August 4, 1967

Eunice Kennedy Shriver

The Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation
Suite 510

719 Thirteenth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 200065

Dear Mrs. Shriver:

We are proud, too, of our association with the Kennedy Foundation and
lose no opportunity that turns up to make note of it. We will continue
to do this but it is a little difficult sometimes to be sure that
affiliation with the foundation is not overlookkd, particularly when
other people report our work and sometimes perhaps even in some of

our own activities. But I can assure you that we are right with

you in our motivation to credit the foundation and ourselves with a
very productive association.

We do have a very handsome bronze plaque that refers to your late
brother at the main entryway into the laboratories. I will make a
point of sending you a picture of it just in case you don't have

one already, There are smaller plaques at other entrances and on
some of the hallways. We do not however have a picture and 1f you
will send me one, I will be very happy to see that it is mounted and
displayed in an appropriately dignified but prominent place.

The most important work going on in research comectgd with mental
retardation here has been summarized by Dr. McKhann and Dr. Shooter
in reports to the foundation headquarters. There is an enormous
amount of work, which may seem like drudge work, connected with these
fundamental studies but they are the surest way to the deepest under-
standing of brain chemistry and its deviations. If you have any
questions about any of the matters brought up in these formal reports

and would like to discuss them with me or with either of them informally

we would, of course, be delighted to do so - perhaps best of all if
you have the occasion for a more leisurely conversation during a visit
to the laboratories.

YanlyHs Lowa,
E. Shriver -~2- August 4, 1967

wlternatively, I might try to meet you in Washington on my next trip
there, which may be either in September or November. JI did try to
contact your husband when I was in Washington last Spring but, has I
hardly need to repeat, he is a very hard man to get hold of and he
has more important preoccupations with Congress and his office.

The laboratories have worked out very beautifully; we have a vigorous
research program; we are working on a very broad front.

I think it will not have escaped you that I use my column in the
Washington Post quite consistently to get over some of the complexities
of human development as an inescapably important premise of political
action in a large number of fields. The more I read and observe on

the matter, the more impressed I am with the great importance of
motivational maturation in the development of what we call “intelligence”
and what an important element this must be, particularly in the

de facto retardation of so many negro children. But what a difficult
subject to study with scientific objectivity! In case you missed

them, I am enclosing a couple of my columns that might be of closer
pertinence to problems of mental retardation and mental development.

I would be very happy to have any comments you care to make on them.

Yours Sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

Encls.

JL/gem