WCL Raskin Book

Dear Jamie, My first memory of working with you at WCL goes back decades, early in my days here, to a retreat (remember retreats?) somewhere on Maryland’s eastern shore. There was a grand piano. Sometime during lunch, you played the slow movement from the Moonlight Sonata on it, flawlessly. That’s pretty much all I remember about that retreat. I figured, this is a special place to be teaching at. We cheered you on as you took on what for anyone else would have been an impossible schedule: banking your courses during fall semester, to free up for the General Assembly session second semester. You represented your Senate district well, but you stood for all Marylanders with passion and a belief that our state had much to atone for, but ultimately could do justice. Bill McKibben’s moving piece about you in The Atlantic reminded us that of somany great turns of phrase, youmay have delivered the Best Quip Ever (he dates that to before you were elected), about swearing on the Bible but defending the Constitution.

You did so much good for democracy in the Maryland Senate. We wondered: why leave a place where you can achieve and have achieved so much, to move on to become one of 435 in an increasingly partisan Congress? Now we know why. The teacher’s drive to transform students into thinking civic actors, the humanity that sustainedanddeepened inyou through your own serious illness and the loss of Tommy, the instinct for beauty that brought you toaquietmoment at the piano - these propelled you to lead the country in ways we could never have imagined. Thank you for your resilient patriotism. Thank you for persisting in the face of disheartening cynicism, and for believing in a just America. All the best, Susan Bennett