KITTY Dukakis, the wife of 1988 presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, has died aged 88.
The activist and humanitarian died on Friday night at her home in Brookline, Massachusetts, following complications with dementia, her family said.
Dukakis, notably, was a proponent of electroconvulsive therapy, having used it to overcome alcoholism and depression.
She was the first lady of Massachusetts while her husband had served as the governor of the state.
In 1988, her husband ran as the Democratic Party’s candidate against Vice President George HW Bush but was defeated overwhelmingly with 426 to 111 Electoral College votes.
Katherine Dickson, who later became known as Dukakis, hailed from Massachusetts. Her father was a musician who performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and led the Boston Pops as a conductor.
She married Michael in 1963 – the same year she graduated from Lesley College.
The Dukakises had two daughters, but Kitty had an earlier child in a first short-lived marriage to another man.
In 1978, Dukakis was appointed by Jimmy Carter to the first President’s Commission on the Holocaust which sought to build a national memorial.
She faced a long battle with pill addiction – taking diet pill amphetamines every day from 1956 until she checked herself into rehab in 1982.
But that addiction was overtaken by alcoholism as her husband was running for president in 1987.
She later wrote that she had been going on benders during his campaign, causing her to cancel appearances on the trail.
Following her husband’s heavy loss and the end of the all-consuming campaign, she began binge drinking.
Several months later she checked her self into a treatment center and admitted her problem publicly.
For the next two decades, Dukakis was in an out of rehab before she tried electroconvulsive therapy.
She said that the shock therapy gave her back her life and lifted a cloud from her mind.
That clearer mind in turn helped her to quit alcohol and cigarettes and confront self-esteem issues she said stemmed from childhood.
