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| Kevin White at the Boston Marathon - rnolan1087 Photo |
State Street, Boston - October 1970
Hizzoner was the Massachusetts Democratic gubernatorial candidate and had recently been released from the hospital after emergency surgery to remove half of his stomach due to a problematic ulcer. He wasn't looking too good, but he was back on the campaign trail.
I was a fifteen year-old kid who frequently found my way to downtown Boston and spent hours exploring the streets and "cowpaths" of the old city.
It was a crisp, fall morning and I saw a bit of commotion up ahead... Black cars, men in suits and raincoats who seemed to be milling around, waiting for someone or something.
I managed to get myself near the edge of the activity and tried to blend in with the wall of a building so I could be invisible and watch what everyone seemed to be waiting on. But I was unable to blend all the way in because there were two raincoat clad men behind me having a vigorous conversation of some sort.
It seemed like several minutes had passed when one of the gents milling around the black cars turned towards me and shouted, "Kevin... Kevin, we gotta get goin'!" I backpedaled and almost bumped into the two conversing men behind me... one of which who was the gaunt-looking Mayor Deluxe.
Kevin waived off the shouting aide and kept chatting while the calls of "We gotta go!" kept coming at me, the kid who was trying to be invisible.
Boston Marathon Finish Line - April 1973 (?)
Back in the years right before the Boston Marathon became a big-time, international, sponsor and money-laden event, the finish line was a fairly modest affair on Boylston St. in front of the Prudential Center.
In 1971 I found that if you arrived in the finish line area around noontime (about two hours before the race ended) that the police barricades were not set up and, with a little footwork, a fella could manage to stay inside them with the race officials and sports media.
In (to the best of my recollection) 1973, while toting my Kodak Instamatic camera, I tapdanced around while the barricades were erected and scored a spot at the base of a small wood-sided trailer that was where the winner was brought to get his laurel wreath from the Mayor of Boston.
I wasn't lucky enough to be in a position to get a snapper of the mayor honoring the winner, but I did get some pix of Kevin schmoozing with the crowd.
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While writing this post about my "uteful" encounters with Mayor Deluxe, it occurred to me I saw him one other time.
The sighting was at several major intersections just a short distance from my 1970 encounter, but the time was now the mid-1990's.
I was on a late morning coffee run with some co-workers and the intersections near the Old Massachusetts State House were abuzz with people saying, "There he is!", about a white-haired fella striding along, smiling and waving at the pedestrians.
My work colleagues were a bit younger than me and had grown up in Central and Western Massachusetts, so their reaction was, "Who's that?".
The best answer I could muster was, "He used to be the mayor."
It was impossible to answer their question with anything more than that one sentence. Morning would have turned to afternoon. Afternoon would have turned to night. And I couldn't have even come close to really answering the question "Who's that?" about Kevin White.
This post was written on my TouchPad
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