Thomas Michael Menino (December 27, 1942 – October 30, 2014) was an American politician who served as the mayor of Boston, from 1993 to 2014. He was the city's longest-serving mayor. He was elected mayor in 1993 after first serving three months in the position of "acting mayor" following the resignation of his predecessor Raymond Flynn (who had been appointed United States ambassador to the Holy See). Before serving as mayor, Menino was a member of Boston City Council and had been elected president of the City Council in 1993.
Dubbed an "urban mechanic", Menino had a reputation for focusing on "nuts and bolts" issues and enjoyed very high public approval ratings as mayor. During his tenure, Boston saw a significant amount of new development, including the Seaport District, the redevelopment of Dudley Square (today known as "Nubian Square"), and the redevelopment of the area surrounding Fenway Park. However, during his mayoralty, gentrification priced some longtime residents out of neighborhoods, and allegations were made of favoritism by Menino towards certain developers. During Menino's tenure as mayor, crime in Boston fell to unprecedented lows, and the city came to rank among the safest large cities in the United States. Menino also undertook a number of environmentally-focused actions. In the last year of Menino's tenure, the city faced the Boston Marathon bombing, an incident of domestic terrorism.
Menino was a liberal member of the Democratic Party. Menino led a powerful political machine in Boston and also played roles in national politics, such as serving as president of the United States Conference of Mayors from 2002 to 2003, bringing the 2004 Democratic National Convention to Boston, and co-founding the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
After the end of his mayoralty, he was appointed professor of the practice of political science at Boston University. He also served as co-founder and co-director of the Initiative on Cities, an urban leadership research center based at Boston University. Menino's post-mayoralty life was unexpectedly cut short as he was diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer of unknown primary origin in March 2014 and died from the disease seven months later.
Early life and education
Menino was born on December 27, 1942, in Readville, a part of Boston's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was the son of Susan and Carl Menino, both of Italian descent. Readville was a largely Italian-American community. Menino's father was a factory foreman at Westinghouse Electric, and his grandparents lived on the first floor of his parents' Hyde Park home. In his youth, the Italian-American Menino was exposed to anti-Italian prejudice.
After graduating from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Jamaica Plain in 1960. Menino enrolled in three night classes at Boston College before abandoning his college education. Menino had decided that college was not for him much to his father's dismay. Carl Menino once recalled his son's reasons for opting out of higher education: "Truman didn't go to college," the younger Menino would tell his father (President Harry S. Truman was Menino's favorite president and was his personal hero). Menino eventually received an associate degree in Business Management in 1963 at the now-defunct Mount Ida College, which was then known as Chamberlayne Junior College. During his tenure as a Boston city councilor in 1984, Menino enrolled as an undergrad at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in community planning in January 1988.
Early career
Prior to running for office, Menino worked as a housing relocation specialist for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, was a research assistant for the state legislative committee on housing and urban development, and served as an aide to state senator Joseph F. Timilty.
Menino met at the age of nineteen Joseph F. Timilty, who became a political mentor to him, in 1961.
Menino began working in sales at Metropolitan Life Insurance in 1963. He left the insurance industry in 1968 after Timilty got him an entry-level position at the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
Menino worked on Timilty's 1971 and 1975 mayoral campaigns. In retribution for Menino working on Timilty's effort to unseat him, Mayor Kevin White fired Menino from the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Menino again worked on Timilty's campaign in the 1979 Boston mayoral election.