Statement from President Obama on the Passing of Dick Goodwin

Dick Goodwin led an extraordinary life. He was a clerk on the Supreme Court, a Congressional aide who helped lay bare a national scandal, a speechwriter to President Kennedy – and that was all before his thirtieth birthday.

But the way he chose to live that life; the values and principles for which he toiled – that’s why Dick will be long remembered. He helped John F. Kennedy push to expand peace and prosperity in our hemisphere, and to prove that the moral force of our values could win hearts and minds around the world. He helped Bobby Kennedy send those ripples of hope a little farther.

Perhaps most importantly, he helped President Johnson battle the twin forces of deprivation and discrimination in America. Together, they forged Great Society guarantees like Medicare and Medicaid that freed millions of seniors from fear. Together, they lifted the voices of protest until “We Shall Overcome” was not just the anthem of a movement, but the promise of a President who’d ultimately sign the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, dismantling the structures of legal segregation in a way that liberated all races alike.

Dick Goodwin was a citizen in the truest sense of the word – someone who, with joy and purpose, joined all who came before in that long march to make America a freer, more equal, more just, more caring and prosperous place for all who come after.

Michelle and I will always be grateful for our friendship with Dick and his wife Doris, and we offer our most sincere condolences to her, their children, and their grandchildren.