Kerry hires former Celtics coach as state office director

Kerry hires former Celtics coach as state office director

12/6/05

BOSTON_A former Boston Celtics assistant coach and recent congressional candidate was named Tuesday to run the Massachusetts offices of Sen. John Kerry.

Jon Jennings, 43 replaces Drew O'Brien, recently hired as deputy chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Boston. He'll oversee Kerry's offices in Boston, Worcester, Fall River and Springfield, and serve as senator's principal representative in his absence.

Last year, Jennings won the Democratic nomination for a congressional seat in his native Indiana, but he lost in the general election to Republican Rep. John Hostettler.

He worked for the Celtics for a decade, serving as a scout for the 1986 NBA championship team. During the early 1990s, he was an assistant coach and scouting coordinator, working with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and Reggie Lewis.

Jennings has a masters degree in public administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served in the Clinton administration Justice Department and is co-founder and president of the Team Harmony Foundation, a program that celebrates diversity.

Kerry praised Jennings' "deep commitment to community and a belief in making government work for people."

"Jon has consistently put his values into action," the senator said. "I am thrilled to have Jon Jennings on my team serving Massachusetts."

Kerry also said Setti Warren, a traveling aide during his 2004 presidential campaign, will assist Jennings as deputy state director. Most recently Warren had worked as Massachusetts press secretary.

History

A rural white man from Indiana named JonJennings and an inner city black man from Baltimore named Reggie Lewis became good friends in the late 1980's. At the time Jennings was working as a Assistant coach for the basketball team for which Lewis was captain. Both men loved kids and basketball. They shared a common dream of making the world a better place. In 1992, after race riots in Los Angeles and steadily increasing reports of school violence, the two friends sat in a hotel lobby and expressed their dismay over what the world was coming to. That same evening these two friends decided to do something. Their goal was to improve race relations in America. Their shared dream was to create a series of events that would aid young people, regardless of their backgrounds, learn to respect each other's differences. Lewis and Jennings felt it was important to help young people end prejudice, hatred, anti-Semitism, racism, and bigotry that they saw as the real problems behind much of the violence. Sadly, in 1993, Reggie Lewis died suddenly at age 27 and Jennings looked elsewhere for support to carry on the cause.