A few
months after my book, Wounded Innocents,
was published in 1990, I received a handwritten letter from Betty
Vorenberg. I’d known Betty when I was a
reporter in Massachusetts in 1980 and ’81 and she was Deputy Director of the
Massachusetts Advocacy Center, the state’s leading child advocacy organization.
In her
letter, Betty asked if I had any interest in trying to form an organization
around the principles in my book. I said
yes. Betty did the rest.
So all of
us were deeply saddened to learn of her death at the age of 87.
As NCCPR
President Martin Guggenheim said:
There
wouldn’t have been NCCPR without Betty. She organized the first gathering of
about six people in her home in Cambridge in 1990 and helped us talk through
the importance of trying to influence the public through the media. We’ve been
trying ever since.
After that
initial meeting in her home came a larger, formal conference at Harvard Law
School. Then she used her contacts and
her reputation as one of the nation’s foremost child advocates to do the
seemingly impossible: persuade a foundation interested in civil liberties to
take an interest in child welfare, and a foundation interested in child welfare
to take an interest in civil liberties.
Betty was
NCCPR’s first president and always our guiding spirit. As Prof. Guggenheim said:
Betty
was a genuine champion of our cause. We will miss her dearly. She believed in
NCCPR with all her heart.
NCCPR is
only a small part of Betty Vorenberg’s legacy. She served as an Assistant
Commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare during the
Dukakis administration. She was a member
of the National Board of the ACLU, and President of the ACLU of Massachusetts. You
can read more about her here.
