FOXBOROUGH – It is 10 days before his Patriots team makes its sixth Super Bowl appearance under his ownership and Robert Kraft is mired in email hell, busy scrolling through hundreds of messages on his split-screen computer as he returns phone calls and tries to whittle down the piles of papers on the desk in his spacious Gillette Stadium office.
“I am so overloaded,” says Kraft with a weary smile, his pink tie still snug under his white collar at 6 p.m.
There are scores of fruit baskets and boxes of candies on a nearby table, gifts from Patriots well-wishers. The office walls are choked with photographs – a rich panorama of snapshots chronicling the life of Robert and Myra Kraft. There’s a photo from the ’60s of the Krafts with the late Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. Several frames show a beaming Robert celebrating one of the three Super Bowl titles from the last decade. There’s another of Robert dancing with the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis at a party the Krafts hosted at their home. Photo portraits of his four sons – Jonathan, Daniel, Josh and David – watch over Robert from the wall overlooking his desk.
But there is one black and white photo in particular that draws Kraft’s attention throughout the day, the portrait of the pretty Bancroft School student looking at the camera, a headband disappearing under one fold of her neck-length brown hair.
“That was her graduation from high school,” Kraft says of the framed photo that is propped directly behind his office chair, the one depicting a teenage Myra Hiatt, who later became Myra Kraft. “I’ve always loved it.”
Kraft’s words fade into a whisper while he holds the frame, his eyes glistening with tears. For as magical a ride as his Patriots have been on this season, the 70-year-old Kraft is weathering an emotional spiral that began when Myra died July 20 at 68 after a battle with cancer. Kraft says the stretch of time “has been the roughest period of my life,” one that saw him caring for his ailing wife while he and fellow NFL owners were locked in a contentious labor battle with players and the union over a new collective bargaining agreement last summer.
Myra died days before training camp opened, and the Patriots dedicated the 2011 season to her, wearing a black patch with her “MHK” initials above their heart on their uniforms. While elite athletic achievements and enormous business success have defined Kraft’s life, nothing will supplant the 48 years of marriage, the lifetime of memories and the bond with “the love of my life” that began in a remote corner of the Brandeis University library in 1962. The Krafts became one of Boston’s most influential couples, and Myra Kraft’s philanthropic and charitable efforts stretched from New England across the globe, a legacy that Robert Kraft and many of those close to Myra say is unparalleled in the breadth of its generosity and the lives she impacted.
