R.I.P. Kevin White: Mayor of many moods
BY BIR STAFF
Kevin Hagan White, a lineal descendant of the politically active Irish families who, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wrested control of the city of Boston from the direct descendants of the settler Puritans of the 17th century, was a man of many personas – ebullient, moody, haughty, energetic, fretful, intellectual, daring, to name a few ascribed to him during his often-tumultuous mayoral occupancy of Boston City Hall from 1968 through 1983.

White, who died on Fri., Jan. 26, at age 82, took what his immediate predecessors, John B. Hynes and John F. Collins had begun – the rebirth of a Boston that some had come to call decrepit – and added his own imaginative flourishes as the city of the Brahmins regained its long-held place among the nation’s and the world’s great cities.
But along with those flourishes came great stress and heartache, perhaps most notably the deeply felt unrest in the mid-1970s over the busing of students across neighborhood lines under a federal judge’s order aimed at ending the racial imbalance that the court had found entrenched in the city’s school system.
To hear former City Councillor Lawrence DiCara tell it, Boston was on its knees when Kevin White strode into City Hall in 1968. “The majority of my contemporaries were bolting from Boston— and this is before the desegregation order,” DiCara recalls. “There was a massive exodus of people. We had Time magazine calling us the New Appalachia. And we were being compared to cities like Cleveland and Detroit.”
William M. Bulger, the former state Senate President, UMass president and political contemporary of White’s from the early 1960s, praised White’s devotion to the city and his cheerful nature. “Kevin saw the political life as a noble profession,” said Bulger. “I think that he was always conscious of the fact that his own dad, Joe White, had been active in it and Kevin had a very high opinion of his dad. He brought to the task an enthusiasm that inspired many of us who were around him.”
White took Bulger’s teasing —often about his roots in leafy West Roxbury— in stride at the annual South Boston St. Patrick’s breakfast. “He had a good sense of humor,” Bulger recalled. “He would say each year, ‘I’m not up to this,’ but I’d say, ‘I need you. You have to come. He didn’t fire back very much and never did he complain thereafter.”

Charitable Irish Society honors the Brett brothers;
introduction by Kevin Cullen
“It is an honor to honor the Brett brothers. I think most people in this room know why we are honoring them. Their good works, their good humor, their goodness, is well known and well documented in this community.
When I think of the Brett brothers I think of the one who can’t be here with us tonight. That would be Jack, who died 16 months ago. Jack had an intellectual disability, which over time made his entire family more intellectually able to instinctively stick up for the most vulnerable among us.
Mary Ann Brett was from Sligo, and while you can tell a Sligo woman, you can’t tell her much. She immigrated to Boston and scrubbed floors. She married Henry Brett and a doctor told her to put her first-born Jack into an institution because surely she couldn’t care for him. The doctor also suggested she not have any more children.
Mary Ann Brett had a sixth-grade education, but she was smarter than that doctor. She told him where to get off. She told him Jack would be loved and looked after by the other children she would have, and she went on to have Peggy and Mary and Harry and Billy and Jim, and boy was Mary Ann Brett right.
Everything we know and admire about the three Brett brothers we could have learned in that house on St. Margaret’s Street in Dorchester, where their mother’s deep faith in her God and in her family, her belief that love and compassion conquers all, made them what they are; where their brother’s disability made them judge no one and value everyone.
Each of these three men have distinguished themselves in their chosen fields, Bill and Harry with cameras around their necks, Jim with a career in public service that is very much around his heart. They are the best of us, in part because they care so much about the least of us.
In honoring the Brett boys tonight, we are honoring everything and everyone in that house in Dorchester, especially Mary Ann Brett and her special son Jack, who are together, forever.”

Lehane puts on BPL trustee hat
City of Boston officials, in an attempt to get celebrated author Dennis Lehane onto the Boston Public Library’s board of trustees, did a simple thing: They asked. “I got the feeling they were circling me for a little bit, but I was mostly living out of state the last couple of years,” Lehane told the Reporter after his first meeting of the trustees, where he was introduced to staffers and his fellow board members by Boston Public Library chief Amy Ryan. “And I let it be known when I met Amy that should the question ever be asked of me, I would do anything for the library.”
In the basement of the Hyde Park branch of the library system, board chairman Jeffrey Rudman reveled in Lehane’s celebrity, introducing him to trustees and staff as the man behind “Shutter Island,” “Gone Baby Gone,” and “Mystic River,” books Lehane wrote that eventually became acclaimed movies.
A Dorchester native, Lehane was a frequent visitor to the Uphams Corner branch library as a child.
“Libraries mean the world to me and in particular the Boston Public library system,” he said.
He and his wife Angie split their time between Brookline and Florida, but it’s “more Massachusetts now,” Lehane said. “We still have a place in Florida and it’s pretty hard to tell my wife I want to leave to come to 20 degrees.”
Lehane replaces James Carroll, who stepped down from the eight-member board in May. Mayor Thomas Menino tapped Lehane for the post in December.
- GINTAUTAS DUMCIUS

West Roxbury's Irish Social Club Plans Moth's Events

A truly ‘New’ Year for Irish Social Club It was a special New Year’s Eve for members and friends of the revivified Irish Social Club in West Roxbury as the organization celebrated not only 2012 but their own feelings of accomplishment in resurrecting the club. More than 300 celebrators jammed the club premises for a night of food, music, and dance after being greeted by the newly elected president, Mary Maloney.
The club has several events upcoming, anticipating visits from Fintan Stanley (Feb. 5), Andy Healy (Feb. 19), and Denis Curtin (Feb. 26).

From Gallivan Blvd. to ‘GBH, Quinn has finger on the pulse
BY JACKIE GENTILE
SPECIAL TO THE REPORTER
Whether she is anchoring the weekend edition radio show, reporting from the field or publishing a story online, WGBH’s Cristina Quinn loves her work.
“I’m so glad that I’m doing what I’m doing. I’m doing what I love,” she says. “I’m producing radio and stories and telling these stories to a wide audience.”
A Dorchester native, Quinn graduated from Boston Latin Academy and UMass Amherst with a journalism degree. A self-proclaimed NPR junkie in her college days, she would tune in while getting ready for class. Before attending Emerson College’s media arts graduate program, she participated in the JET program and lived in Aizu in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture where she “got bit by the radio bug,” she says.
On a weekly 15-minute radio show called “Let’s English,” Quinn, as the station managers instructed, reported the civic news in English “unnaturally slowly” to an audience of mostly Japanese speakers. Though Aizu is a small city, its university attracts many foreigners. To help non-English-speaking natives and students, Quinn suggested that she speak at a more natural pace and the managers agreed.
Speaking more quickly allowed Quinn some airtime to create a segment of the show where she read essays and shared stories of being a foreigner in Japan. She called it “Word Up.”
“I was kickin’ it the ‘90s way,” she laughs.
Before leaving for Japan, Quinn got her first reporter gig writing a story for the Reporter about the owners of the P&J Bait Shop retiring and selling the establishment.
Upon coming back to the States, Quinn worked full-time and attended grad school part-time where she got an internship at WGBH.
“Because I was a journalism major [at UMass], there’s always that interest in telling stories,” she says. “I just kept my foot in the door.”
Quinn was the weekend edition anchor for a year and, for the past two months, has been a field reporter.
“What I set out to do in radio is to have those ‘Aha!’ moments or those ‘I’ve never thought of it that way’ moments for the listener,” she says. “That’s pretty cool. That’s like yeah! Got you thinking, didn’t I? Got you thinking.”
News stories often take an afternoon or a one-day turnaround called a “cut and copy” or a “wrap” in the business. With stories requiring Quinn to visit various locations, interview people or record natural sound, about a day is needed for a completed story that will be aired the next day. Feature pieces that are not as news-heavy take about a week. For a four- to four-and-a-half minute feature, anywhere from a 24-hour turnaround to a week is needed, depending on the urgency of the story.
“What I really like about radio is that there’s more intimacy there. There’s an intimate relationship between the listener and the producer, whoever’s on the other end, whoever’s in the studio, the voice,” she says.
Her job as a general assignment reporter at ‘GBH requires that Quinn be ready to write about just about anything. In recent weeks, she has reported about daily life in the town of Burlington, reaction to the Occupy movement in suburbia, and the dangers of texting while walking,
Quinn and her husband live in Dorchester, just two units down from her brother, Kenji, who lives next to her in-laws, the owners of the property. Because of the close proximity, the family calls it “The Compound.” Quinn’s mother, Toshiko, lives on Gallivan Blvd., just a ten-minute walk away.
“If I’m feeling motivated, I could walk to Mom’s, usually I drive,” she laughs.
“My mom’s Japanese and so you don’t leave your parents, you sort of stick around and take care of them,” she says. “It’s sort of a deeply rooted value there in staying close to home when it comes to the Japanese tradition, but I guess it’s pretty worldwide.”
Quinn and her brother grew up in St. Gregory’s, where they attended the parish grammar school and church. Her father, Joe, was originally from Savin Hill and World War II veteran who came to be known as the of St. Gregory’s. His deep, baritone voice led the congregation in song for many years. He passed away in 2009.
Considering herself geeky, Quinn did her homework as soon as she got home from school and earned extra Girl Scout badges on her own time.
“I’ve made lifelong friends here. There are people with strong values and it’s a great neighborhood,” Quinn said.