Longtime Kennedy aide a ‘lion among lawyers’
Nick Littlefield dead at 74; relished law
‘An entire generation of lawyers committed to the public interest looked up to him as an exemplar and mentor.’ — RALPH D. GANTS Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice
Nick Littlefield, a longtime aide to the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, died yesterday surrounded by his family in Cambridge after a courageous battle with multiple system atrophy. He was 74.
“Nick was a lion among lawyers: a thoughtful prosecutor, a balanced craftsman of public policy, and a respected private attorney,” said Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants, who taught alongside Littlefield at Harvard Law School.
“An entire generation of lawyers committed to the public interest looked up to him as an exemplar and mentor,” he added.
Littlefield relished the law, painting, tennis, the Red Sox and his six grandchildren, who range from 6 to 12 years old, his son Frank Lowenstein told the Herald last night. His 2011 diagnosis of multiple system atrophy — a neurodegenerative disease similar to Parkinson’s — slowly took his ability to jog, play tennis and walk, until it left him even unable to type.
“He was an extraordinary dad,” Lowenstein said. “He had an unbelievable amount of love and an unbelievable amount of positive energy. He came to every game and read every report card. He cried with us and laughed with us. He was extremely engaged, and loving and supportive. He was full of life. He spent a lot of time arguing and joking.”
The sweep of Littlefield’s career encompassed federal courtrooms, classrooms, state government and the U.S. Senate, where he worked with Kennedy during one of the Senate’s most productive periods since the ’60s — a span that yielded the Americans With Disabilities Act, the first increase in the minimum wage since 1981, major child health care legislation and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Littlefield wrote it all down in his 2015 insider account, “Lion of the Senate: When Ted Kennedy Rallied the Democrats in a GOP Congress,” much of which he wrote with a drumstick and a board marked with the alphabet. He spent his last few years putting the finishing touches on his book, aided by his beloved wife, Jenny, and his three children, Frank, Tom and Kate.
“For us, the book was a blessing, for him, for the whole family,” Lowenstein said. “It was a great way to spend time together. It was a nice way to relive all the great experiences he had, to tell us a story he really wanted to tell.”
Early in his career, Littlefield was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1972 to 1976. He then served as a chief counsel to the Massachusetts Special Anti- Corruption Commission, known as the Ward Commission, where he directed investigations into public corruption and construction fraud.
Littlefield joined the law firm Foley Hoag in 1981, working as a partner until 1989, when he joined Kennedy’s staff as a chief counsel for the Senate’s Health Care, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He taught at Harvard Law School full time from 1976 to 1978, and part time from 1980 to 1989.
A love for singing was something he shared with his boss. At Kennedy’s 2009 memorial service at the Kennedy Library in Boston, Littlefield brought the crowd to its feet with a moving rendition of “Love Changes Everything.”
In 2015, Littlefield discussed the illness that by then had taken his ability to walk and speak clearly.
“It may affect my speech but I assure you that it doesn’t affect my mind,” he said. “If you ever know people with a neurological disease and you think they’re speaking funny, they may be talking funny — but you shouldn’t assume that their mind is also funny.”
Herald Editorial Page Editor and longtime friend Rachelle Cohen recalled Littlefield as someone who was “always building bridges between people” who didn’t see eye to eye and recalled joining him for runs around Boston.
“So all of a sudden when I saw him using a walker, that was incredibly sad for me,” Cohen said. “But in these last years, I don’t know anyone who could have been braver in facing that kind of physical adversity.”