Ten O'Clock News; Grand Bostonians

Grand Bostonians 1977 final assembly. 8677 BGH TV Boston. [Orchestra Playing] Emerson once said that the measure or test of a civilization is not its consensus, or its cities, or its crops, but it is the kind of man that that civilization turns out. Well the grand Bostonians is an event conceived four years ago to honor people who were eminently successful in their

chosen fields. And that success and you had to Boston's acclaim internationally as well as locally. As Bostonians we want the world to see who we're with. your dedication. This is why. Initially, as some of you might know, we honored seven grand Bostonians. We did not originally intend to honor more. Distinctive careers of the seven we honor tonight commend them. Florence Luscombe, and Melnea Cass symbolize a legacy of humanitarianism, community involvement and social reform. Leverett Saltonstall and Henry Cabot Lodge

represent a proud tradition of politics and public service that's as old as the Republic itself. Eliott Norton and Walter Whitehill, epitomize a life of scholarship, erudition, and culture and Sidney Rabb's career stands for historic leadership, commercial innovation and ?forever? (Speaker?)I was born in Cambridge 72 years ago next September. I have lived about 60 of those years within 25 miles of Boston. I was in Europe for a number of years a sentence in Washington during the 2nd World War. The rest of the time I have been somewhere within reach. The last 40-

41 of them, I've been in the same house in North Andover, Massachusetts. It's difficult to say what I thought as a young man I was going to become if I had pursued the idea of becoming an Episcopal clergyman, I might conceivably be a bishop at this point, but I fell afoul of mediæval architecture and became first an architectural historian and then by various circumstances, tumbled into maritime and naval history and have wandered through various aspects of history, dirtying paper consistently. In 1977, most people concerned with scholarly matters specialized. They become

involved in one thing and stayed in it. In my youth, it was not so. You could follow your bent. You learned your trade in one discipline. If you had the mind to wander into another, nobody prevented you from doing so. And I have always loved architecture and the company of architects. I've never even built a hen house or a dog kennel. The feel of the city does change. from time to time, when old alleyways disappear and new buildings are put up. I used to walk from the North Station to the Atheneum, 30 years ago by an intricate series of back alleys. They all vanished when the Government Center was built. On the whole,

I prefer the great open space in front of the new city hall to my old alleys. It's a different thing but it has a similar feeling; it's a place where people can mill about and enjoy themselves as they please and there are changes but not in basic principles. In 1935, when I was still living in Spain, I applied for the job of Director of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. because I liked Dublin so much that I thought would be a charming place to be. I got 4 votes and an Irishman got 5, and so I've been in Boston ever since. I think I could have enjoyed myself in Dublin but I know I've enjoyed myself more. (Rabb) [Baroque music plays]I started at Stop and Shop when I was 18 years of age and now in my 59th year there.

I originally was a clerk, and worked up from the clerk and then became the owner of the company. I don't know if I was at the right place at the right time. Boston was as good a city as one would want to be to live in. And when I found the business was able to grow here why this is where I wanted to be. My grandparents came here in 1890 and the city it was very good to them. And we've had a tradition of that of of trying to carry our share of the load which is very is a very early age and enabled me to participate in what the philanthropies learned. One of the unique things about the city is the devotion that people have to the city. You know, this is a city that's made up of a lot of good people who don't think only in terms of what they can get from their business but what the business can do for the kind of living which has helped establish the kind of standards that we have in living.

The question I continue to ask is, 'What can we do to make Boston, Massachusetts competitive with the other states in the Union. My era was the era of the entrepreneur. I started preceding the 19- 1929 depression. But the problem today is, that is a man willing to stay as an entrepreneur or does he want to become a professional manager? I think that the major number of prosperous and good business citizens in this state Are urging their professionals to become as interested in the communities that they're in or in Boston as the entrepreneur used to be. I'm one of the one of those who feel that business has a social responsibility. And I think that's noting but enlightened selfishness. (White)I've been asked often, what are the Standards and Poor criteria for selection?

There are 3. The first is that they uniquely represent the best of our city, and that is recognized both within and without Boston. Second, that that recognition has enhanced the achievements and the acclaim of our city. And third, a more restrictive criterion, is age. Each grand Bostonian must have lived at least 70 years. But these grand Bostonians, I think we all agree, we know them, did more than survive. They all continue to be active and energetic citizens. (_______)I was taking the year off to write a book. And while I was here doing that, a vacancy occurred in the, ah, in the state legislature

in this district. I just got in by, luck you might say, and we ?didn't do all of mine? in Ward 6 Precinct 3 and my uncle said, "Would you like to do it?" and I said, "Well how much time would it take. He said, "One night two weeks every other week." Well he was wrong there. (Speaker____)when the publisher of my newspaper said, "Oh well you'll probably be defeated. So you don't need to resign. We will give you a leave of absence. Yeah, I said, Now, who is, ah, if I run, who is going to be my opponent?" And my uncle in ?Dead? Grove said, "We'll see that there is no opponent." And the wasn't. And that's how I came in. Well, I stayed on in one capacity or another for about 35 years before I was defeated. There was some hope for Republicans then in Boston in Ward 5 and -- 4 and 5 -- and that's, when, '21 and -- 21. But, ah, it's sort of hopeless now. [background music] I think the biggest public meetings that I ever attended or spoke at were in

1938, before when I first ran for governor. Now the television has changed it a lot. I think it's changed the serials of public meetings and people getting together. The average person who is interested, enough interested, he'll stay an' listen at home, say, well I like that guy, I guess I'll vote for him. [music] As governor you'll have the opportunity to do what you think is the right thing to do. Now as a United States senator, of course, you're just one now of a hundred. It's a value to being a United States senator, I think it's because you meet people from all over the United States and from all over the world. I enjoyed that. My grandfather was a senator from Massachusetts, eh, from 1898 until 1924. That's 26 years. But, eh, nobody in my family held local office, city office,

but they always were very active in Boston and, ah, of course when the unusual an' miraculous thing happened that I carried the city of Boston, That's an event which I will never forget, although I don't think anybody else ever talks about very much. That, that was very big. Ah, wheth- whether they say that a, that a, that a statesman is a dead politician, ah I considered myself when I was in it. I considered myself a politician and I was trying to be a politician because unless you're a pretty good politician you don't get elected. [background music] There's a thing in my life, which I think stands out ahead of everything else, was when I resigned from the Senate to go into the Army in, ah, in World War II, because I had worked

terribly hard to get to the Senate. I thought I'd never get back. And it, it was an awful wrench. And yet I could not see myself sitting out the war in Washington, D.C., in a dark blue suit. The world used to be considered, uh, divided up by these great ramparts -- the mountains and the oceans and all that. Well, now with aviation and with communications an' television and radio and everything else, the thing has shrunk. And that, of course, changes the, the practice of diplomacy very much. I would never want to live abroad. I--I like to travel and I like to go here and there for a short time. Um, but I would never want to live abroad.

I'm too much of an American, I have too many roots here, ever to do that. [much crowd noise] Y'know at this time, it's the only time of the year my time's a little different. I reviewed more than [crowd noises] 5000 productions and I've seen a lot. ?Well I'm not and? I've seen some of them twice and some even three times, as a matter of fact. On their new plays I nearly always, if they're working on them I nearly always go back and see them twice: at the end -- you know, at the beginning when they open, and then the end when I, uh, when they think they've fixed the third act. I think it's a lot easier than acting. After all, we sit in the

theater and we watch, and then we have to, uh, sit down at the typewriter for maybe about an hour. And that's where the pressure is, but the actors stand up there and they lay their lives on the line. Main reason I have so much respect for actors, and more year-by-year, is because of that. In the theater, at any rate. Not in front of the television cameras or Hollywood, but on the stage they go out there with only their lines and the playwright's idea between them and 1700 people. And they do it 8 times a week. And they do it when they don't feel well, they do it when they're sick, when they're heartsick, when they're depressed. After all, they're all human beings. I never wanted to be an actor except when I was a boy. I think when I was a boy I wanted to be an actor, but I also wanted to be an Admiral when I was a boy. And I took the exams once for Annapolis. But I, u, -- and I never wanted to be a playwright. I have great admiration for playwrights. Um, but I think I know enough about it to know again,

you either have the creative quality or you don't. And I'm sure I don't have any creative ability. I have never tried to write a play. The great thing in the theater or any of the arts is creative work. And critics are not creative. We, some of us try to be. I think we try to criticize, to evaluate in such a way that we perhaps help the playwright, the actors, and the others to develop their own work. But that's not really creative work. The actor creates. He takes the playwright's words and creates. The director creates. The scenic designer, the lighting designer, all the people, these are the great people to me. I think I'm getting mellower, perhaps. I know when I started in, I was pretty fresh. I think all young critics begin by being enamored of their own voices and their own power and influence. You stand outside the

Schubert Theatre and say, "I don't like this, it's lousy." That's one thing. You write it in print and it goes into 350,000 copies. I know so many actors that told me that they remember every unfavorable review they've ever had. Twenty years later they can quote it to you and they still quiver. And I discovered somewhere along the line that you don't have to be cruel. I think at times I was cruel. But you don't have to be cruel in order to be accurate and honest. You make mistakes. After all, critics, playwrights, every playwright makes mistakes. Think Shakespeare wrote "Titus Andronicus." I graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in ?or? 9, in the course in architecture. At that time, the student body of M.I.T. was

1200. And there were 12 co-eds. I started my career In the women's movement when my mother was a delegate to the National American Woman's Suffrage Association convention in 1892 and she took me with her as a little girl of 5. And I heard Susan B. Anthony speak. Now, of course, as a 5-year-old child I can't tell you what she said, but I remember very distinctly that they said to me, "Oh! This woman speaking now is Susan B. Anthony." [chuckle] And from that time on, all through my school years, my college years, and my working years, all my spare time was put into the campaign for votes for women.

After we got, women got, the vote, great interest in completing the women's Equality Movement. I'm again being asked to

lecture, give talks very widely on the subject, the history of the women's movement, ah, telling what the condition of women was before the women's movement started, about 135 years ago. When the law said that man and wife are one, and that one is the husband. I am perfectly sure that there are still some discriminations against women that need to be changed. The worst discrimination of all is that against working women. I don't think that basically, people have changed. I think that the greatest change is that in the condition of one-half the human race --

my half. I often wondered why the, ah, people in this area call me the first lady of Roxbury. They seem to think that I have been here a long time and I have constantly been trying to improve this area in which I live because I, I love this area. And I think they feel that that stays here, so I must be a first lady. Well, I had a mother-in-law that was really a community-spirited person, Rosa ?Brown?, and she talked about these things incessantly and worked in them incessantly. And I got the hat, got, I think, a lot of it from her, from being around her a great deal. Oh,I never left my children to go anyplace. If I went anyplace, like to a meeting at night, my husband was the babysitter. So I understood, and I always had my own children first. In fact that's how I began takin' them along with me when I

could. [background music] And then as I grew older and, uh, began to see the problems that faced our own black people, ah, I realized it was a good many things that I should be doing to help. So I joined organizations which were working in the community, which were working for civil rights, and which were working for women to vote and all kinds of other kinds of products that made me a part of community activity. Almost unconsciously you became involved in them because they were right there. I have been on delegations to go to see people in large corporations to ask them to hire just one black person and they turn you away and they're gonna

consider it an' they'll see what they're gonna do about it. That's 'course some years back. And it was very disheartening to think that especially in stores such as Dudley Street and little stores where black people are majority shopping couldn't even hire a clerk. Five & 10, Woolworth's was one of 'em that we had to pressure just to get 1, 2 little clerks up on Washington Street. And so those things were very discouraging in a way, but they didn't stop us. And sometimes it made ya have more determination to go right back and bang at it. The organization of, ah, activities 30 or 40 years ago, compared to what they are today there's a great difference because people had a different way of doing things. Thirty or 40 years ago black people really were slower about achieving their aims but they kept at it, just kept going steadily at it. You never give up hope, never. Never give up hope because just when you think you're gonna to give up, that's when you could really gain the

victory if you just kept right on going just little bit more. Each is different, and they prized that. The paths they followed were their own. But the common threads are clear: High aspiration, high achievements, and all governed by constant an' proud reverence for the human spirit. Taken together, we would agree that their lives form sort of a road map of our times. And their achievements explain in individual terms the qualities of hope that Boston will always be famous for. Last year when the city dedicated the ?unclear? to me and put up a bronze bas relief at the foot of the statue of Samuel Adams with my likeness on it,

I felt as if I were already dead. But I was touched by the inscription, which suggested that I had shown the city how to shape its future by remembering its past. I think I care more intensely about the relation between the past, the present and the future than anything else. I don't know what my influence is, an' it's hard to compute those things. I suppose over a period of time there have been people, they keep telling me, people who have read what I've written, and perhaps I have helped to point out to them the kind of things they were interested in discovering. The only way I would like to be remembered in my life is that I have tried to share myself with others, that I have given the best years of my life to help others, and that I really feel that it has been effective 'cause I have lived to see some of the things that I've wanted to

see come true. The one thing that I would firstly like to be remembered for is whatever contribution I might have made to helping make this a better city in which to live. What did I wanna be known as? A good, simple, straightforward family man.