Bethesda interview: Jamie Raskin and Sarah Bloom Raskin

Congressman Jamie Raskin and his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, talk about meeting in law school at Harvard, how they were changed by the riot at the Capitol, and the acts of kindness inspired by the death of their son, Tommy.

'On Jan. 6, Sarah Bloom Raskin was home in Takoma Park watching the assault against the U.S. Capitol on television. Just the day before, she and her husband, Rep. Jamie Raskin, had buried their 25-year-old son, Tommy. Now, Jamie, the couple’s daughter Tabitha, and their daughter Hannah’s husband, Hank Kronick, were all at the Capitol, threatened by a menacing mob.
“We were petrified,” Sarah says. “I was thinking, has my life taken this dramatic turn where I’m going to be losing my entire family?”

Jamie, Tabitha and Hank had gone to the Capitol to witness the ceremonial counting of the Electoral College ballots making Joe Biden president. Jamie says the confluence of the two events—the suicide of their son and the storming of the Capitol—has left an indelible mark: “We experienced the violent attack on Congress and the insurrection against the government, which was a public trauma to accompany our family trauma. In that period of about a week, a lot of basic pillars of my existence were demolished. We lost one of the three people most precious to us, and we discovered the precariousness of democracy itself.”

Six days after the insurrection, House Democrats voted to pursue the impeachment of President Donald Trump, and Raskin—a former professor of constitutional law at American University whose district covers about half of Montgomery County—was named the lead manager of the effort. Trump’s Senate trial in February ended in his acquittal, but Raskin’s eloquent speeches, and his emotional invocation of his son’s memory, converted him from a relatively obscure third-term congressman to a national figure. Jamie and Sarah published a lengthy essay about their son’s death in January, and now Jamie is writing a book about the events of the last few months. “As I kept saying through the trial, I had no doubt that Tommy Raskin was with me in my heart the whole time,” he says. “It gave me a sense of calm and a sense of purpose about what we were doing.”

Jamie, 58, grew up in Washington and attended Georgetown Day School before going on to Harvard for his undergraduate and law degrees. His father, Marcus, was a major figure in the anti-war movement of the 1960s. His mother, Barbara, wrote an influential feminist novel, Hot Flashes, which was on the New York Times’ bestseller list for four months. “I grew up as a feminist kid because I was surrounded by strong, intelligent women,” Raskin says. So it is not surprising that he married one. Sarah, 60, has held a string of high-level jobs, including as a governor of the Federal Reserve system and deputy treasury secretary under President Barack Obama. Now a visiting professor at Duke Law School, she graduated from Amherst College before attending Harvard Law, where the couple met. I talked to them via Zoom in early May. . .

I was in the library coming down the stairs, and Sarah was coming up the stairs and we passed each other. My heart started to beat, and then I said, ‘Hi.’ And she said, ‘Hi.’ And then she said, ‘What’s your name?’ And I said, ‘Jamie.’ And she said, ‘Oh good. I just wanted to know because I did dream about you last night.’ So that was the beginning of our friendship. I kept going back to the library at that point, bringing her chocolate brownies or ice cream or whatever I could find; I had no money.'>>>

https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-magazine/july-august-2021/bethesda-interview-jamie-raskin-and-sarah-bloom-raskin/?