Kitty Dukakis

Katharine "Kitty" Dukakis (née Dickson; December 26, 1936 – March 21, 2025) was an American author. She was the wife of former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. She was the First Lady of Massachusetts from 1975 until 1979 and again from 1983 until 1991.

During the 1988 presidential election, many fake rumors were talked about in the media about the Dukakises, including the claim by Idaho Republican Senator Steve Symms that Kitty had burned a United States flag to protest the Vietnam War.

In 1989, Dukakis was briefly hospitalized after drinking rubbing alcohol. In 1991, she revealed in her autobiography that she had suffered from alcoholism and had depression. She later became an activist supporting electroconvulsive therapy to treat patients with depression.

Dukakis died at her home in Brookline, Massachusetts, on March 21, 2025 from problems caused by dementia at the age of 88.

References

Category:1936 births
Category:2025 deaths
Category:Deaths from dementia
Category:American autobiographers
Category:American activists
Category:Writers from Cambridge, Massachusetts