By LISA W. FODERARO and CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
Published: June 17, 2010
Somewhere in Pennsylvania in the aftermath of World War II, Robert Kagan gave up his seat to Gloria Gittelman, a fellow student from Pennsylvania State University, on a trip home during a school holiday. He was bound for Brooklyn, she for South Philadelphia.
That chance meeting led to a courtship and then marriage in 1950, after Mr. Kagan had begun studying at Yale Law School. The couple settled in Manhattan and had three children: Marc, Elena and Irving.
Elena grew up to become dean of Harvard Law School and President Obama’s solicitor general, and if the Senate confirms her after hearings that begin on June 28, she would be the 112th justice of the United States Supreme Court. But before all that, she was the middle child in a New York family whose intellectual dynamism and embrace of liberal causes provide a window onto the social milieu and culture that shaped her.
The three Kagan children came of age during the social and political ferment of the 1970s, when community groups were absorbing the lessons of the civil rights and antiwar movements, and Bella Abzug won a seat representing the Upper West Side in Congress after she declared, “This woman’s place is in the House — the House of Representatives.”
Robert Kagan, their father, carved out a law practice representing tenants in the wave of co-op conversions that swept the city. He also volunteered his skills on a number of land-use issues roiling their Upper West Side neighborhood, once roping himself to a tree that was about to be cut down. Their mother, Gloria, taught for 20 years at Hunter College Elementary School, where she was legendary for challenging her students to challenge themselves, sometimes to the point of making them tremble.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/nyregion/20kagans.html
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