Barack Obama lost his preceptor Abner Mikva, who deceased 10 years before his centenary celebration.
Mikva was a representative of the Democratic Party from Illinois. He died this Monday in Chicago. Mikva knew Obama for many years. He was almost the first person who saw future President’s potential in the public service sphere. Mikva also could become Obama’s first employer. While the President, who was an alumnus of the law school then, didn’t take the post offered by Mikva, he acknowledged an importance of such step.
“No matter how far we go in life, we owe a profound debt of gratitude to those who gave us those first, firm pushes at the start,” he said in a statement. “For me, one of those people was Ab Mikva.
At the time of decease Mikva was 90 years old. He had bladder cancer that killed him after all. The man’s life ended on July 4. Some of his friends and family members see a sign of symbolism in this date of death. Mikva was a patriot and liked to act in a historic way. It was in his style to die on one of the greatest American holidays, mentioned Mikva’s son-in-law Steven Cohen.
Abner Mikva is a great example of a person who developed his success from the scratch. He was born in 1926 in a family of Ukrainian immigrants. Mikva’s father often became unemployed, and the family depended up the government allowance for many years. However, the man was able to build a career without a patronage. He got a post in the U.S. Court of Appeals and Illinois governmental establishment. Mikva worked at the White house as an advisor of Bill Clinton and, of course, was current President’s preceptor.
Barack Obama paid respect to Elie Wiesel
Another man who contacted with President Obama and other US politicians died recently and was 3 years younger than Mikva. Elie Wiesel peacefully deceased on Saturday after the long illness. Obama paid respect to this man, who survived Holocaust, won the Nobel Prize and wrote meaningful books.
“Elie Wiesel was a great moral voice of our time and a conscience for our world,” Obama wrote on Twitter. “He was also a dear friend. We will miss him deeply.”
Wiesel spent the subsequent decades fighting for human rights, never shying away from confronting leaders – in 1993, he pushed former president Bill Clinton to take action on human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia.
