Thomas M. Menino (1942–2014)

Mayor Thomas Menino was opinionated, as politicians are generally wont to be. He was held in high regard by the people of his beloved Boston. You need not have been a Bostonian to know that. The fact that his tenure as mayor spanned two decades proves his enormous appeal. A politico who manages to stay in the same office that long must be masterful.

Shortly after receiving my copy of Mayor for a New America, the recently retired Menino died from cancer at the age of 71. It almost seems his purpose had been fulfilled and it was time to check out. Thankfully he was able to write about his tenure as mayor before his death. In this book Menino runs down a list of the most important things he accomplished while in office. He also enumerates fights with people of opposing views.

Menino, of Italian descent, came from the Hyde Park neighborhood. He broke a longstanding tradition in which people of Irish stock had been the only seemingly electable mayoral candidates. That wasn't easy for the man who had problems with elocution. He was not a great speaker, and he knew it. He had to work hard to make people see past that.

Here are a few of the things I find most interesting about the man. After a blaze that killed two firefighters, one of the deceased was found to have cocaine in his system. An autopsy revealed that the other had alcohol in his system. Menino subsequently pushed for drug testing for firefighters. After a police SWAT team mistakenly broke into the apartment of a 75-year-old man, the resident died of a heart attack. Menino made a public apology to the community. He was a mayor who cared about quality of the schools. The Boston Globe praised him for what he did for education.

The late Tip O'Neill is widely remembered as saying that all politics is local. Menino epitomized the meaning of that phrase. The writing in Menino's book is not the best, but I highly recommend it for the messages contained therein.… (meer)