Kitty Dukakis, Former First Lady of Massachusetts, Dies
Kitty Dukakis (COM’82, SSW’96) speaking at BU in 2017.
Kitty Dukakis, Former First Lady of Massachusetts, Dies
Alum was committed to activism
Kitty Dukakis (COM’82, SSW’96), the former first lady of Massachusetts whose struggles with addiction led to a commitment to activism, died March 21, 2025. She was 88.
Dukakis shared her story about her depression and her addiction to diet pills and alcohol in books, during interviews, before groups, and while her husband, Governor Michael Dukakis, ran for president as the 1988 Democratic nominee.
She graduated from Lesley College and earned a Master of Science from the College of Communication and a Master of Social Work at BU.
According to the Boston Globe, “In Massachusetts, she used her role as her husband’s valued, trusted adviser to promote gender advances in the executive branch’s highest ranks from the beginning of his first term as governor.” Michael Dukakis was governor from 1975 to 1979 and from 1983 to 1991.
“She insisted that Mike appoint four women to his Cabinet, and that was unprecedented,” Evelyn Murphy, who was one of those appointees and a former Massachusetts lieutenant governor, told the Globe. “She has not received enough attention and acknowledgment for what she did to change the face of women’s leadership in Massachusetts.”
Dukakis also supported many causes, nonprofits, and humanitarian organizations, and served on the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and, later, on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
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