Legacy MattersThe era of the old-time Boston pol has ended with the death of Dapper O'Neil.
Tip O'Neill was famous for saying, All politics is local. Dapper would say All politics is personal. What you said in public was for show, what you did in private was for real. If you could make people mad or make them laugh by something you said, you got extra points. He was both crass and hilarious.
Dapper went everywhere. As Whitey says, he would attend the opening of an envelope. Being no friends with the Bulgers neither the Senate President, Billy Bulger or his gangster brother Whitey who's still on the lam and the FBI's Most Wanted list, Dapper for years never went to Billy Bulger's Saint Patrick's day breakfast in Southie, "Who wants to go someplace where you can't piss for four hours." Whitey has videos from one time when he did attend.
Howie Carr wrote O'Neil was principal of the old school
Dapper O’Neil never made a dime in politics. Name me another modern pol in Boston you can say that about.
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Talk about a throwback - Dapper didn’t have a checking account. He paid cash for everything except his car (with the “Liberals: An American Cancer” bumper sticker).
Boston Globe, obit an era in Boston politics ends
Often the top vote-getter in City Council races, Mr. O'Neil became one of the more revered politicians in the city's history with his attentiveness to the smallest needs of constituents, even as his caustic statements about minorities, women, gays, and lesbians made him one of the most reviled.
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"The great irony of Dapper was his kindness and generosity to so many people," said Councilor Stephen J. Murphy, a longtime friend of Mr. O'Neil's. "At the same time, he fearlessly and deliberately violated the rules of political correctness. He'd say, 'Watch me get them going.' "
Dapper learned from a master, James Michael Curley whose life and career were fictionalized in Edwin O' Connor's book, The Last Hurrah and later made into a movie by John Ford in 1958, starring Spencer Tracy, but I'm not saying Dapper was "Ditto" in the movie.
(Long before there were Dittoheads, there was Ditto who aped every move and attitude of his beloved mayor.)
"The Last Hurrah" (Edwin O'Connor)
As former mayor Ray Flynn said,
That's what politics is supposed to be about, helping people. He learned it from Curley, and I learned it from them.
He'd go to four or five wakes a night," Flynn said. "When he'd come back from the wakes, I'd see him the next morning with little pieces of paper in his pocket. We'd go to breakfast at Amrhein's, and he'd pull out a little note with a name and phone number on it, and you could hardly read it."
Mr. O'Neil would often walk into Flynn's mayoral office without an appointment. "He was looking for a turkey or a ham for a poor family who had been burned out by a fire or to help some veteran friend of his who got laid off from work,"
A lot of politics was done at wakes because that's where you learned who was hurting. If you could help them, you'd have their vote and the votes of their family members for life. So maybe you cut some deals, crossed the line in a few places, to do a favor for a pal, politics was a game and a lot of fun.
For Dapper it was always about politics
He will be remembered as a throwback, a bigot, a larger-than-life character, a sexist, a champion of the little guy. He was all those things. But mostly he was a politician caught between two eras.
Boston Herald Love him or hate him, Dapper cared about Boston
Boston Maggie says
A lot of politicians come to the table with an agenda and for most that agenda is masked or hidden or worse......compromised. Dapper was never compromised. If he was helping you, he was grand. If he was on the other side of your issue.......well, he was your enemy. Anyone who is talking smack about Dapper, well that's just sour grapes.
Always a character
In 1992, O’Neil named himself “acting mayor” when then-Mayor Ray Flynn was trapped for 30 minutes in a Mattapan hospital elevator with two priests, city officials and his son.
“I am prepared to settle a lot of old scores,” O’Neil declared at the time.
In my earlier life, I grew up among Boston pols. My father and my grandfather were campaign workers for the Democrat Yankee, Endicott "Chub" Peabody, after whom it was said, three Massachusetts towns were named, Peabody, Marblehead and Athol. In junior high school, I had a crush on the Massachusetts senator, Jack Kennedy and as a freshman in high school, I handed out campaign literature when he ran for President which of course was totally unnecessary in Massachusetts. Later, I married Jack Flannery who had been Chief Secretary to another Massachusetts governor, Frank Sargent who was far more beloved even if he was a Yankee Republican. Jack was a wonderful writer whether it was speeches, op eds or his column, The Pols which ran three times a week for several years in the Boston Herald. The Pols was a political soap opera, a combination of fictional character and real politicians, that became an excuse to tell a lot of great stories about Boston pols, most of them true but you couldn't use their real names because the statute of limitations was still running.
That's what I miss about politics these days, the fun and the stories.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino said Wednesday.
It's the end of an era in Boston politics with the passing of Dapper O'Neil. He was the greatest storyteller there ever was. The real question is whether all those stories are true.
Nobody had more fun or had better stories than the old Boston pols and those days are over, that time is past.
