WCL Raskin Book

February 14, 2021 You Are the Nation’s Valentine! Dear Jamie,

You are so amazing and I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to know you. In fact you are hands down the most impressive person I know personally. I have listened to your supremely eloquent advocacy these past weeks with profound pleasure and pride. Your speeches will go down in history. As you know, I have admired your political career from its start, and was there with you in the beginning, as you may remember. I’ve lost the picture of my car with balloons spilling out the windows as I carried them somewhere for you during your first campaign for state senate but I wish I could reproduce it here. Buoyant balloons reflect who you are personally, spiritually, and intellectually. I have attached a picture froma day, much later, whenyou came tomy fundraiser for WCL grad Wala Blegay. By that time you were so busy and so important but still you, alone among WCL faculty, showed up. I know you will never forget the grassroots you grew from even as you float into the stratosphere of national power and prominence. And Jamie, as I have written to you before, I am beyond sadness that all of your success and acclaim around the capitol assault and impeachment proceedings happened right after the incredible tragedy of losing your beloved Tommy as you so sweetly referred to him in one of your

speeches. Truly you were divinely inspired in the energy and eloquence you projected as you spoke for the nation so many times over these past weeks. I don’t believe in heaven but it does almost seem that he was speaking with you. How you had the stamina and brilliance to write so incredibly, at such length and under such pressure and intense demands, exceeds what any human being should be capable of. You are a hero of the likes of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips; maybe all of you are connected in some deep way we cannot comprehend on this side of the divide. With love and admiration, Susan Carle