AUGUST 12 • 2021 | 13

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tor went to Swarthmore College in 
Pennsylvania and then Harvard Law 
School. But to help pay for college, he 
worked summers in three auto plants, 
dirty and sometimes grueling work, 
which he later said gave him insight 
into both the difficulties the workers 
faced — and the weaknesses and 
inflexibility of the industry.
Following graduation from law 
school in 1959, Levin worked for 
several small firms in Detroit and 
became involved in Democratic Party 
politics, serving as a precinct delegate 
during John F. Kennedy’s campaign. 
A few years later, Frank Kelley, a 
recently elected Michigan attorney 

general, started a civil rights division, 
put the office in Detroit and hired a 
new assistant attorney general to run 
it: Carl Levin. “I knew he was going 
places,
” Kelley said.

HEALING DETROIT
Not long after that, dismayed by the 
civil disturbances that devastated 
Detroit in 1967, Carl Levin decided 
to run for Detroit City Council in the 
hope that he “might be able to help 
start the process of rebuilding and 
healing my shattered hometown.
”
Four years later, he was not 
only easily elected, but was the 
top vote-getter and became City 

Andy Levin: The 
‘Uncle Carl’ I Knew 

By U.S. Rep. Andy Levin 

Throughout my adult life, wherever I went in 
Michigan, from Copper Harbor to Monroe, I 
would run into people who would say, “I don’t 
always agree with Sen. Levin, but I support 
him anyway because he is so genuine, he 
tells it straight and he follows through.”
Carl Levin personified integrity and the 
notion of putting the public good above 
self-interest. As he walked about the Capitol 
in a rumpled suit, almost always with a plain 
white shirt and pedestrian tie, carrying bulg-
ing files with the occasional paper flying 
away, Carl was the very picture of sober pur-
pose and rectitude.
In truth, he wasn’t unfun. In fact, he often 
pierced tense situations with self-deprecat-
ing humor, and he privately shared incisive 
observations about others with staff and 
colleagues.
But Carl was all about the work, and the 
great honor the people of Michigan had 
bestowed upon him with their votes and 
their trust. He did not seek to divine their 
views to be popular, but rather to study the 
issues and advance the people’s interest to 
the best of his ability.
Uncle Carl met with more presidents, 
kings, queens and other important people 
than all but a few of us ever will. But he 
treated them all the same as he did a Detroit 
autoworker or a beet farmer in Michigan’s 
Thumb — with a full measure of dignity but 
no airs, ever ready to puncture self-impor-
tance, posturing, mendacity and avarice.
He was so well-prepared for every meet-
ing, hearing and conference that he chal-
lenged conventional boundaries between 

Carl, Andy and Sander Levin in 2018

COURTESY OF MICHIGAN RADIO/PHOTOGRAPHER LESTER GRAHAM

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Sen. Carl M. Levin

