I know you're scratching your head over that title because you know of the now-late Chicago Sun-Times Columnist as a conservative and pugilist, and SF Chronicle Editor-at-Large has a great blog post on Novak's missed call on Salvadoran death squads, but "helped kids grow?"
Yes.
I discovered this for myself one day about two years ago when I was looking to write a blog attacking Novak, who died of a cancerous brain tumor today. In searching around I stumbled on a photograph featuring a group of African American kids and adults holding what looked like a plaque and an elderly Caucasian man dressed like...Robert Novak. This photo:
I fell out of my chair.
See, Novak has a well-cultivated and well-deserved reputation as a muckraking "Prince of Darkness" all the way down to the black three-piece suits he wore on television. I saw Novak as the kind of conservative one loves to hate, but I never thought of him as racist, just cold blooded, especially in the way he outed Valerie Plame. But that photo, and this one:
..changed my view of him - Novak has a heart - and then more so when I learned that these picts were from Youth Leadership Foundation (YLF) events, and that Novak was more than just a visitor, he was on the board of directors. Moreover, Novak contributed not a small amount of money to YLF. At their 2005 awards gathering he contributed $50,000.
Now, even if that may not have been all his own money - some board members get credit for causing others to donate - the effort required to raise $50,000 for any non-profit organization is considerable. Plus, the contribution was just for that event; Novak has been involved with YLF almost since its creation in 1997.
What does YLF do? It's based in Washington DC and has the charge of helping young people from DC's poorest neighborhoods between 8 and 15 years old who are "just passing" and need some attention and guidance to help them make the extra effort in school and in life to reach their potential.
Novak was as involved in YLF as he was in giving Washington politicians a headache. Today, you'll read a lot of blogs and columns about Novak, almost all of them referring to his work as a columnist. Well, that's not all there was to Novak. The "Prince of Darkness" as it turned out, was his stage name. It's not surprise that donations in Novak's name are to be directed to YLF, because in reality Robert Novak was a community leader who cared about kids and their growth into the leaders of tomorrow.
