became important in the effort to educate young people against the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

But a few months after Michael Dukakis lost the election with vice-president George HW Bush, Kitty Dukakis entered a 60-day treatment program for alcoholism. Several months later, she suffered a relapse and was hospitalized after drinking friction alcohol.

In her 1990 autobiography, “Now You Know”, she blamed her mother for a large part of her dependence on alcohol and drugs and a long story of low self -esteem. In 2006, she wrote another book, “Shock”, which attributes the electroconvulsive therapy that she started in 2001 to relieve the depression she suffered for years. The treatment, she wrote, “opened a new reality to me”.

The current governor of Masara Healey Massachusetts has called Dukakis “a force for good in public life and behind the scenes”, a leader in effort to ensure that the holocaust is never forgotten and a defender of children, women and refugees.

“She spoke courageously about her difficulties with substance consumption problems and mental health, which inspires us all to decompose stigma and ask for help,” Healey said in a statement.

Dukakis used his personal pain to help others, the Massachusetts Attorney General, Andrea Joy Campbell said on Saturday in a statement on social networks on Saturday.

“Her heritage will live in the policies she helped to shape and the people she inspired to say their own truths,” said Campbell.

Dukakis and her future husband met during her secondary studies in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. It was dull and frugal; She was dramatic and fancy. He is Greek Orthodox; She was Jewish.

Dukakis, who divorced and had a 3 -year -old son, married Dukakis in 1963, and had two children, Andrea and Kara.

Dukakis, whose late father, Harry Ellis Dickson, was an associate conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, obtained modern dance and broadcasting diplomas.

After the presidential election, in 1989, Bush appointed him to become a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Previously, she sat on the presidential commission of the Holocaust in 1979 and the board of directors of the refugee policies group. She was also a member of the Cambodian children’s working group.

At the end of the 1990s, Dukakis and her husband divided their time between Massachusetts and California, where she was a social worker and was a professor for part of the year at the University of California in Los Angeles.