Tom Cogill

Ethel Kennedy

Law School dedicates bust of alumnus Robert F. Kennedy

Staff Report

The University's School of Law dedicated a bust of Robert F. Kennedy, a 1951 law alumnus, March 4 in Caplin Pavilion.

The bust was donated by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. Ethel Kennedy, widow of the former U.S. attorney general, senator and presidential candidate, selected a quotation from her late husband that will be inscribed on the base of the bust. She and other members of the Kennedy family attended the dedication. The ceremony was part of a student-run conference to encourage public-interest law careers among students.

"We are honored to receive this memorial to one of our country's most distinguished public servants, and one of the Law School's most eminent graduates. It is fitting that its dedication comes as a result of student initiatives, and during a conference on the law and public service," said Law School Dean Robert E. Scott. "We are grateful to the Kennedy family. Once permanently installed in the Law School, Kennedy's bust will serve as a fitting memorial to his life-long commitment to public service."

Kennedy received his law degree from the U.Va. School of Law in 1951. He served as U.S. attorney general and as a key presidential advisor during the administration of his brother, John F. Kennedy, and played a major role in shaping the era's important civil rights legislation.

He served as U.S. senator from 1965 to 1968 and was assassinated that year while campaigning for the presidential nomination.

The inscription accompanying the plaque will read:

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

-- Robert F. Kennedy, to the students at the University of Capetown, South Africa, June 6, 1966