Menino died surrounded by friends and family on Thursday, just days after announcing he had suspended further treatment and cancelled a tour to promote his new book. Image source, AP. Once elected, he proceeded to shape the look and feel of Boston as perhaps no other mayor had in the past. His intimacy with the city ranged from obscure budget details to the placement of fire hydrants, so developers knew the success of high-profile proposals for highly visible projects often hinged on pleasing Mr.
Menino said as he looked at the architectural drawings. Linde and his architect tried again, bringing a set of miniature proposed roofs to City Hall and setting each one atop the model of their planned tower.
At different points, Mr. Try negotiating with a union whose members die for you. Chief executives of major cities often want to leave behind a defining development. For Kevin White, it was Quincy Market. Other challenges also proved vexing.
And while graduation rates increased incrementally, that was enough to draw praise. Menino was more successful presiding over what became known as the Boston Miracle. In his early years as mayor, police stepped up outreach to neighborhood groups and church leaders to try to quell gang violence.
Homicides plummeted from 98 in , when Mr. Menino became acting mayor, to 31 in Violent crime rose again, but not to the levels of the late s and early s, and by the end of his tenure the number of homicides dropped four consecutive years, to 40 in Several years ago, he also joined with then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York to cochair Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a nonprofit coalition that pushed for more gun controls.
As years passed, Mr. Menino consolidated power, becoming a strong political boss not to be crossed during his second decade in office. Still, programs that spoke to core beliefs forged early in his leadership remained in place. Finding summer work for youth — the initiative that helped lift his first mayoral bid — became an annual preoccupation as he tripled the number of participating private employers to Last year we did 10, Beginning at 10 a.
Sunday, the mayor will lie in state at Faneuil Hall. Menino was baptized. More details about the service and the procession from Faneuil Hall to the church will be announced. Last year, Harvard University awarded Mr. Menino an honorary doctorate.
More important to Mr. Menino were lists like the one detailing how he dealt with gender inequity at City Hall. Thousands of women gained years of life from preventative care. His own health suffered sporadically through the years. Not even a broken leg could keep him in his wheelchair, however, when it was time to pay tribute at the interfaith service to those killed and injured in the Boston Marathon bombings.
His blunt description of his frailty was characteristically unsparing. Menino recalled tucking his elbows back as his son tipped the wheelchair forward. The enclosed pulpit hid the line connecting my catheter to the bag on my wheelchair. Once on his feet, in clear pain and in an international spotlight as he delivered the most closely watched speech of his career, Mr.
Menino exhibited the resilience he praised in the city he loved. During his first run for mayor, in , Menino embarked on a trolley tour through Dorchester, a harbinger of a pounding-the-pavement leadership style that defined his tenure. More Menino coverage Thomas M. He set up an office that developed a pioneering smartphone app for residents to report potholes and other apps to report graffiti and other nuisances.
He never sought nor showed interest in running for higher office. Mayor, it seemed, was the only political job to which he aspired. That would not, however, stop him from being at the forefront of major national issues. In , his administration began videotaping the court appearances of men arrested for soliciting prostitutes, promising to show on its cable TV station the arraignments of those convicted.
In , he underwent surgery to remove a rare sarcoma on his back. He spent six weeks in the hospital in for a series of ailments, including a respiratory infection. While he was in the hospital, he suffered a compression fracture in his spine and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
In May , he was back in the hospital for surgery for an enlarged prostate. In typical fashion, he declared on his release several days later that he would not let the latest ailment slow him down. Menino focused much of his attention in his final months in office focusing on education, including an appearance before a legislative committee in which he advocated for more charter schools and flexibility to intervene in struggling urban schools. Former state Rep. Charlotte Golar Richie met Menino before she became an elected official and left the State House to join Menino's cabinet as chief of housing and neighborhood development.
Golar Richie says his leadership, even though it came years after the start of the city's school busing crisis, broke ground.
And he, I thought, did a lot to make this a more open place. Councilor Charles Yancey, representing the 4th District of Mattapan and parts of Dorchester, was often on the receiving end of Menino's sharp tongue. But he says 90 percent of the time he and Menino agreed on issues. He deserves credit for that. But we know that that's not always true," said Boston businessman Jack Connors.
Because if there was success, then Tom Menino wanted to be sure that the folks who didn't have a voice shared in that success. Connors credits Menino for inspiring and for helping him create Camp Harborview, a summer camp for city kids on Long Island in Boston Harbor.
Menino's last few years in office were marked by illness. He was hospitalized more than a dozen times over two decades, starting in and There were severed tendons in his knees, a broken foot, an upper respiratory infection, a compression fracture suffered in his spine while he was hospitalized, a diagnosis of diabetes.
He announced in March that he would not run for a sixth term. A month later, he twisted his ankle and fell, breaking his right leg. In February of this year — just over a month after leaving office — he was diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer that had spread to his liver and lymph nodes.
He went on a book tour promoting his autobiography, "Mayor for a New America.
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