 . . . March 1994
Robert Meeropol '69 learned compassion By Laurie B. Fenlason "When our names were changed, my brother Michael and I essentially went underground. No one knew who we were. It was a big secret, and everybody who knew kept the secret. They even kept it from us. They would pretend they didn't know who we were and at the same time we would pretend they didn't know. It was kind of a weird charade that went on."
The younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Robert Meeropol was 6 years old in June 1953 when his parents were convicted and executed–wrongly, he believes–on charges of selling classified information about US atomic bomb technology to the Soviet Union.
Describing himself as more a "faithful follower" than a leader in SDS, Meeropol recalls as his "shining activist moment" at Michigan a protest of classified defense research in the fall of 1968. "The U got a grant to develop infrared sensing devices to locate gorillas through heat sensing. They were testing the device in the jungle in Thailand, and we thought the intended use of it was pretty obvious. We needed a slogan for the campaign, and I suggested a maize and blue button that said 'Go Michigan, Beat Thailand!' The protest was written up in Newsweek. I still have one of the buttons."
During his graduate years at Michigan, SDS split into factions that would later include the Jesse James Gang, an Ann Arbor-based precursor of the Weathermen. Meeropol aligned himself first with the more conservative wing and later with a center-left position ("what one of the faction leaders called mush-head SDS") that he says has characterized his ongoing political activism ever since.
After leaving the University in 1971, Meeropol earned a law degree and opened a practice in Massachusetts specializing in what he describes as "left wing estate planning."
In 1974, forced out of anonymity by a court battle to prevent unauthorized publication of their parents' letters, Meeropol and his brother embarked on an ongoing speaking campaign to assert their parents' innocence and wrongful execution. Over the years, while Michael Meeropol, the elder by four years, has focused attention on the legal aspects of the Rosenberg case, particularly in connection with a series of American Bar Association re-enactments of the trial, Robert has expanded a second, more intimate message that builds from his experiences as a child.
"When I speak, one of the things I stress, one of the things that was so important for Michael and me, is that we were shielded–even from the people who were helping us." When public school officials in New Jersey refused to allow Robert and Michael to enroll in grade school, supporters of the Rosenbergs established a trust fund. "We didn't know who the donors were, and we were not asked to send thank you notes," Meeropol says. The fund enabled the brothers to attend a series of private, progressive schools and camps where they would not be stigmatized by their parents' politics.
Today, the roles are reversed: Meeropol is the donor–or at least the conduit for donors–and those shielded and protected from public censure are children whose parents have been harassed, injured, imprisoned, fired from jobs or otherwise targeted in the course of progressive activity.
Meeropol reaches out to these families through the Rosenberg Fund for Children in Springfield, Massachusetts, a nonsectarian, nonpartisan foundation he established in 1990 to honor his parents and to replicate the education and emotional support that sheltered him as a child. Meeropol is proud of the fact that the fund gives grants to people across the political spectrum–"people whose politics I don't necessarily agree with and people who probably would not agree with each other."
The fund's board of directors applies no political litmus test to determine eligibility. To meet the fund's criteria, an activist's work is examined against the following broad tenets: that all people are of equal worth; that people are more important than profits; that world peace is a necessity; and that society must function within ecologically sustainable limits.
One award in particular stands out to Meeropol as epitomizing the mission of the fund: a grant to the family of an Afro-American Los Angeles police officer who spoke out against racism within her department in the wake of the Rodney King beating. As a result, Meeropol recounts, she was subjected to harassment that included telephoned death threats to her home during her children's summer vacation.
With the help of a network of supporters and donors, Meeropol located a suitable overnight camp for the children within driving distance of Los Angeles. With a matching grant from the camp, the children were able to escape the harassment their parents were facing.
Now in its third year, the foundation expects to donate $30,000 in 1993 to children ranging in age from toddlers needing daycare to teenagers taking driver education lessons. By 1999, Meeropol hopes to be awarding $100,000 a year and to have planted the seeds of an endowment that will ensure the fund's long-term survival.
Meeropol and his staff are careful to protect the identities of the children and families they assist and discourage any sense of obligation to the fund or its donors. He recalls receiving thank you notes a few years ago written at the insistence of the counselors of children the fund had sent to summer camp. "I called the camp director and told him I didn't want that. If the kids do it on their own, that's fine. When they grow up and get to be 18 or 20 or 25 and want to come back and talk to us that's just fine. Right now they need to be free to be kids, to be left alone. Later on, who knows."
|
Robert Meeropol '69, '70 MA, isn't sure how many of his classmates and professors knew who he really was when he transferred to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1967.
Shortly thereafter, to guard their safety and privacy, Meeropol and his brother Michael assumed the surname of the couple that adopted them, a decision that afforded them relative anonymity until they publicly revealed their family background later in life. In college, friends in the activist group