MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor Keenen Peck, 1960-1990 Obituaries of the young are commonplace in time of war. That is one reason for regarding war as a monstrous enterprise. To write the obituary of a...
...Over the next five years, Keenen wrote a number of outstanding articles for The Progressive on topics that engaged his passionate concern: corporate assaults on the environment, governmental assaults on individual liberties, militarism, consumer fraud...
...He was an activist as well as a journalist...
...He took vigorous part in an attempt to assert the right to distribute political literature—that is, copies of the Bill of Rights—in shopping malls...
...They say, "Please don't forget him in your own stories and happy memories...
...When U.S...
...He was a senior at the Univerity of Wisconsin and wrote a brief piece explaining how the Reagan Administration's cutbacks in student aid were likely to stimulate ROTC enlistments...
...Members of the Peck family have asked me to convey their thanks and appreciation to all of his friends from around the world who have expressed sympathy and love since his untimely passing...
...For a year, Keenen was a clerk to Federal District Judge Terence Evans in Milwaukee, where he managed to make friends among jail inmates and among the crusty retired cops who serve as bailiffs in the courthouse...
...Fair, accurate, and unmistakably sympathetic to the plight of the downtrodden— that was Keenen Peck's all too brief life's work...
...Our files are full of his memos offering useful editorial suggestions, compliments to writers, and, occasionally, ever so gentle reproofs for a story missed or a fact fumbled...
...Within a few months, we invited him to join the staff as an associate editor...
...When he left The Progressive to go to law school—we tried but failed to talk him out of it—Keenen became an outstanding student and, in his senior year, the editor of the Wisconsin Law Review, while continuing to play an active part on our Editorial Advisory Board...
...When he left, he presented each of them with a set of plastic handcuffs and a G-man badge...
...When he graduated that spring, Keenen began an unpaid editorial internship at this magazine...
...armed forces invaded Grenada, Keenen and two friends registered their protest by chaining themselves to the doors of the Federal office building in Madison, Wisconsin...
...I tried to make it fair and accurate, but also unmistakably sympathetic to the plight of Midland citizens...
...Then, for the last year of his life, he worked in Washington as counsel to Senator Herb Kohl, Wisconsin Democrat, on the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...In one of the many tributes paid to Keenen at memorial services in Chicago, Washington, and Madison, Kohl recognized him as the driving force behind recently signed legislation barring biological weapons from the U.S...
...There is no need to say that Dow is evil...
...In another legal battle, he challenged a municipal ordinance that barred three or more unrelated persons from sharing a family residence...
...To write the obituary of a young man in a time of peace seems absurd and tragic to a degree that defies comprehension...
...Best of luck...
...Keenen's first appearance in The Progressive was in the May 1982 issue...
...He was the chair of his local ACLU chapter...
...I've been browsing through Keenen's correspondence files—an invasion of privacy that would have prompted him to raise an eyebrow—and found, among many quotable letters, these two: I To an environmental organization that had requested a "serious contribution of $20 or more": "Enclosed please find $20...
...Among his proudest achievements was a path-breaking expose of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ("The Take-Charge Gang," May 1985...
...II To a reader who had praised Keenen's article about Dow Chemical's devastating impact on its "home town" of Midland, Michigan: "I hope my article was not 'remarkably balanced,' as you stated...
...I cannot, however, guarantee that it is a 'serious contribution'—only that the check will not bounce...
...merely that in the course of 'doing its job' it is killing people...
...arsenal...
...In a lifespan of less than three decades, he accomplished more than most of us get to do in twice that time—a fact that in no way diminishes our sense of terrible loss...
...He was a gifted journalist, a brilliant lawyer, an indefatigable champion of human rights and civil liberties, an affectionate friend, and a joyous presence in the lives of all who knew him...
...Keenen Peck, who died of an aneurysm at the age of twenty-nine on June 6,1990, was a young man of remarkable achievement and extraordinary promise...
Vol. 54 • August 1990 • No. 8
