Jennifer Meeropol is the granddaughter of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and the daughter of RFC Founder, Robert Meeropol. Jenn became the Executive Director of the RFC on September 1, 2013. Prior posts on this page were written by Robert (unless otherwise noted), and represent his opinions, which are not necessarily shared by the RFC.In a few days Elli and I will celebrate our 43rd wedding anniversary. I was so young, two weeks shy of my 21st birthday, that I couldn’t get married in the State of Maryland without my parents’ notarized permission. Since then we’ve been involved in a range of public activities, sometimes as individuals, and at others, as a couple. We first collaborated as SDS militants in college. Later Elli, as a member of the Springfield Woman’s Union helped organize Mudpie Childcare Cooperative, and I staffed it one morning a week for four years when our kids were little.
Despite the headline, I’m not really arguing that we should free Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), the self proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Once again, however, the debate rekindled by Attorney General Holder’s decision to bow to political pressure and try KSM by military commission at Guantanamo leaves me tearing out what’s left of my hair.
Sixty years ago today, Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman sentenced my parents to death. He justified the death penalty for their “Conspiracy to Commit Espionage” (planning to commit espionage) conviction by saying their “conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding fifty thousand.”
The RFC has begun the final lap of our 20/20/20 marathon. In September 2009 in Albany, NY, we held the first reception of our project to stage 20 events, in 20 cities, over 20 months to celebrate our 20th anniversary. We (usually me and my daughter Jenn, who will take over my duties as Executive Director in a couple of years) have met, thanked and discussed the RFC endeavor with a couple of thousand supporters and new friends since then.
Monday marked our Spring 2011 application deadline. Since we have limited resources and do our best to be a dependable source of multi-year support for the children we aid, it is not unusual for more than 90% of our beneficiaries in any cycle to be those who are already receiving ongoing help. For instance, last fall we welcomed four new families while renewing aid to 65 more.