Schmidt Fills The Shoes That Daly Left

One year ago today Charles U. Daly, then vice president for government and community affairs, was engaged in the final stages of a long struggle to keep at least a portion of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at Harvard.

Now the library and Daly are gone.

In November Daly lost the battle over the library to the University of Massachusetts. The groundbreaking has not yet taken place.

Last spring Daly moved on to become the director of the Ireland Fund, a charitable organization that directs American money to Ireland.

He also serves on the Committee on Administrative Review--a group of 15 Congressmen and private citizens trying to change some of the ways the House operates--and is a consultant to the Ford Foundation.

At the beginning of the school term, Robin Schmidt, former assistant vice president for public affairs, stepped up to succeed Daly.

Schmidt said yesterday he believes the job does not differ much from his former position. Before taking over Daly's reins, Schmidt specialized in the federal end of the Government and Community Affairs office.

He still will occasionally visit Washington, but he says he is spending time trying to learn the Cambridge community side of his new job.

Schmidt says he came to the job at an "interesting time." Many of the projects that Daly had been working on, like the Mission Hill Housing Project, had come to fruition. At the same time there may be a change in presidential administrations, and some of higher education's best friends in Congress face re-election campaigns.

Schmidt plans to spend much of his time working on issues like health manpower legislation and the financing of basic research, he said yesterday.

"These are not typical days at the office," Schmidt said about the job. Some days, he said, he will spend responding to other peoples' demands, whether it be a New York Times reporter calling for President Bok's comments on an issue or a Congressman curious about the possible educational ramifications of pending legislation.