HEATHER CAMPION: Good evening. Welcome. I'm Heather Campion, CEO of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Foundation. And on behalf of Tom Putnam, the Library's Director, and all my Library and Foundation colleagues, we welcome you to this remarkable national treasure.
If you haven't been here before, and I don't see many unfamiliar faces in the audience, or you haven't explored this beautiful Museum in a while, I'd encourage you to come back later this month when we reopen the Museum after renovations we've been doing all winter, the first that we've done here in many years.
The new Museum will be an entirely new experience for visitors, with sound and lighting and films of President Kennedy's most iconic speeches that are all being enhanced and put on much larger screens. It's our goal with this Museum redesign, and with all that we're doing at the Foundation going forward, to reintroduce President Kennedy and his powerful words to the generations of people – actually now over 80% of people in the world – who have no living memory of President Kennedy, in hopes that they, too, will draw inspiration and motivation to get involved in helping to make our country and our world a better place.
This evening's Forum, and all the John F. Kennedy Library Forums, are free and open to the public. And they're also livestreamed on our website. And this is thanks to generous support from many wonderful sponsors in Boston: our lead sponsor Bank of America; the Boston Foundation – and I see Paul Grogan and Mary Jo Meisner here in the front; thank you very much – the Lowell Institute; Viacom; and our media partners, the Boston Globe – well represented here tonight – Xfinity; and WBUR.
Tonight's Forum is inspired by the latest beautiful book of photos by Bill Brett, called Boston, Irish. When Bill dropped by the Library recently to give me a copy, in addition to sharing my own Irish credentials – despite how I look, my grandfather was born in Ireland and the family that I married into, the Donlans and the Campions, who are 100% Boston Irish Catholic, but hail not from Dorchester, Jim and Bill, another sector in Boston, that faraway place called West Roxbury [laughter] – I was quick to offer that we have an event to celebrate his book, Boston's Irish community, and to begin celebrating St. Patrick's Day early here on Columbia Point at this magnificent memorial to Boston's native son and Irish Catholic President, John F. Kennedy.
I'm sure that many of you here today remember President Kennedy's very special and moving trip to Ireland, which was in the summer of 1963. What many people may not remember is that he actually first traveled to Berlin, which, despite his remarkable speech at the Berlin Wall, was a sobering trip for him as he saw in full view the stark contrast between the East and West.
But he went right from Berlin to Ireland, which was, as Arthur Schlesinger writes about so eloquently in his book, A Thousand Days, a great release for him. He said in his book about the trip to Ireland, he had never seen the President easier, happier and more completely himself than on that trip to Ireland.
The film footage that we have of this trip is extraordinary, and it'll soon be on full view in the new Museum. But we thought we'd show you a couple short clips from that tonight. In the first one, you'll see President Kennedy's joy and laughter as he addresses the crowd in his hometown of New Ross.
When my great grandfather left here to become a cooper in East Boston, he carried nothing with him except two things: a strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty. If he hadn't left, I'd be working over at the Albatross Company [laughter/applause] or perhaps the John V. Kelly [laughter]. In any case, we are happy to be back here.
The next clip, as he's preparing to leave Ireland, his parting and very poignant words to a crowd that gathered to see him off in Limerick in this last summer of 1963.
I must say that though other days may not be so bright, as we look toward the future, that the brightest days will continue to be those in which we visited you here in Ireland. This is not the land of my birth but it is the land for which I hold the greatest affection. And I certainly will come back in the springtime.
So tonight, over 50 years later, it's so fitting that we gather at President Kennedy's Library to talk about Boston's Irish. Not just the old, but also the new faces of Boston. We have a panel gathered that represents the best of Boston's growing and evolving Irish community. No one here needs an introduction, but everyone wanted to be on this panel. So I apologize for the size of it. But I will be brief.
First, on the end, is Father Jack Ahern, whose Dorchester parishes were once dominated by Irish Catholics and are now populated by so many different nationalities. He's been described by our moderator in the Globe as one of the souls of our church.
Next, Senator Linda Dorcena Forry, a Haitian American, educated here in Irish Catholic schools, whose husband Bill and father-in-law Ed are also leaders in this community. She's also the mother of four, and who has been most recently the Senator representing South Boston and now therefore hosts the nationally renown St. Patrick's Day breakfast in Boston. Last year was her first breakfast, and she hit it out of the park. [applause]
And Barbara Lynch, a woman who was raised in South Boston's housing projects, had her first kitchen job cooking at a local rectory, and built her career right here in Boston to become an award-winning and world renowned restaurateur. And she just told me actually she cooked for Ambassador Kennedy in Tokyo on the Fourth of July. [applause]
And then we have Joyce Linehan, a Dorchester native, whose career has spanned, or I should say connected the arts community to Boston, to politics in a whole new way. She started out as a punk rock promoter, became a political activist, and she's a force behind several successes on the Boston political scene here, including Elizabeth Warren, Ayanna Pressley and now Marty Walsh, who brought her inside City Hall as the mayor's chief of policy. Thank you, Joyce. [applause]
And then, of course, what's a Boston Irish panel without nepotism? And good stories, he promised me. So we're lucky to have Bill's brother, Jim Brett, here, the president and CEO of the New England Council and, most importantly, a member of the board of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. A former legislator himself, Jim has done so much, not just for Boston, but for our entire region in providing a voice and extending our reach as an important economic engine in the country. [applause]
And finally, to the man to whom we owe this evening, the legendary Boston Globe photographer,
Bill Brett, who, I should quickly add, will be signing copies of his book, which is on sale in our Museum store, right after this Forum. Bill's books chronicling the great people of Boston have done so much to tie us all together as one family. Thank you so much, Bill, for all of your books, but most recently this one. [applause]
And finally, who better to corral and get the best out of this group of wallflowers than our moderator this evening, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe columnist and the bestselling author of a book on Whitey Bulger, Kevin Cullen. [applause] Kevin opened the Globe's Ireland bureau in 1997, and knows more about the Boston Irish than anyone in this town.
Please join me in welcoming them all, and thank you so much for this Forum. [applause]
KEVIN CULLEN: Thanks, Heather. And by the way, all those people in West Roxbury, we call them lace curtain. But we're not going to go into that. [laughter]
Those clips got me thinking. When Jack Kennedy was elected President of the United States, it was a psychic moment for the Irish American community, if not the Irish community, breaking all sorts of barriers, creating all sorts of possibilities. And I just would like to go right down the line and ask each one of you here what that meant to you, not necessarily at the time, because some of you weren't even alive probably when it happened, but what did Jack Kennedy being elected President of the United States mean? Father Jack?
FATHER JACK AHERN: I grew up in Arlington in the projects. Irish Catholic. Very proud of it. But I didn't have a sense that I had a future. I was only six years old. And when Kennedy was elected, I had a sense that I could be anything. The possibilities were endless. There was great hope. And I remember running to the Decatur Market and getting a congratulations card. And it was a boat, because I knew he liked boats, and it was an ocean scene. And I sent it. And about three months later I got a card back from the White House – of course I thought he signed it personally – thanking me for my note. Only years later did my mother tell me the congratulations card actually said "get well." [laughter]
KEVIN CULLEN: It could have been worse, Father. [laughter] Joyce?
JOYCE LINEHAN: I think I'll go to a sort of dark place. I think that President Kennedy's assassination, I was very young when he died, really taught us a great deal about sadness and empathy. It really was a moment that was taken away from us, especially as Boston Irish, that I think still lingers to this day.
KEVIN CULLEN: Jimmy?
JAMES BRETT: I wasn't born. [laughter] I read about him. Needless to say, his election, even though I was just a young lad, I just felt, first, pride – Irish finally to assume the position of President. But also the feeling that the world is unlimited in what you could do now. I just felt that he has achieved the highest office in politics, that now you can achieve anything that you want to do in life. And needless to say, his words about giving back, I think that's something that I'll always remember. Two things: one about each person can make a difference. You don't need a title to make a difference. But also, too, that he was the first president to acknowledge, through his sister, the disability community, and hiring people with disability, recognizing people with disability, giving them an opportunity to live a life of fulfillment. But the point is that he was the first president to create that commission. And it's in existence today. So those are two things that I remember.
KEVIN CULLEN: Senator?
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: First, thank you having me. I would say I was not born, obviously, but I would say, in terms of what Jim said, is that the inspiration in terms of being able to lift a whole culture in terms of the Irish American and being Catholic was quite outstanding. Now, I know from the experience through my father-in-law, Ed Forry, who's here, who's talked about that moment with me a lot in terms of what it meant for the Irish here in Dorchester, in Boston. But the fact that he was Catholic and proud in terms of his religion as well was something that you'll never forget.
So as a first-generation American, I can appreciate that, having someone who for generations in terms of Irish coming here in the 1800s and the treatment, and to be able to have someone end up becoming the president of the United States, anything's possible. And so, it was quite an amazing feat.
KEVIN CULLEN: Bill?
BILL BRETT: I had just graduated high school that year, and I was taking photographs since I was 14. And in November, when the tragedy took place, I said to my mother, I said, "I have to go." And she says, "Go where?" And I said, "I've got to get to Washington to photograph this funeral." Because I never had the opportunity to photograph him here, alive. And I said, "I have to be part of this."
So a friend of mine, George Monroe, and I, we got a credential from the Dorchester paper and off we went to Washington. And I was there to photograph the funeral. And it was the most spectacular thing I think I ever did.
And then coming back, I blew the engine in Connecticut. We had a Volkswagen. We had to take a bus back. And then we had to go back to Connecticut and rebuild the engine. At that time it was $350, which was a lot of money. But it was worth every bit of it, to be able to be there for the historic moment, because I never really had the opportunity to photograph him alive.
KEVIN CULLEN: Barbara?
BARBARA LYNCH: I wasn't born then. But my mother would remind me constantly how great he was as a president. And I'm with Father. It kind of set the tone for Irish pride. Well, we call it Southie pride. And he did make you feel like you could accomplish anything. At least that's how I felt coming from a housing project. My mother had seven kids. She basically raised us single, single parent. And the funny thing is, in Old Harbor projects, the house I lived in was where Speaker McCormack lived as well. So we used to get all these phone calls for Speaker McCormack.
Now I'm going to speed up a little bit. My cousin is actually a Congressman, Stephen Lynch. And my uncle was the campaign manager for Moakley, way back when, John Lynch. So I love politics, I just love it. The fact that my first restaurant is right across from the State House is pretty amazing. [laughter]
And I have investors who were actually friends with Senator Kennedy. And I'd be talking to one of them on the phone and he'd say, "I gotta hang up; Senator Kennedy's on the phone." And I'm like, "What? Am I chopped liver?" [laughter]
So it's a great family. Tons of Irish pride. And I think he was a great president. Fair in many ways; many, many ways.
KEVIN CULLEN: Thanks. We've got quite a crew here tonight. And just freeze this image in your mind, because I believe this is the only time you will see Joyce Linehan to the right of Linda Dorcena Forry. [laughter] But aside of that, Billy, when I first heard you were going to do this project, I did not quite know where it was going to go. I didn't know what you had in mind. But I'm curious, during the whole process did you come away from this, did you have preconceived notions about what we consider the Boston Irish community? And were they changed when that book went to press?
BILL BRETT: Well, I got the idea; I was at a school in East Boston. It was two years ago; I can remember it so well. I was there to photograph tennis players. And I was in the gym. And I was looking up on the ceiling and I counted about 65 flags from 65 different countries. And as I was looking around, I said, oh, my God, I said, this is unbelievable. So the headmaster came out and I asked him, I said, "Does this mean that there's somebody in this school that represents this flag?" And he said yes. Some were five, some were ten, some were smaller groups, some were bigger groups.
And at that moment I said to myself, when I get home I'm going to say to my wife, I'm going to discuss this with her and tell her that tomorrow I'm going to start a project to photograph the Irish of Boston. Because the demographics are changing. I could see just with those countries that I wanted to capture the men and women of this town that have done some wonderful things.
And as time goes on, as colleagues of mine have passed away, I go to their homes and I visit them, and I ask their survivors, "Where are the photographs that were taken by he or she?" And they all tell me the same story: "Oh, they're in boxes in the basement," "they're in the garage." So I didn't want my photographs to be in the garage or the basement. I wanted this so people would remember these people. And as I started the project, being in town so long– I'm celebrating my 50th year in photographing for the Boston Globe– [applause] thank you, thank you.
I was able to come up with a list in my mind. First of all, I went through my files. It took me days to go through the files of the Globe, and some in the basement of my home, of some of the men and women who passed on, because I thought it would be important to put them in. And then every day somebody would say to me, "Did you think about So-and-So?" And in the course of six months, the thing was running. I had 100 photographs; I was happy. Another six months, now it was 200 photographs. I was saying, somewhere I have to stop this, because all my other books all ended, I ended up with 150 pages, 160. This one here has 308 pages, 275 photographs, black and white. And at some point I had to stop it.
And Carol Beggy, who's sitting here tonight, she'd say to me– who did the writing on all my books, and without her [applause] it wouldn't be possible. She would say to me, "When are you going to end this?" And I'd say, "Well, I have one more, I have one more." And then eventually, because it was getting late, the year was moving closer and the publisher couldn't handle it because the book was getting bigger and bigger, but I thought it was important to do this, to capture this moment in time because it won't be here in 20, 25 years. And neither will I. I hope I am, but I don't think I will be.
But I thought that when you put it all in a book, it's all in one group. And as I go through town now, I see the book in doctors' offices, lawyers' offices, in banks, I see it everywhere. And libraries. And I know that it's going to be there forever. And I think that is what I was trying to show, is what these men and women have done to help build the city.
Because when the famine struck in 1845 to '49, a lot of these immigrants came to America. And then the early 1900s, we were very fortunate because we had something that the other
immigrants didn't have – the Italians, the Jews, the Polish and the Greeks – they didn't speak English. So we had that inside track. Our English wasn't great, but we knew what the Brahmins and the Yankees were saying. [laughter] So we were able to put it together as a group. And then the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds and the Curleys looked around and they said, "Geez, there's a lot of us."
So that's how they built their power. But the power was built with the photographs, and then as we moved through life and John Kennedy becoming the first Irish president, and then it was we move into the 1990s, the year 2005 and 2009, three Irish families, John Fish, who built these schools, Peter Lynch and Jack Connors raised the money to rebuild– nine, is it Father? Nine Catholic schools? Well, between Brockton, Boston and South Boston. To rebuild these Catholic schools for a good formal education. And they really weren't built for the Irish, because about 80% of them are minority and people of color. So they're building for the future.
So the Irish, the way the immigration law is today, a lot of the Irish are going to Canada and they're going to Australia, because it's a lot easier. But these men and women that I just mentioned, those particular men, are building for the future immigrants. Because we were immigrants and our job now is to help the next group of immigrants, whoever they are. [applause]
KEVIN CULLEN: It is true, Billy, that the Irish were white and spoke English. And yet we have a mayor today who, I believe, is the first mayor in the history of Boston whose parents' native language was not English. It is Irish.
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: It was Gaelic.
KEVIN CULLEN: And I know that nationally it was portrayed when Marty and John Connolly were the finalists for the mayor a couple years ago, that it was a couple of Irish pols running. And it struck me as odd. And I wanted to ask you about this, Joyce. What has changed? Marty Walsh did better in places where there were more minority voters than where there would have been the traditional Irish bloc. What's changed in our culture here in Boston that that happens?
JOYCE LINEHAN: First of all, I just want to thank you for the astute observation you made earlier, but I'm stage left of Linda. [applause]
I think the mayor spoke to immigrants, frankly. He spoke to immigrants. He spoke to immigrant communities. He spoke to that progressive desire in those communities. I think that a lot of the immigrants who come to Boston lately see themselves in the mayor's story. They see themselves in the story he tells of his parents who met in Dudley in one of the Irish dance halls. Came here looking for a better life and found a better life for their two kids. And we spoke to a lot of people who were either first or second generation, who really understood what that meant. And he really spoke to them on that level.
KEVIN CULLEN: But do you think that's changed? I think the Irishness in this town used to be worn almost like an exclusive badge. And it's true in Ireland, too. It wasn't cool to be Irish before Seamus Heaney, U2, you name it. Things have changed internationally, but it seems like it's also changed here, that when you describe yourself– and I'll direct this to– where my family were from, they were people from Galway, they used to call us the Black Irish. Which means a lot of different things, Senator, but I would argue that you are Boston Irish.
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: I'll say I am Black Irish. [laughter]
KEVIN CULLEN: It had to do with the hair, Senator. I lost that a long time ago. But it really has changed. And the idea that, I actually think of you as an– I know your parents are from Haiti.
But I think of you as an Irish politician. Is that wrong?
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: No, it's not wrong. So it's really fascinating because
I think all of us appreciate Irish culture and actually try to emulate the culture itself. But I am married to an Irishman. I mean, I do have four children who are biracial, so we do celebrate Irish culture. We celebrate Haitian culture, African American culture. We celebrate a lot of things in our home, because that's just who we are.
And so, I think that if you look at the style of an Irish politician in terms of door-knocking – right here, right here; the master of campaigning right here – I do that as well. So I don't think it's necessarily– I think the Irish politicians have really perfected the whole election piece and getting votes out and really mobilizing people to come out and vote. And so, that's what we do as well.
And so, I would say that St. Patrick's Day is 14 days away in terms of the breakfast. And so, at that point we all are Irish. And I think what's more important is that it's the struggle. And I think Joyce said it perfectly. Because Mayor Walsh got elected because he talked to that. There are generations of Irish people, we know that, folks who have been here for centuries. But Marty is first generation. His parents just came from Ireland and he's been able to become mayor. Because of hard work, because of perseverance, and because of knowing that this is an incredible country, that you can come from wherever you are, that you can make it here in America. It is incredible. And that's the story I think that resonates with people, whether you're Irish or not. Whether you're Black Irish or not. Really black-hair Irish, I'm only joking. [laughter]
JOYCE LINEHAN: The mayor's recent trip to Ireland didn't look unlike JFK's trip to Ireland.
It was crazy. The excitement for him over there is really probably even more than it was here.
KEVIN CULLEN: I'd say the difference is that when Jack Kennedy got to Ireland, he met cousins he never heard of before. When Marty went there, he met cousins he played with when he was a little boy. Very different.
Jimmy, you've seen it all. And picking up what the Senator was talking about, how does that play out differently in the neighborhoods. I guess 30 years ago, an Irish pol could get elected with just the Irish vote. That's really changed.
JAMES BRETT: Yeah, it has changed. Not to dwell on Marty again, but an Irish candidate in Boston can do very well throughout the city. And obviously you have to to be elected. And that's what happened in this past mayor's election. Marty turned out to be a rainbow candidate. We had Mel King in '83 being the rainbow candidate. Marty became the rainbow candidate by campaigning across the city. This city has changed dramatically in many, many ways, and all positive. We have new people moving in to the city that may not have children. They're professional people. They're interested in what's going on downtown. Then you have other people who have families and are interested in the schools. A politician needs to address all of that. But an Irish politician, I think, can do it, and do it in a very effective way. And we've seen it.
So the city has changed, but to be Irish, I think, is almost like, so what, what else is there that you have to offer to me? You don't run basically saying "I'm Irish," or "I'm Catholic." Tell me what you believe in on the education. Tell me what you believe in on how you move the economy.
What are you going to do about crime in the neighborhood?
KEVIN CULLEN: Jack, you are part of that– it's one of my favorite photos in the book. It's you and Doc Conway, who's a priest in Dorchester, and Dan Finn, another priest. And the three of you there– Dan was born in Ireland. You and Doc might as well have been. And yet, you guys represent a flock that has changed so dramatically. Doc actually learned how to speak Portuguese so he could talk to all those Cape Verdean kids. And they love him. And if you could walk us through there, how those parishes in Dorchester that were once Irish are sort of Irish in ethos, but not Irish in presence anymore.
FATHER JACK AHERN: I have in my three parishes, five different languages. I only speak English, but I smile in all five. [laughter/applause] And the dreams they have are no different than the dreams my parents had. And I see Cape Verdeans doing two, three jobs, if they can get the jobs. Work hard, work hard, work hard. Pushing the kids off to school. And so, in many ways they arrive knowing that things are possible. They come from difficult situations in many cases.
And if they work hard, they sacrifice, their kids are going to do well.
And it's no different from my parents. I looked at the Rooney picture and I almost cried because it was my parents. I mean, the Rooneys are holding a picture, from a previous book, of 11 boys.
My parents weren't as Catholic, we only had seven. [laughter] But my father worked three jobs.
My mother worked so we could be as successful as we could adults. And that's true with the Hispanics, the Cape Verdeans, the new Polish, and the Vietnamese. It's great to see.
KEVIN CULLEN: Barbara, you represented sort of the great modern Boston Irish woman. I mean, if you want back 40 years ago, maybe even less, I don't know how many Boston Irish women entrepreneurs there were in this town. And you were sort of out– I would say you know you've reached middle age or maturity, when I was a living man living in South Boston, I went to your brother's place, The Quiet Man. And as I got older and smarter and a little more money in my pocket, I went to your restaurants. [laughter] But talk about that. You're a success story at so many different levels – coming out of the projects, coming out of a culture that wasn't pushing women to open businesses on their own. Talk about that.
BARBARA LYNCH: Oh, god, no. I mean, I come from an amazing amount– 40 years is crazy.
I lived right next to Billy Bulger– Whitey Bulger, I mean. Whitey lived with his mother.
KEVIN CULLEN: I don't know who that is. [laughter] But go on.
BARBARA LYNCH: My mother, we worked, she had us working. We were shoveling the T during snowstorms.
__: Still doing it. [laughter]
BARBARA LYNCH: Still doing it, still doing it! And the main thing was, treat people the way you want to be treated. And that's always stuck with me. And I did work in a rectory; that was my first cooking job. I was like 14, and Father Quinn would say, "Now, Barbara, do you think you're ever going to come to Mass?" [laughter] And I'd say, "I really don't think so, but I'm fine right here."
And cooking, god, I mean, basil was exotic in South Boston. [laughter] So that was unheard of. And even the fact that I wanted to cook, my mother just thought I was crazy because I had a great job down on the waterfront. I actually worked in a warehouse down on– it used to be called port terminals. And I had insurance. And so, when I decided to cook, she said, "Well, what are you going to do about insurance? You're going to be working at a McDonald's." And I said, "No, Ma, I just want to cook." And then that was it. She would always claim that I was trying to kill her with provolone cheese instead of the Land O Lakes sliced on number four. [laughter] It's funny.
And then I went through the whole forced busing era.
So I never graduated high school, I never went to college. I just knew that if I could cook, I'd always have a job for the rest of my life. And then that was it. I always thought I'd have a sub shop, spuckies we call them. Steak tips and spuckies. So I'm a lot farther than that, but– [laughter/applause]
KEVIN CULLEN: Barbara, talking about your mom reminds me of my mother, who was the child of immigrants from Galway, and first graduating class of Gate of Heaven in 1938. And obviously South Boston's the only place where Gate of Heaven would be reduced to Gatie. [laughter] When I told her I had been hired, after working at a small newspaper, that I was coming back to Boston, she said, "That's nice. Do you know there's a fireman's exam on Saturday?" [laughter] Mom was right, I actually should have– anyway.
Bill, actually talking about Irish mothers, I would love you to talk about your mom, Mary Ann. She came over here, started a family, and then if you follow that trajectory, that continuum, we come to this book. So talk a little about her.
BILL BRETT: My mother, Jim actually knew my mother, too. [laughter] Jim was very close to my mother for nine months. [laughter] I thought that my mother was a super person. I mean, she was it in our family. My dad worked hard. They drank. They worked. They worked, they drank. And they went to sleep. And my mother would do everything else. She worked. She raised six children. My oldest brother was handicapped, who demanded a lot of time. And she gave him all the time that he needed.
She worked scrubbing floors between eleven o'clock and six-thirty in the morning at what at that time was Bank of Boston. And she'd come home and get everybody ready off to school. And I don't remember my mother sleeping. I don't know how she did it. And when I said to her– that I'd be out taking photographs at 14 and 15, I'd be out chasing fires, and my mother would always say, "Where are you? What are you doing?" And I'd say, "Well, I want to be a photographer." My mother used to say, "Photographer? What is that?" I said, "I take photographs. I want to make some money."
And so, I was 16, 17, and I met this friend of my mine, David Mugar, who had a car, and he had a camera, and him and I struck up a conversation and every Saturday night he'd pick me up, because he was a student at Babson at the time. And we'd pick up the late Arthur Fiedler at the side door at Symphony Hall, and we'd drive around all night, four, five o'clock in the morning, and we'd shoot photographs of anything that happened. And I'd come in at five o'clock in the morning and my mother would say, "Where have you been all night?" I says, "Ma, you wouldn't believe what I saw. Five alarms in Roxbury, West Roxbury," I said, "We went to Lynn, Chelsea, all night."
BARBARA LYNCH: We were probably starting those.
BILL BRETT: Probably. And she used to say to me, "Just be careful," that's all she would say, "Be careful." And she never asked for anything. And in her later years of life– I mean, she never talked about Ireland. The only person that really got information out of her was my older sister, who's over there, Peggy.
JAMES BRETT: We do have two sisters.
BILL BRETT: We have two sisters, Peggy and Mary. [applause] And they seemed to get more– but she continued life, she as just a super– I mean, I can't say enough about her because she meant so much to me. And this particular book I dedicated to her, because my sister Peggy was able to give me some information about her that Jim and I didn't know anything about, because the old Irish, they didn't say very much. And she told me that she left Ireland and in a matter of couple days– she had four brothers, and she was told it was time to get out because things weren't good. One of her brothers was in the IRA. And she was helping her brother and they found out and she had to– the next day she was on a boat to America. And she didn't see them again for 50 years.
I mean, and she never talked about anything. And then when Jim ran for state representative, she died four days before– she had a stroke. And my older brother was with her, Jack, and she was on the floor for several hours. And he put a pillow underneath because he didn't know how to call 911. And he thought she was just asleep. And when Jim came home he found her, and the next day– it was a sad moment.
But she was proud to work for Jim. And she'd say, like Marty's mother was doing the same thing, "Vote for my son. He's running for office and he needs your vote." And I can remember my mother was doing commercials on the Irish Hour. [laughter] And she only went to, I think, the third grade and she was in there pumping those votes.
Irish mothers, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to them, they were all poor. They didn't know they were poor. Neither one of my parents drove a car; we didn't have a car. But we were all in the same boat so no one knew– we were poor, but we didn't know we were poor. But we were poor in different ways. But we were rich in better ways. And that's why this particular book, I thought it was appropriate for me to dedicate it to my mom. [applause]
KEVIN CULLEN: Joyce, in your lifetime– your identity would be Irish, right? You would identify yourself. That I think is peculiar about this town. I think people never use the hyphens and put the American after. They tend to say they're Irish, they're Polish, they're Lithuanian, they're Haitian, they're you-name-it. How is the definition or your self-identity changed in your lifetime? Or has it?
JOYCE LINEHAN: It's changed a lot actually. I came to my Irishness pretty late in life. I'm half Irish. My father was Irish, my mother was French Canadian.
KEVIN CULLEN: Oh, Jesus. [laughter]
JOYCE LINEHAN: Yep, I know. She grew up as an olive-skinned person on King Street in Dorchester and, according to her, suffered for it. My father died when I was four. So she was a single mom raising three kids and we lost touch with my father's side of the family. Didn't reconnect with them until I was pretty much an adult. And I was also into sort of edgy art and music, and things like that. So sort of an outcast.
The insularity of Irish Bostonians was probably a little bit more pronounced in the late '70s and early '80s than it is now. And it was a little bit tough. So very much an outsider.
So Michael Patrick MacDonald is a very close friend of mine, and he and I had very much the same experience. And it wasn't until we sort of looked to Ireland for our Irishness that we really got to understand what it was all about. The closeness to the country itself and the art that exists there really was a very, very different experience.
I think that later generation Irish in Boston, at least as kids in that era, it was tough. If you were anything other than them, it was a little bit difficult to navigate. So much later, after I'd gone to college, had a career, gotten involved in music, traveled the world, traveled to Ireland with different bands, that's when I sort of got in touch with my Irishness. And now I'm very, very, very happy to be an Irish American.
KEVIN CULLEN: But what you're saying is that you found it more in Ireland than you found here, the capital of Irish America.
JOYCE LINEHAN: It's true. It's absolutely true. Let's face it, let's put it out there. I mean, there's definitely an element of racism and bigotry that existed in the '70s and '80s, in Boston, amongst Irish and other groups of people as well. And I grew up in St. Brendan's, which is a very, very white neighborhood. Didn't really know that there were anything other than Irish Catholics until I was probably 13 or 14. But when I discovered that there was more out there, I was very, very interested in it.
So went out. Learned those things. Music was really my door to the world. Music and theatre, really my door to the world. It took me kind of going out and exploring those things, among them Irish arts, to really come back and appreciate what I had here.
And things are different now. Very, very different. I find that the Irish, especially the ones who have not been here as long, they're much more in touch with their– let's say, an oppressed people really has a lot of empathy and a lot of compassion. And I think that over the years, that's become more apparent in Boston Irish than it perhaps was in the late '70s and early '80s.
KEVIN CULLEN: By the way, you know what we call French Canadians who marry Irishmen? Social climbers. [laughter]
JOYCE LINEHAN: Well, George Kenneally introduced my mother to my father, so it's all his fault.
KEVIN CULLEN: There you go, the great George. I actually used this anecdote in Billy's book, in the intro. It revolves around when Bruce Bolling was elected the first African American president of the Boston City Council, there was a reception for him up at the Parkman House. And he punished somebody who had voted against him. And I went up to him, I said, "Geez,
Bruce, a brother finally gets a job and the first thing you do is act like an Irish pol." [laughter] And he slid his arm around my shoulder, he said, "Kevin, in this town, we're all Irish by osmosis." [laughter] Senator, is that true?
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: No! [laughter]
KEVIN CULLEN: Oh, come on!
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: I know the Irish know how to hold a grudge though, so we need to work on that. [laughter] No, I don't hold grudges, no.
KEVIN CULLEN: No, but I mean, when you think about it, in the context, the mid-19th century or certainly towards the end of the 19th century and on, the Irish were the dominant culture here. Now, there are bad things that come with it; there are some good things with it.
Like everybody else. But I'm saying, I'm asking you, what have other cultures in Boston taken from the Irish, for better or worse?
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: Okay, I will say that, to piggyback on Joyce, I think the '70s, early '70s with busing, that was a negative experience, no doubt about it. I would say I'm now the state senator for the first Suffolk, which has South Boston, which is an incredible community. I think outside of Massachusetts, in other states around our country, people still look at Boston as the Boston of the '70s. So they're like, "Wow, there's black people in Boston?" Or, "Wow, how is it over there? Isn't it racial?" And it's really not.
I mean, Boston is an incredible community. It's people who are experiencing various things, like we're experiencing in Dorchester, from lack of housing, transportation, jobs. It's the same issues.
And I would say that when I first ran for Senate, and this is an interesting example, I was on a black radio show. And I was driving there, but I'm also listening. So on the radio, people were like, "Why does she want to host the breakfast? She shouldn't even host the St. Patrick's Day breakfast because of all the racial issues that happen."
So as I got into the station, into the radio station and I put on my microphone, and I'm listening, and a woman calls in from Mattapan. And she says, "Well, Linda, Senator, I'm so happy you're running. I have to tell you my experience. I am a black woman from Mattapan, but before busing, my parents would go to South Boston and they would go clamming on the beaches on Southie." And I said to her, "Really?" I'm born in 1973, okay? And so I'm like, "Okay, so tell me about it."
She's like, "Yeah, black families were in Southie all the time." I said, "Were there other white families on the beach?" She said, "Yes, they were there as well." So white families were on the beach, black families were on the beach. "We were clamming together and they would go back home." Was there any racial issue? She said, "No, I never experienced any racial issue. Until busing came."
And so, I think when you pit, when there's poor white families and poor black families, it becomes that dynamic of, you're taking from me, or, you're taking from mine.
So I say that because that was quite an eye-opening experience for me, as someone who grew up, born and raised in Dorchester. Have read and seen all the stories around our busing issues that happened here. And to have this woman talk about her experience, that "I was in Southie with my family and a rock never came towards us, or a window was never broken."
But I could also give you another story of my father, who drove through Southie with my younger brother and my younger sister. And it was during busing. He's a Haitian immigrant. And like a lot of stories here, like Father Jack, working two or three jobs. And I see former representative Marie St. Fleur here in the back, a good colleague. Same experience, where our parents are working hard. It's the same, exact Irish experience – working two or three jobs, just want to put food on the table, keep a roof over their children's head.
And my father took a wrong turn. And he took a wrong turn in Southie, and a rock came through his window. But he didn't know. But he knew, "Wow, I need to get to 64 Howard Avenue, I need to get back home to where I know where I am." And so that's what he did.
But growing up, we've had incredible role models. So I'll say Father Jack Ahearn is quite an amazing priest. So Father Jack is doing an incredible job. And before Father Jack, there was Father Bill Francis, who was my pastor, who baptized me, who married me, who counseled us. Marie, right? In St. Paul's Church, Holy Family parish. Loved Father Francis. Was intertwined in my family. Was knee-deep in the issues around my family and my brothers and my siblings, and all of us in our neighborhoods. He was an Irish man.
BILL BRETT: I was there to photograph that.
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: That's right -- at my wedding. But he learned how to speak Spanish, because he did his missionary work in Peru. And he was there for ten years. And when he came to St. Paul's parish, it wasn't an all-black church, but it was diverse, where there was a large Irish community, but there were the Haitians that were there, right? There were other communities that were coming in. There was the large Spanish community. And he was conducting Mass in Spanish.
And so for me, growing up with the Irish, yes, I'm married to the Forrys now, but I knew the Irish before the Forrys, right? Bill Francis, Father Bill Francis introduced me to this incredible, incredible culture of laughter and of just quick wit. He was very quick, very quick.
No, but it's really an incredible experience. I mean, I'm blessed – blessed to sit in this position, blessed to be able to bring people to the table, whether you're from Southie, Mattapan, Dorchester or Hyde Park. We are in it together. The struggles of your families and the generations past is the struggles that immigrants are dealing with now.
And so, it's really creating that balance, and really seeing ourselves in people that are sitting in front of us. They may not look like us, they may not look like me, they may not look like you and like you. But it's the common experience.
And I think Barbara said it best, that you treat people the way you want to be treated. And you speak to people the way you want to be spoken to. I am born and raised Catholic. My Catholic faith has really solidified my experience in how do you treat people the way you want to be treated. And that is critical. And it's something you can do every day, right? It's not something grand. It's just smile. Like Father Jack said, you smile and you acknowledge someone that's walking next to you. It's that simple. [applause]
JAMES BRETT: Smile, but keep the grudges. [laughter]
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: No, let the grudges fade, let the grudges fade.
[laughter]
KEVIN CULLEN: Barbara, do you cringe at all– the term Boston Irish, when put in that context back in the '70s, I think it was associated with negativity, that rightly or wrongly people said, "Oh, the Irish in Boston didn't want this." Do you cringe when you hear that? Because some people think that.
BARBARA LYNCH: Oh, yeah, we got a bad rep. We were integrated. I had so many black friends. And when forced busing started, my mother was one of the mothers who just went motorcading every day for Judge Garrity.
KEVIN LYNCH: Was she a member of ROAR, the anti-busing?
BARBARA LYNCH: She wasn't a member of ROAR, but she was just one of the parents that didn't want to see their kids shuffled off to the other side of town. So I ended up in Madison Park High. And she couldn't afford to keep me in parochial school. So Boston changed. And Boston in general; I wouldn't just say Southie. I mean, Boston was just not the place you wanted to be.
So fighting every day at school. And then the projects just became worse. And drugs. So it's been crazy, just the way it's actually changed. And now, I'm amazed, I'm blessed to be where I am, to be able to give back. And I love meeting people who went to Madison Park High when I went to Madison Park High. And how we're all giving back. Like Jack Connors, like you guys. Tommy Hynes is out there.
I mean, we give back. You go through these years, and then all of a sudden, it's like, shit. You know? [laughter]
KEVIN CULLEN: It's about time somebody swore; we've got all these Irish people here. [laughter]
BARBARA LYNCH: I tried not to, I tried not to.
KEVIN CULLEN: Jimmy, I ask you as sort of the– are you the dean of something here? I don't know, but I'll ask you. Billy and I talked about this before in sort of the context of Bill's book. Given their history in this town, the Irish have an obligation. They came here and they were not welcomed. And by sheer dint of hard work and stick-to-it-ness, they were able to rise above that and become the dominant culture. With that, does there come an obligation for the established Irish, whether they live in Dorchester or the Irish Riviera on the South Shore, do they have an obligation to reach out to the newest immigrants?
JAMES BRETT: I believe they do. At least for Bill and my family. It began with our mother who said – we have a disabled brother – "Your job is to protect him, watch over him, and also be close to each other. Do that." And she also said, "You also have to find time to help other people. Your world is not just taking care of yourself, that you have to reach out and help other people along the way." And I’ll never forget that. I think it's part of our religion, too, being brought up as Catholics, to say and practice that you really are your brother's keeper. You have to be out there helping people, whether it's a smile, a charity, a contribution, your time. And to me, that's what this whole journey in life is about, is giving back. It's not how much I've accumulated. Quite frankly, I'm more interested in how much somebody's giving, rather how much they've accumulated.
If I can tell you one quick, quick story. When I was a young lad going to college in Washington, I had no money. Bill already alluded to our family situation, wasn't great. I happened to be selling newspapers, the old Record American. And one of my customers was Speaker of the House John W. McCormack. And Billy always got the tip. I delivered the papers. [laughter] He lived on Columbia Road. He had no children. It was just him and his wife Harriett. And once a month he'd come home and he'd pay for the papers. And he'd tell me all the wonderful things that he was doing in Washington.
So fast forward. I'm going to Washington. I write him a letter because my mother's upset I'm going to Washington. I'm taking out all these loans and she's very, very upset. I write a letter to the Congressman saying that I'm in Washington, I'm looking for help. Maybe he can give me some help and suggestion on working my way through college. Within a week – I still have it at home – a telegram arrives at the dorm. There's five of us in the dorm. "I'm so happy my paperboy is going to college." Speaker never went to college, went to night school. "I want to see you."
Now, today, that person who I was supposed to see, if he was in existence today, they'd have the cuffs on him because his name was John Monahan, patronage secretary. [laughter] He wanted to see me.
So I go and see the Speaker. And I'll never forget. He has this blue pinstriped suit on. He's smoking a cigar. And he's way down the end of the room. And he said, "Jimmy, come on in here." And I sat there and I'm shaking. And he says, "I have a job for you." I said, "Oh, my gosh,
I'm here for advice guidance. A job." "You're going to deliver the mail to the different Congressman at Longworth, Cannon and the Rayburn Buildings." I said, "Oh, my gosh," I couldn't believe it.
Bottom line is I'm sitting there and I'm saying to the Speaker, "I don't know how to thank you." I said, "My mother has no money. My brother Bill has all the money." [laughter] I said, "We have no money. We're not politically active, and here you are giving me a job. I don't know how to thank you." And he's puffing his cigar and he doesn't even look at me, he looks down and he says, "Jimmy, you want to thank me? Help somebody else along the way who can't repay you."
I'll never forget it.
In other words, you have an obligation. Pass it on. [applause]
KEVIN CULLEN: All right, enough of what I think. This is the best part of the night, I think. We're going to open it up to questions on the floor. We've got two microphones here on either aisle here. So come on up. I'll just forewarn you: these are questions that must have a question mark on the end of them. The Irish are prone to making statements. There will be no statements here tonight. [laughter] And I'm brutal. So please, come on up and ask away. We've got a great panel here.
BARBARA LYNCH: Father loves to answer questions.
JAMES BRETT: Peggy, do you have a question?
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: Why would you point out Peggy?
JAMES BRETT: Peggy Brett, do you have a question.
BILL BRETT: First person gets a free book.
JAMES BRETT: First person gets a free book, I heard that. [laughter] It's called an oral contract. Can I just have a show of hands? How many people are in the book?
Q: When we hear of Irish in Boston, Boston Irish, let me ask the question, is East Boston a part of Boston? [laughter]
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: Yes, it is.
Q: Tell me about the Irish in East Boston, please.
BARBARA LYNCH: Southie/Eastie football game.
KEVIN CULLEN: That's where old Joe Kennedy–
JAMES BRETT: That's where old Joe Kennedy, that's where he began.
BILL BRETT: East Boston actually has half Irish and half Italian. And in my book, there's a picture of a gentleman in there who's a retired judge that was responsible for starting the De Valle [?] football team. And I think he has nine children from East Boston. And Ed King, the former governor who grew up actually in Winthrop– he was East Boston, then he went to Winthrop. That's like growing up in Dorchester and going to Milton; you're going up the scale. [laughter] But East Boston, today it's not half Irish, half Italian. And I was inspired-- I do in the book, because when I was in that school in East Boston, the amount of school– when I saw all those flags.
But there's an expression, not to change your subject, but in Boston growing up people would say "what parish are you from?" And that was an identity. Well, we've changed that now with this new book. The new slogan is "what page are you on?" [laughter]
KEVIN CULLEN: Yes, sir?
Q: I'm Ed McGowan. My father grew up on Mission Hill. And he moved to Irish Valhalla in lace curtain West Roxbury. But they also had another neighborhood with the less well-off people called Leaky Roof.
BILL BRETT: We have that now. [laughter]
Q: They actually, until recently, held annual reunions.
BILL BRETT: And where was Leaky Roof?
Q: Down the backside towards– from the Mission Church, looking over the hill. Back and down.
BILL BRETT: I never heard that term, leaky roof, until the last two weeks. And I'm one of them.
Q: My question is, don't you think it would be appropriate if we noted JFK was the beginning of the greatest generation to serve as a president? We can't count Eisenhower, he didn't have the boots on the ground. I think it's worthy of noting.
BILL BRETT: Yes, yes, yes. Thank you.
Q: I'm a Dorchester guy who happens to be related to one of the people up here. Tell us about my grandchildren, Linda. [laughter]
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: They're fine, they're fine.
Q: You have, what, 260, 275 photos?
BILL BRETT: 265, yes.
Q: What's your favorite? And what's your favorite story from that [simultaneous conversation]
BILL BRETT: Actually, I'm very proud of all the photographs. But if I had to through the top list, I would put my top photograph of Mr. O'Neill, who's sitting here with his lovely daughter. When I met him, and I was told about him, he and his wife came for Ireland 25 years ago, and they weren't blessed with children. And over the years they explored about looking for adoptions. And they ended up– they were in Ireland. They were in different parts of the country looking to adopt a child. And they ended up adopting a little boy from Ethiopia. And they found out that the boy had three sisters in another orphanage. And he and his wife adopted the four children. [applause]
And when I went out to meet them, to photograph them out in Brookline, I was so inspired by these four beautiful children, and I was thinking to myself, I mean, 20 years, 25 years ago an Irish family that brought four children that looked like them, they'd say, "Oh, my god." Because only in those days 25 years go, if you were able to– Tom Flatley was one that I knew was blessed with several adopted children, they're from Ireland. But this man here adopted these children from another country to give them an opportunity to have a great life. And he didn't ask them, "what country." We're supposed to look at ourselves and say we're adopting children, not from where they're from or where they came or what church they went to.
So that is my favorite photograph in the book, because when I went out to photograph him with his children, I highlighted his children first and I put he and his wife in the background. And I just thought at that moment, when I left him– and I was so moved. I have four children and I had several foster children during the time that my wife thought it was a good idea to bring these kids home on an emergency program that we were involved in many years ago. But we only had them for a short time. And this man here, he and his wife made a commitment to adopt these children, all at once. And I've heard of people having twins – which I had twins, I was blessed with twins – or triplets, but he had four of them. And the picture was just a beautiful picture. It was one that I never expected to make because I never knew anything about it until this man, Pat Kelly, told me about this couple.
And then I went on to another photograph over in Charlestown, the fire department chaplain; 51 years of being the chaplain for the Boston Fire Department. And when I spoke to him, he knew every person that he gave the last rites to by name. I mean, it was just moving. And when I brought him to the fire academy over in Long Island to make this picture, I just thought it was a beautiful, beautiful moment.
And the funeral picture of Larry Reynolds was one of my finest pictures. Larry Reynolds was a great musician. He was a carpenter by profession, the father of nine children. And his whole life was music, to teach people and to play the Irish songs in clubs and bars and private homes, to bring people together. And his funeral was one of the most beautiful funerals that I have ever seen, because all his buddies came, and they all played for him one last song as he was going out the door of the church. All different instruments, young and old, come to see him.
And I just thought they were very moving moments for me, to see this. And I was able to capture this in a photograph because a man like him should be always remembered. I talked to his wife Phyllis the other day and she said she saw me on TV on Chronicle and she started to cry. She said, "What you said about my husband was all true." I mean, it was just a beautiful– she's just a beautiful woman.
So I mean, I was able to capture these moments of individuals. And as I said earlier, it's important that it's all in the book; that it'll be here for history. Because the next history group will be some other group, which I hope I'm able to do the next group. And I think that by tying them all together, it really makes it a complete package. And for me, it was a gift to the city and a gift to the Irish community because my parents came here with really nothing. And here I am, I'm producing a book that people are going to buy. I mean, only in America! [laughter] And I thank you. [applause]
Q: Bill, you remember, I was just a teenager when I met you, and we were covering the riots of those Boston summers. And you and I driving around, we used to joke about the fact that the blacks hated us because we were white, the whites hated us because we were from the Globe and the cops hated us because we were reporters. So we were the only ones at the riots without a friend.
BILL BRETT: It's true.
Q: It's true as you and I remember those moments. So my question is, how could we bury that heritage for Boston? Because that is ancient history. I'm just wondering, I'd like to challenge this panel to maybe think about how we can somehow put those scars behind us, because this city is well beyond that at this point.
BILL BRETT: Thank you. It's a good question, Tom. I think personally, since I lived it, I worked it, they hated us. Because they didn't like the Globe stand and these were neighbors of mine, it was a tough time to be taking photographs at South Boston. Every day I was there.
And to bury it, I think, to answer that question, I think it's been buried. Because we're a better– I mean, as we get older, time marches on. Judge Garrity says it didn't work. Actually the Globe in an editorial said really we shouldn't have done it like that. And if I was the person on busing– when they implemented busing, they started it from the top. They should have started from the bottom. Because when kids go to school three- and four-year-old children, there's no color barrier. But when you start it when you're 16, and you live on this side of the street and you're poor and you're white, and this side you're black, and someone's trying to steal something from you– they didn't know what was going to be stolen from them.
But I think really have come a long way, that very few people seem to remember, talk about it. South Boston has changed tremendously. All the new people, I say the new people; they're the generation their parents lived there, grandparents. I have a son living in South Boston. They all wanted to go back to where the roots were.
And I think that we've learned a lot about ourselves. Education is something that you can't buy. It's something that you really have to work at. And time heals a lot of wounds. And there's an expression, the older you get, the more wisdom that you get. And there's a lot of truth to that.
And I personally, when I think of South Boston today, I try not to think about during that era, because it wasn't really a nice time. But I look at it today as a great town.
BARBARA LYNCH: I don't think you can bury it. I think you learn from it. It didn't work. I see it two ways. I actually, I'm a chef now because I had a wonderful home ec program at Madison Park High. I'm not sure I would have had that at Southie High, had I gone to Southie High. But I also feel that when you're forced to do something by the government like that, it just doesn't work. And when you take neighborhoods where your parents come, they immigrate over here, they choose a neighborhood to live in and they want to take your seven kids and just put them across town, I mean, it just didn't make any sense. It really didn't make any sense.
And you learn from that. And then the cops– now it is a different city. We work together. And I think you saw that with the Boston bombing. God, I never saw staties and Boston Police work together. Every hospital in the city came together. It's tremendous.
And so, it does make you stronger, but you shouldn't have to bury it. It just makes us stronger as a city in general.
JAMES BRETT: I want to say Boston, have we come much better since those days in the '70s?
I think politically, I look at people like Ralph Martin – African American. Really a New Yorker.
Comes here, runs for district attorney in the '90s. Runs against an Irish Catholic. Guess what?
South Boston, 1990s, endorses with the vote Ralph Martin. I believe West Roxbury did, too.
Ralph Martin gets elected as the district attorney.
City councilor, a person of color, tops the ticket right now. Tops the ticket. Deval Patrick, runs for governor. In the primary against an Irish Catholic, Boston votes majority Deval Patrick.
So I think Boston's come a long way in a very positive way.
SENATOR LINDA DORCENA FORRY: And I will just say, and I agree we've come a long way. And I think that discussions are important in terms of remembering is critical.
Remembering our history is important, and how do we move forward.
Now are we in a post-racial society? Absolutely not. And I don't think it's just looking at South Boston as a community because of the busing. I think it's looking at all our communities and looking whether it's in housing, whether it's in business, whether it's at the board room. Is there diversity? And I think that is where the true conversation begins. That when we are in an environment where it's just homogeneous and yet there are amazing talent, like women, who are entrepreneurs, and yet they're not at the table, or there are people of color that are doing incredible things here in Boston and in Massachusetts, but they're not at the table, then we still have work to do.
And I can tell you that working with our incredible unions here in the city of Boston and in the Commonwealth, one of the things we started is doing open houses at union halls, starting right in my neighborhood. We started at the plumbers. This morning we were at the New England Regional Council of Carpenters saying it is important to open up these halls to allow people to understand that this is a place for jobs, this is a place for opportunity.
We just celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, and he believed in the union struggle. He believed in unions because that allowed families to lift themselves out of poverty. It allowed families to get good-paying jobs and put their kids through school. So that's part of the process that we're working on now. Mayor Walsh is a leader in that. And how do we open up our union halls and bring diversity in.
But we need that all over the place, not just in construction, but in our businesses all around the
Commonwealth, and these incredible developments that are happening right here on the South
Boston waterfront, in my district, where we're talking about access and opportunity. Not just boots on the ground, but we have small businesses, like Barbara Lynch. Maybe she'll open a restaurant on the waterfront. We have incredible small businesses, women and people of color, and veterans, whether it's accounting, engineering.
I mean, this is what we need to move towards, is really saying if we are about taking a holistic approach and saying that we are one commonwealth and we're in it together, then it's not saying we're burying the hatchet. Because we can never bury the hatchet. But dialogue is important. We can't run away from dialogue. When things are happening around the country, we can't run away from it and say it's just happening there. Because it could happen here, too.
And that's how we're going to be able to transform, truly transform Boston, truly transform this incredible state that we live in. [applause]
Q: Senator, that was very, very well said. I just had a question for Bill. You have published some incredible books that have had some profound impacts on the city of Boston. What is the impact that you want to see this book have? And are you there? Do you feel it? Where do you see that? What is that impact that you hope to achieve with this book?
BILL BRETT: Thank you for the question. It's a showcase. And I was trying to, as I said earlier, to put these men and women together to show what they have to done to help make Boston what it is today. And to achieve it, I thought it was to put it together– I could have five volumes to do this, but to do it in one book– and it took me two years to do. It was important for me personally to do this, because I think what it does, when other people, younger people, Irish immigrants or other immigrants look at these photographs and read about what these men and women have done, "if they can do it, so can we."
So I think with the new Boston, the new immigrants that are coming – as I said, the Irish aren't coming the way they used to come here – we have to open up to the new world. And whatever country it is – probably South Americans, seems to be a lot coming from that area – that they look at this and they're going to say, They were a group of immigrants and, geez, they did pretty well. Well, if we work hard, we can do well, too.
And this is what I'm trying it show, that these men and women are ready to help the next group of immigrants.
BILL CULLEN: Yes, sir. Last question.
Q: Father Jack, we've heard Bill and Jim talk about their mother and the lessons learned. Could you tell this audience what they've done in your parishes with the food bank that's been named in her honor?
FATHER JACK AHERN: When I arrived at St. Margaret's, we had a small food pantry. Served about maybe 20 families a month on a good month. With the Bretts' support – we named it after their mother – we're up to over about 550 families a month.
AUDIENCE: Wow! [applause]
KEVIN CULLEN: It's a great legacy. And other than the Senator's breakfast, it's the only great tradition in town around St. Patrick's Day, and that's the fundraiser for the food pantry up there.
Listen, there was a quintessential Irish barman in this town named John Foley. When it got very late at night, John would always say, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." [laughter] And so, I am channeling John at this moment to let you know that Bill is going to move out there and sign copies of his book. So please go out there.
But before you leave, please thank this great panel. [applause]