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By Greg O'Brien
Special to the BIR

Boston City Council President Maureen Feeney &emdash; on a growing number of short lists of potential contenders to succeed Tom Menino one day as Boston mayor, and, if so, breaching two centuries of male dominion &emdash; will never forget her first brush with politics. She screamed!

When she was ten years old, her parents escorted her to James Michael Curley's public, open-casket wake at the State House Rotunda. "We filed passed the body three times!" Feeney says, from her fifth-floor City Hall office that overlooks Government Center. "I had no idea why."

Political allegiances die hard in Boston, and Feeney's parents, Joseph and Katherine (Kelly) Keaveny, were no exception. They were longtime Curley supporters, and Feeney's maternal grandfather, Robert Kelly, had been a close friend of Curley's and a loyal campaign volunteer. The elder Kelly, in fact, was buried with a personal note from Curley, thanking him for his years of service.

"Can I touch him?" Feeney recalls asking her mother, as she passed Curley's stiff corpse. No," her mother replied sternly. "You can't touch him!" On the third pass, the probing and persistent young Feeney reached out and poked at Curley. "I screamed," she says, noting that the shriek resonated throughout the hall. "His hand was freezing cold!"

The often-cold realities of politics and the gut instinct to engage when necessary have guided Feeney's political life. She became involved early on in Dorchester's spirited Cedar Grove Civic Association, established a meals program at the Long Island Shelter, organized annual blood drives and created coalitions to build new parks in her neighborhood. Then there was her dutiful staff work for former Boston City Councilor Jim Byrne, her election to the council in 1993, replacing the retiring Byrne in Dot's District 3, her landslide re-election margins, and, three months ago her ascension to the council presidency. In succeeding polarizing Councilor at Large Michael Flaherty, she became the first woman to lead the council since Louise Day Hicks in 1976. The January vote was seen as a "rise to power of the council's minority and those representing the city's most diverse neighborhoods," the Boston Globe reported.

Now 13 weeks later &emdash; after vetting a number of key public safety and education issues, after probing the future of guerrilla marketing in the aftermath of a disastrous Dr. Pepper promotion, and after digesting a critical 200-page report by The Boston Foundation that Boston is losing talent and businesses to other major cities who have far more flexibility to generate alternate sources of revenue that take pressure off residential and commercial property taxes &emdash; Feeney is ready to hit her stride with the gavel. That is, if she can stay on schedule.

She's running late again today, a brisk March morning when the bronze statue of Kevin White outside City Hall is as cold as Curley's hand. The delay is not of her doing. An earlier appointment was on "Irish time, shall we say." Says Feeney, who keeps a day planner that would choke a sturdy Irish Draught workhorse: "If I got up at 4 every morning, I'd still be behind schedule."

The morning began over strong coffee with Sam Tyler, head of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, the methodical city government watchdog group celebrating its 75 anniversary this year. The two discussed the worrisome Boston Foundation report, which notes that almost 60 percent of Boston's revenue is gleaned from property taxes, compared with 25 percent in New York, 20 percent in Atlanta, and 10 percent in Denver. Next on the calendar is an animated contingent from Limerick &emdash; the mayor and 15 councilors, late on arrival after a night in Boston. This has thrown a tightly scripted schedule off kilter, and Feeney is in sprint mode. The group is seeking her views on Boston's prickly gang and drugs problems and public housing concerns. Feeney knows first-hand about such inner-city matters, particularly public housing issues. As a child and a young adult, she lived for 14 years in Dorchester's Franklin Field Housing Project with her parents and six brothers and sisters in units on Ames and Stratton Streets. The oldest of the siblings, she was beyond all doubts primus inter pares, particularly in her father's eyes.

"It was crazy growing up, but I mean that in a good way; it was one of the best times of my life," she says in a late morning interview. The Franklin Field Housing Project is a long way from City Hall, much further culturally than it is in miles. Feeney found her way with the directional help of archetypal street savvy, Dorchester political connections, and devoted parents who imbued her with toughness and compassion. She inherited the toughness from both her mother and father, and was blessed, she says, with her father's tender soul, one "that saw all the good that God has placed around us." A classic paradox, her father, tall and thin, was a pipe fitter in Local 537, a local featherweight boxing champion, and a self-taught artist, who drew impressive portraits with scraps of charcoal. Her mother instilled in Feeney an abiding love of politics. Both parents are deceased.

To know Feeney, a second generation Irish American, is to know her parents; she is a composite of the two, and only seems comfortable talking about herself in terms of them.

Her mother Kate, a homemaker, was active in local civic and political causes and she passed down to her children (Robert and Kevin, pipe fitters like their dad; Thomas and Michael, both in computer-related professions; Katie, a nurse; and Teddy, who works in the state treasurer's office) an appreciation of Boston, its rich history, and the family's Irish roots. Feeney's paternal grandparents &emdash; Thomas and Elizabeth Keaveny &emdash; hailed from County Mayo. They married in Ireland, then came to Boston. Her maternal grandfather, Robert Kelly, was from County Kerry, and her maternal grandmother Mary (McCarthy), from County Cork. The couple met at the Hibernian Hall in Dudley Square, Roxbury.

"Mother was always rushing," Feeney says from a sofa chair in her office, surrounded by family photos and various political memorabilia. "That was her nature. When we were kids, she would wake us early on vacation mornings to take us on walking history lessons of the city. We did the Freedom Trail before it had been designated the Freedom Trail. I don't know how many times you can walk to Bunker Hill Monument or visit the USS Constitution or the Frog Pond, but we must have set a record for it. She always would tell us how lucky we were to be Irish Catholic, Democrats, and from Boston. That was something special. It was branded in us."

Feeney's mother would also tell her children stories about family ties to Mayor Curley, and how Curley would often send the Kelly family turkeys and food and fruit baskets in appreciation for their support. But there was a tough side to Kate Kelly Keaveny, who tossed compliments around like they were Jersey barriers &emdash; a reticence to encourage that shaped Feeney in predictable ways.

"As a child, I had these skinny long arms and legs, and my mother always made me so self-conscious about it that I wore long-sleeve shirts in summer," Feeney recalls. "Whether it was clothes or something else, she would always say, 'That's not bad or that's fine.' She never said she liked anything."

To this day, the word "fine" is verboten in the Feeney house, a not-so-subtle decree to those she loves most&emdash;her husband, Larry, general counsel to the state Department of Veterans Services, and her two children, Kaitlin, a sophomore at Boston College, and Matthew, a 29-year-old assistant district attorney at Roxbury District Court. "My husband and my kids know never to use the 'f' word around me. They know to be more expressive."

In contrast, Feeney's father was munificent in his praise of his daughter. "My father saw something in me that I didn't see in myself," says Feeney. "He thought I was special and always demonstrated that to me. He never left the house without telling me that he loved me. It was reassuring, and has driven me to repeat the same to my family. So much of what I hold precious in life my father has given me. He molded me in so many ways, introducing me to the arts and music. He was my pal."

Beyond her father's gentle soul, what Feeney remembers most about him was his meticulous nature and his hands&emdash;"his large, rough hands," she says, glancing down at her own. "At night, he would take a wire brush to them, almost to the point of cutting his skin, just to make sure there was no grease or dirt on them at the end of a day's work. I always remember grabbing his hands. They were the hands of an artist &emdash; a pipe fitter and a boxer who loved to plant flowers."

At 48, Joseph Keaveny was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, formally known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and died shortly after his 50th birthday. Feeney watched in horror as his body degenerated. "It was the saddest day of my life when he died," she says, pausing to regain composure. "I'm sorry; it's difficult to talk about this." Feeney stops to wipe her tears. "But from that day on, I've never been afraid of dying."

His death, she says, also gave her the confidence to live as her father had taught her, to follow through in life, to take the calculated risks. It hadn't always been that way. After attending grammar school in St. Matthew's parish and high school at Notre Dame Academy in Roxbury and then Hingham, Feeney attended Mass Bay Community College and UMass- Boston, leaving school before earning her degree. "I will tell you it was the biggest regret in my life," she says. "I wasn't mature enough to recognize the opportunity."

The irony is not lost on her friends and some critics &emdash; a city council president, possibly mayor someday, without a college degree. But there always seems to be an open door for Feeney. Maybe her parents have the key.

Before elective politics, Feeney was busy with the day-to-day of life. She labored in the insurance and banking business, got married, had children, then went to work for Byrne, who was impressed with Feeney's neighborhood work for the Cedar Grove Civic Association.

In 1993, when Byrne told his stunned faithful assistant that he wasn't seeking reelection, the door swung open again. "What are you crying for," he asked her. "I want bumper stickers made, and I want you up and running in ten days!" Her husband and children repeated the rallying call. In a notable first run, Feeney received more than 70 percent of the vote in the final election. Her constituents have not looked back since.

After 14 years on the council, Feeney is still looking ahead, but only to the next 24 hours. "I'm a person who lives the day. My life has been wonderful; opportunities have presented themselves that I could never have imagined. I'm blessed to have extraordinary family to support me at every turn. They have demonstrated a belief in me that I should keep moving and not settle."

So will she run in the future for mayor if her husband and children wave the checkered flag? "I think you always have to be open to life," she says, dodging the question, as she hands a visitor a recent photo of her with Kevin White next to his bronze sculpture outside City Hall. White has inscribed the photo, perhaps intuitively: "Congratulations! Best of luck in the future."

Pressed again on a mayoral run, Feeney replies, "Who knows? The Lord moves in strange ways." It's now time for her next appointment, an hour behind schedule. She finishes the interview with one last thought and a wry Irish grin: "There is one thing, however, that I covet. I'd like to be a grandmother some day!"

Greg O'Brien is a freelance writer and editor who contributes to various regional and national publications. His Boston Metro columns appear regularly in New York Metro and Philadelphia Metro, and he contributes to the Op-Ed pages of The Providence Journal.

By Greg O'Brien
Special to the BIR

To say Sister Lena Deevy has a point of view is to say Boston can be chilly in winter. But there's nothing understated, not even by a degree, about this visionary, Harvard-educated, Crettyard farm-raised 63-year-old Irish Catholic nun - part activist, part nurse, part idealist, part lightning rod, part administrator, and for 30 years a devoted member of an international order of Catholic women, the Little Sisters of the Assumption. Most in Boston know her simply as the executive director of the Irish Immigration Center (IIC), a non-profit, self-help agency that serves the varied interests of the immigrant community from Ireland and at large, and operates a maverick program in Northern Ireland to bridge the gap between Protestants and Catholics.

Old school in some ways, with a cutting-edge social agenda, Sister Deevy reminds many of those who meet her of a favorite teacher they had when they were young, but there's more, far more, to her persona. The IIC company line doesn't do her justice. An official bio notes that "her unique ability to organize public works programs became her trademark early on. She specialized in creating job centers, drug abuse programs, playgroups for children, and home care centers." And although Sister Deevy has formal degrees in nursing and education, she declares that she is "self-taught and that many of my projects were created because I saw a need that I felt had to be met."

That urge to act on what's needed is an estimable trait passed on by her late father, Michael, a role model who labored on the family livestock and crop farm in Crettyard in County Laois between Carlow and Castlecomer. "If my father believed in something," she says, "he went for it!"

To cut to the quick, Sister Deevy, who sometimes takes issues with the more established figures in the church, has lived the simple, self-effacing life of a servant who has never been reticent to speak out, and loudly, on gut matters of social justice and caring. While she may have strong (and parochial in her own way) opinions, she rolls up her sleeves and changes the dirty diapers in life. She often talks passionately about the relevance today of the social gospel-"a concern for the afflicted in society and those treated harshly, and a calling to comfort the troubled and challenge the comfortable."

"Christ led by example, working for justice and peace," she adds, noting that her favorite Old Testament scripture for challenge and inspiration is Micah 6:8. A Jerusalem Bible translation of the passage reads, "This is what Yahweh asks of you, only this: to act justly, to love tenderly and walk humbly with God."

From all accounts, Sister Deevy has been walking humbly with God since she was a child. To fully understand her motivations, values, and accomplishments, it's important to know something about her beginnings. Like most of us, she is a product of her environment - in this case a rural, farming community existence, with a focus on discipline, hard work, and faith. Her late mother, Mary, was a community nurse - "a caring, loving woman, greatly admired." - and her daughter seems clearly a sum of her parts. "My father," she says, "had the drive. Both my parents would infuse me in different ways."

After attending secondary school, Sister Deevy trained as a nurse for four years in a North Wales hospital, returning to Dublin to work in a maternity hospital. An activist at heart, she then joined the convent, choosing the Little Sisters of the Assumption because of their grassroots focus. "I knew God was calling," she says, "I always knew I had a purpose in life. At the time there were few options for women who wanted to do something. I joined the convent because my faith made a difference for me, my faith helped me get through the difficult times in life, and I wanted to share it with other people."

And share she did. "I always had a strong social conscience," she says with diffidence, "No great credit due me. I think I was probably born with it."

Maybe so, but she cultivated her innate caring tendencies, working for years with the less fortunate in the Dublin area, providing better medical care, job training and opportunities, developing leadership, and instilling dignity.

Sixteen years ago, she came to Boston "for a short break," intending to return to Dublin. But life has a way of interrupting the best of plans. With no formal college degree, she was accepted in a master's program at the Harvard School of Education, where she studied administration, planning, and social policy. "To be honest with you, I think there was probably a lot of luck attached to my acceptance to Harvard," she says, noting a jolting Harvard-inspired intern program at English High School that "opened her eyes to poverty and racism in Boston."

While at Harvard, she helped compile a research paper on undocumented immigrants, called Living On The Edge, a perspective on the Irish, many of them highly educated, who had come here by the thousands on travel visas and remained without proper documents and working papers, individuals who were forced to live an underground existence. Living On The Edge became the cornerstone of the Boston Irish Immigration Center, and in 1990 Sister Deevy became one of its first paid employees.

"A big part of what we do is to provide in-depth legal services and help people go through all the steps they need to take to get their working papers and ultimately become citizens," she says from her modest IIC surroundings on the fifth floor of 9 Temple Place in Boston, "a small, poky office," as she calls it. She is comfortable in the setting, and, when asked, shares her deep faith and commitment to making a difference in the lives of immigrants and people from around the world. She is pragmatic in her approach. "I remember once reading about a Jewish woman who had died in a concentration camp. The woman said, 'I no longer believe I can change the world until I begin to change myself.' "

A work in progress, Sister Deevy has focused her energies inside and out. Many international solidarity efforts have benefited over the years from her involvement, most notably efforts supporting justice and peace in Nicaragua, El Salvador, South Africa, and the Philippines, notes an IIC commentary about her work. Since coming to Boston, she also has been involved with the Haitian Solidarity Movement and PeaceWatch Ireland. In addition, she has served as the chairperson of the National Coalition of Irish Immigrant Organizations, currently serves as chair of the Governor's Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants, is a member of the newly created Massachusetts Diversity Team, and is on the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Refugee and Immigrant Health Advisory Council.

"My passion in life is to work for justice in a peaceful way," she says. "Certainly, war is not the answer. We reside in a global village, and the call of the Gospel is to accept and appreciate all peoples, and work for a peaceful and just society." But like all noble visions, this one is not easily accomplished. "There are seeds of greatness and there are seeds of great destruction in the world," she observes, noting that society is cultivating the seeds of destruction, rather than the seeds of life.

"We each harbor two possibilities within us: potential for the best, and fear of the worst," she says. "To me, Christianity - being a Catholic - is about bringing the best out of people, and the best of myself. If we don't have an inspiration and if we're not at peace within ourselves, we're not going to be at peace with other people. And the only way to be at peace with oneself is to be at peace with Christ. Knowing there is a greater power than myself, and knowing I have a place in God's universe, I come to realize I am no better or no worse than anyone else."

But to succeed, she says, both as individuals and as nations, we must first face our demons. "If we don't, we go on being oppressive."

A good case in point, she notes, is the Catholic Church hierarchy's initial response to the sex abuse scandal and the scores of priests who abused young boys. Not one to mince words, Sister Deevy says, "It was dysfunctional behavior. I was absolutely shocked. I didn't see the level of it coming. I was furious, angry. In dealing with my anger, I sometimes distance myself from it. If I hear too much of the details of the abuse, I get too upset."

"I felt let down, betrayed by something I had believed in," she adds. "I had been taught that the Catholic Church was my salvation, that I was to respect the heads of the church, who, while not perfect, were inspired by God. But what happened was that leaders in the Catholic Church were placed on a pedestal; when someone is placed there, they usually don't deserve it."

In some ways, she says, she was not completely surprised at the abuse. "That's the struggle between the darkness and the light. But the church covered up the darkness. While there is no perfect institution or government, when we cover up something, it makes it worse, it makes it despicable. This was horrendous."

One of the few good things to come out of the scandal, she says, is that people are now asking more questions. "This is absolutely necessary for healing, and hopefully people will ask a lot more questions. While some positive steps have been taken in the church, more needs to be done. For example, there isn't enough respect for the laity. There are a lot of phenomenal Catholics who aren't being listened to - thoughtful people who are being dismissed by the church administration because they ask thoughtful questions. And there also are many excellent priests today, but if they ask questions, or question the authority of the bishop, they are viewed as disloyal. To me, loyalty is not being a 'yes' person."

Christ, she notes, did not surround himself with sycophants. "If you are following the teachings of Christ, you need to make sure church members, including the priests, are respecting one another. It upsets me to see priests getting up in the pulpit and pontificating about how women should live their lives, and then they go off and have affairs or abuse young children."

Will the church recover?

"The church has made it before in times of crisis," Sister Deevy says. "I think the church has been brought to its knees. The question now is: Will it now learn from it? I think the church would be much more effective if it had a structure where women had more of a say in it. There is a place in the church for people who think differently. Some people would probably call me a cafeteria Catholic, but I don't see the negative side to that. I actually believe that all Catholics are cafeteria Catholics. Everyone chooses the most important part of the Gospel, and emphasizes it in different ways."

So can a cafeteria Catholic Church prosper in the future?

She has a ready answer. "I think so. The message of Jesus, the message of the Church, is that we are called to live a way of life."

But life is fleeting, and Sister Deevy plans to keep on living it until none is left in her. As pragmatic as she is visionary, she pledges to continue living one day at a time until the Lord returns for her.

"We all live to survive another day; then just as quickly, we're out the next!"

(Greg O'Brien is editor and president of Stony Brook Group, a publishing and political/strategy company based in Brewster. The author/editor of several books, he is a regular contributor to regional newspapers and magazines, a political columnist for Boston Metro newspaper and a television scriptwriter. He is currently at work on a book on crisis communications, and contributes regularly to his two blogs: Boston Cod and Codfish Press.)

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