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A mutual friend brought together the 24-year-old divorcee and the serious, idealistic Harvard Law graduate. The normally frugal Dukakis took her to a smart French restaurant and an Italian movie on their first date. (They hated the movie, left early and went back to her apartment for tea.) Dukakis was quickly smitten. She was impressed with how he took to her son, occasionally baby-sitting while Kitty studied for an exam. When the two decided to marry, Dukakis' parents were less than thrilled: they liked her, but a divorced woman with a young son was not what they had envisioned for their Michael. Kitty's parents were delighted: her mother dubbed Michael "the Saint," referring to not only his righteous manner but his willingness to put up with the mercurial and sometimes difficult Katharine.
When she married Dukakis in 1963, Kitty had been taking diet pills for seven years, depending on her small, 5-mg dose of amphetamines to get her through the day. Eleven years later, her husband discovered her cache of pills, but her subsequent attempt to kick the habit failed. She finally succeeded in 1982 at a drug-rehabilitation center in Minnesota, although it was only this past summer that she bravely went public with the story of her 26-year addiction.
Drug rehabilitation is one of a variety of issues to which she is devoted. She has been effective in fighting for the homeless, serving as co-chair of the Governor's Advisory Committee on the Homeless. She and her staff are credited with devising a plan for the state and charitable organizations to share the cost of maintaining shelters. Seven years ago, she organized a task force on Cambodian refugee children in Thailand, and she has led two tours of refugee camps there and helped to bring orphaned children to the U.S.
At the state house, she has an office down the hall from the Governor's, and has been known to stride into a meeting unannounced and question her husband on some pet project while slightly startled state legislators look on. She can be imperious with others, and is quite exacting with those who work for her. If thank-you notes are not done perfectly, she demands new ones. She is vigilant about catching mistakes, from a misspelled name to an incorrect date. Even more so than her husband, she does not suffer incompetence gladly.
As a campaigner, she is a definite asset. In Brooklyn's Brighton Beach, she switched into Yiddish at appropriate moments. While she can be just as unexciting as her husband when delivering a scripted speech, she turns * spontaneous and exuberant when she breaks away from the text, bringing applause from charmed audiences. If she becomes First Lady, she is certain to break the set-in-aspic mold of Nancy Reagan. She has little tolerance for what are known as "silly wife questions," which have always pursued political spouses. When a woman reporter wanted to know, "How do Michael's shirts look so fresh at the end of the day?," she starchily replied, "I don't do his shirts. You'll have to ask him."