Adam Yarmolinsky; Kennedy, Johnson Advisor

Adam Yarmolinsky, 77, an influential thinker who was a leading force in the social programs in the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations. As assistant secretary of defense from 1961 to 1964, Yarmolinsky helped prepare the Gesell Report, calling for an end to racial discrimination in towns adjoining military bases. When Johnson called on R. Sargent Shriver to head a task force to draw up legislation for a comprehensive war on poverty, Yarmolinsky, on loan from the Pentagon, was added to the team. Columnists Robert Novak and Rowland Evans wrote that Yarmolinsky was “chief midwife in the hurried birth of the poverty program.” After the poverty bill was passed in August 1964, Yarmolinsky returned to the Pentagon, where he was chief of the Emergency Relief Mission to the Dominican Republic in 1965 and principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1965 to 1966. After leaving government service, Yarmolinsky taught at Harvard, where he pioneered courses in urban law. A native of New York City, Yarmolinsky graduated from Harvard in 1943 and from Yale University’s law school in 1948. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. On Wednesday at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, of leukemia.