The Center for Politics needs you! Larry
Sabato wants your support to help the Center continue its
important work.
the time he matriculated to Mr.
Jefferson’s University in August of 1970, he was
no less than a full blown political junkie: fueled by the events of the past decade, the Kennedy assassinations and the war in Vietnam, yet guided by his father’s belief in the virtues of civic participation.
no less than a full blown political junkie: fueled by the events of the past decade, the Kennedy assassinations and the war in Vietnam, yet guided by his father’s belief in the virtues of civic participation.
CAMPUS LIFE
Part of the first coeducational first year
class at UVa, Larry would later live on the Lawn, a distinct
honor reserved only for the best and brightest of the
graduating class, before earning his bachelor’s degree in
government as a Phi Beta Kappa. His friendship with Edgar
Shannon blossomed during his fourth year, while he was student
council president and Edgar Shannon was serving his final year
as University president. After making his promise to Edgar
Shannon, he began masters work at Princeton University’s
prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and
International Affairs. At the urging of his mentor, he applied
for and was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship. In 1975 he was
whisked across the Atlantic Ocean to Queens College,
Oxford University where he completed his doctorate in politics in less than
Oxford University where he completed his doctorate in politics in less than
and when Larry Sabato returned in
September of 1978 to join the faculty, his salary was a mere
$14,000 a year.
It would be another 30 years, after both
Edgar and Eleanor Shannon had passed away, before Larry would
mention his promise again.
CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY
Those who know Larry know that he has
never been shy about his life changing experience at the
University of Virginia and the profound influence of Edgar
Shannon on his academic career. Before coming to
Charlottesville, the Norfolk native was raised in a lower
middle class family by his parents Nuncio and Margaret. After
living through the Great Depression, his father volunteered to
fight in Europe during the Second World War and then returned
stateside to work for a Navy contractor. Every morning father
and son would paw through the daily paper, analyzing the
political events of the day. The younger Sabato distinctly
remembers the four Kennedy-Nixon debates, the election, and
assassination of JFK, and five years later, the assassination
of Robert Kennedy. Son and father also went door to door for
Kennedy in 1960. It was “heresy” for Catholics not
to support Kennedy, according to Larry. By
