The memorial service for Kitty Dukakis, a relentless mental health advocate and Former Massachusetts first lady, focused on her life as a powerful and influential woman who loved and believed in all people.
The service took place at Brookline High School, where Kitty and Michael Dukakis first met and where their kids also graduated from. While it wasn’t intentional, the service took place on Mother’s Day (May 11, 2025), something many speakers said was most fitting, as she was there for everyone, like a mother.
In place of flowers, the family suggested donations to the Jobie Project Fund, which funds pediatric brain tumor research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, to honor Jobie Hereford, Dukakis’s granddaughter, who died from a brain tumor at 22 years old.
The family also suggested donating to RefugePoint, a humanitarian aid organization supporting refugees, a cause important to Kitty Dukakis, the founder of which also spoke at the service.
Kitty Dukakis‘s youngest, Kara, remembered all the car rides with her mom — the cigarettes her mom smoked even if it was too cold to put the windows down, how she loved to sing in the car and joked about her mom’s serious road rage.
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