Do others or they will do you,” was one of his mottos, and it was said that he won the 1921 election against fellow Roman Catholic John R. Murphy by accusing Murphy of eating a roast-beef sandwich, on a Friday, at a restaurant named Thompson’s Spa. But many of Boston’s Irish and Italians loved James Michael Curley for his charm and his chicanery, as well as for the free hand he had with public funds on behalf of the poor. Curley was famous for having insisted that the scrubwomen in city hall be given long-handled brushes, the better to spare their knees.
When he died at age 83 in 1958, Curley had run Massachusetts as Governor for a term and was four times sent to the U.S. House of Representatives. But he was mayor of Boston (“Mayor of the Poor,” he was called) for a full 16 years, four terms, the last of which was partly spent in jail on a mail-fraud conviction. Hizzoner continued to draw his salary while behind bars, gracefully donating it to other Boston prisoners.
Bostonians never got around to naming anything much after Curley except a recreation building at a city hospital, an elementary school and a public bath. Then Boston planners learned that the city was about to receive some special building funds. The bequest came from an upper-crust Yankee lawyer named Edward Ingersoll Browne, who left part of his trust to the city of Boston “for the adornment and benefit of said city by the erection of statues, monuments, fountains for men and beasts and for the adornment of its streets, ways, squares and parks.” James Michael Curley’s commemorative moment seemed to have come.
When something called the Browne Commission was created to distribute the money, a group of architects produced a plan for a Curley Mall along the Freedom Trail, which included benches for footsore travelers bound for such historic sites as Faneuil Hall, the Paul Revere House and the Old North Church. On the middle bench, they proposed to seat a life-sized statue of James Michael Curley, resting himself among the citizenry. The plan gathered dust until last fall when the commission was finally persuaded to spring a paltry $65,000 for James Michael Curley’s park and bronze statue, as part of a package of $1.45 million worth of embellishments for Boston. Unanimously, the city council approved the general funding last Sept. 12.
The brief notice of the appropriation in the Boston Globe stirred little comment until City Councillor Frederick Langone spoke out about it. “Curley never sat on a bench in his life,” Langone cried. He should have something “more dignified.” In reply, one William E. O’Halloran of Newtonville took pen in hand and tongue in cheek. A mere $65,000 was “not nearly enough,” O’Halloran opined in the Boston Globe’s letters column. But there is another way that “will cost us nothing and accomplish much.” Concluded O’Halloran: “There is no longer any viable reason we should call our river after an obscure and no-account English King. We should spend nothing and rename the Charles River the Curley River.”
The Charles separates Boston from Cambridge, Mass, (and Harvard College). It was soon apparent that in Greater Boston, passionate feeling about an English King who had his head chopped off in 1649, James Michael Curley and history in general flowed as deep and murky as the Charles itself. “Unfortunate,” snapped Benjamin R. Sears Jr. of Boston, replying to O’Halloran. “King Charles, while perhaps not one of England’s great rulers, was King during much of the time Boston was being colonized,” Sears noted. “What better way to remember part of our heritage?”
Another voter in favor of leaving the river’s name as it is, David P. Matthews of Lexington, agreed, but for a more pointed reason: “Charles Ι was the first political leader to suffer the ultimate consequence of failure to address the problem of tax relief. Newly elected leaders on Beacon Hill would do well to let the River Charles serve as a constant reminder.”
A wag named Philip C. Thibodeau of Dedham was all for the O’Halloran plan. “It’s an extremely crooked river,” said he. “The name Curley River would be most appropriate. We could settle for one of the more crooked sections of the Charles, preferably in a Democratic precinct, and christen that area ‘The Curley Way.’ You know, like Hell’s Gate at the narrows near New York City.”
These sentiments outraged Mary J. Sullivan of Roslindale. The Globe should stop printing “cheap-shot letters” about “a man who had an illustrious and compassionate history.” Besides, Curley deserved more than a river named after him. Don’t do it, was Mary J.’s vote. Mary Sullivan Shea, though, was all in favor of the idea: “James M. Curley was a great man, a good man.” George Donelan, a former Boston College football star (center and team captain, 1945), agreed in rhyme: “A fine idea deserving the support of one and all/ To the grandest mayor to sit in city hall.” From darkest Chicago, far from the hub of the solar system, former Harvard Running Back Edward Cronin chimed in, “I proudly wish to add my name to the growing rolls.”
“Please, no more letters to honor that scoundrel and rogue who frequently exhorted Boston voters to ‘Vote early and often,’ ” replied Jean Rogers, languishing in Provincetown. Curley was no “scoundrel and rogue,” sniped George Morrissey from Newton. And furthermore, “The true exhortation was ‘Vote often and early for James Michael Curley.’ ”
Both wrong, declared John McNeil of
Groveland. ” ‘Vote early and often actually originated in either Newark, N.J., or New York City.” McNeil was right. The phrase has been traced to John Van Buren, the New York lawyer son of President Martin Van Buren. But the Curley trail proved too serpentine for Jacki Lappen of Brighton. Losing the thread entirely, she suggested the Charles be renamed its “original American Indian name of Quineboquin, which means ‘twisting.’ ” The Globe got lost, too, printing a story to the effect that Curley was once re-elected from jail. After a wave of protest mail, they corrected that error but committed another by saying that Curley “never” ran for office from jail. He did, campaigning for alderman back in 1903 while he was a state legislator serving time in the Charles Street Jail for taking a Civil Service exam for a friend. He won, of course.
This month the Globe printed what should be the climax of the Curley correspondence. Joseph Barbieri, a Cambridge artist, threw in his lot with those who “would further memorialize the late great mayor of Boston.” To. illustrate how, Barbieri included a map, which may be the best map of Boston since the old Yankee version of the U.S. on which every thing west of Dedham seemed vastly shriveled. As Barbieri sees it, Cambridge will be Curleybridge, Harvard becomes Curley College with, of course, a Curley Business School across the river. The Longfellow Bridge is Curleyfellow Bridge; Beacon Hill, Curley Hill; and, where the polluted Charles flows into Boston Harbor we find, naturally, the Curley Locks.
All of which seems to leave the city council contemplating the fleetingness of fame and the high cost of bronze. — Ruth Mehrtens Galvin
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