Early Life and Education
Zakim was born in Clifton, NJ and became interested in civil rights and activism after he encountered anti-semitism as a boy. He earned his undergraduate degree at American University in Washington, DC and then graduated from the New England School of Law in 1978. He settled in the Boston area after law school and lived there until the end of his life. In 1978 he worked as the southeast Massachusetts field director for the reelection campaign of then Mass. Governor Michael Dukakis. Paid $50 a week to work on the ultimately unsuccessful campaign, this experience nevertheless formed the cornerstone of his later political involvement. "The campaign was the beginning of an association with Dukakis and his wife, Kitty, that would bring Mr. Zakim to the policy-making level of the national Democratic Party, a standing he retained after Dukakis's political career faded," the Boston Globe wrote in its obituary on Zakim.
In 1979 he was hired by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as its New England Civil Rights director and in 1984 he was named New England director for the organization.
He later married his wife Joyce and had three children, Josh, Deena and Shari.
Read more about this topic: Leonard P. Zakim
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need—
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In my state, on the basis of the separate but equal doctrine, we have made enormous strides over the years in the education of both races. Personally, I think it would have been sounder judgment to allow that progress to continue through the process of natural evolution. However, there is no point crying about spilt milk.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)