Barney Frank’s Boston roots end with Quincy Market memorial

A story passed down through a family connected to Boston City Hall is now closing with a memorial for Barney Frank at Faneuil Hall and the rebuilt Quincy Market—an arc that traces politics, patronage, and the kind of effectiveness that defined an era in the ci

When people gathered for Barney Frank’s memorial on Monday, they did so in a place that had once been a mess—then became a point of pride.

It was at Faneuil Hall, right by the Greenway, the park over the highway that the Big Dig put underground. Quincy Market is there too, built around the old colonial area that had fallen into disrepair and was later renovated.

The decision-making behind that turnaround, in this family’s telling, ran through Boston politics long before Frank rose to Congress. Sometime around 1970. Frank—then top aide to Boston Mayor Kevin White—called the head of the Boston Redevelopment Authority. working to professionalize the agency. White, elected in 1968, had empowered the BRA director, Hale Champion, to fire old political patronage hires. But there were limits.

The BRA had received federal money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to renovate Quincy Market. Those funds were made possible by Speaker of the House John McCormack. a Boston-area political boss who preceded Tip O’Neill as Democratic leader and served in Congress for more than four decades.

Frank told Champion that one BRA official couldn’t be cut. That official, in the family’s account, “had to stay on” because he was “McCormack’s guy.” Champion pushed back, saying the person never showed up—“We’ve never seen him, Barney. He doesn’t come to work.”

Frank’s response, as the story goes, was blunt: “I don’t give a shit if he’s dead. You want your HUD money? Keep paying him.” Frank died last month at 86.

My father—described here as Frank’s press guy for the BRA at the time—relayed the anecdote in almost the same words. including the line. “You want your HUD money?. Keep paying him.” My father had covered City Hall as a reporter before joining the White administration. Later, he managed real estate development for the Massachusetts Port Authority, largely on the South Boston waterfront.

Over the years, the stories he told were heavy on politics and planning, set in familiar parts of Boston. In the press room at Old City Hall. a tabloid reporter admitted to making up quotes from city councilors. correctly guessing they wouldn’t notice or care. At a South Boston restaurant, crooked state reps were said to have sold influence for just a few free meals.

Frank himself entered the family’s orbit in earlier days. when my father wrote what may have been the first newspaper profile of Frank in the Boston Globe in 1968. The profile was largely laudatory. but it also made much of Frank’s messiness—an anecdote about Barney wandering City Hall shoeless. and a quip that Frank had “occasional moments of neatness.”.

In another story, my father and Frank crossed paths during a City Hall softball game. My father was the catcher; Frank was trying to score. To avoid being tagged out. Frank allegedly tried to run my father over “like he was Pete Rose. ” and my father claimed he used old football training to knock Frank to the ground.

Those clashes, the family writes, made sense in the way City Hall itself was shifting after White’s election in 1968. White hired a young. relatively diverse staff—more minorities. non-Bostonians. and women. including my mother. a Minnesotan who came directly to City Hall from Radcliffe. The story frames them as liberals shaped by the 1960s, people who believed diligent, pragmatic policies could improve things. The claim is that Massachusetts today—regulated, prosperous, educated, and relatively healthy—stands as proof they were right.

In the years that followed, Frank moved on. Elected to Congress in 1980, he had different work by then. But the family says Brookline—the community where they lived—was in his district. and it shaped what Frank was like on the ground. He would show up at local events. “rumpled. verbose. accessible. ” including a time he spoke to a high school government class for 45 minutes with his fly open.

In that same memory, Frank is also described as someone who yelled at people—his constituents—“all the time.” The account is unsparing: he was “a dick,” said to be egalitarian in the way he delivered it, making people feel important enough to be berated.

There are specific recollections. A girl the family knew was said to have gotten an early dose of political disillusionment when Frank—an icon for gay rights—told her how little he thought of her opinion. The family places it around the Gulf War. Another story says that when the sister of an acquaintance got married. guests were warned to be careful approaching him because. as she put it. “He’s not that nice.”.

The family’s account then connects that temperament to the place Frank represented. Childhood memories of Boston are painted as hostile: crime rising. newspapers negative. and racism from the busing days only slightly less overt. Even in Brookline, fights over traffic disputes were watched from nearby. The political mood, in this telling, was equally rough—people hated Dukakis after he lost the presidential election. Fans supported the Red Sox by brawling at Fenway and booing players, with Jim Rice becoming a particular target. The most pointed memory is at a game where a man ran on the field and mooned the crowd. with “R-I-C-E” written on his ass.

Against that backdrop, the family argues that voters may not have prioritized kindness. They wanted smart and effective, and Frank gave them that.

As a reporter, my father learned that Frank was easy to reach—but with sharp limits. During my father’s first reporting job at a weekly paper in Boston, he got Frank on the phone, asked a question Frank wasn’t expecting, and Frank replied he “wasn’t interested in answering that,” then hung up.

Later. covering the House. my father published a piece listing lawmakers who didn’t participate in a key Democratic Caucus vote over a contested chairmanship. The family says Frank was not like the others mentioned. because he was running for a different chairmanship. meaning he couldn’t vote. Frank’s press secretary demanded a correction. My father declined and went home after being trained by editors to fight that kind of request.

When he got off the Metro, he received a 30-second voicemail. Addressing him as Mr. Friedman, Frank—now described as “my former congressman”—called him an idiot. The family says the message was cutting because it landed close to something he thought was right.

For a long time, my father kept the voicemail and even played it for people who believed you had to be important to be yelled at like Frank Frank could yell. Eventually, he lost it.

The family doesn’t claim the anecdotes are perfect—my father never checked them closely. But the closing thread ties back to Quincy Market itself. The story says that at the BRA. supposedly. Frank’s insistence that “McCormack’s guy” stay on ensured the federal funding kept flowing. The new Quincy Market was ready for the bicentennial in 1976.

Monday’s memorial at Faneuil Hall brought that arc full circle. The city today—nicer. safer. and much richer—is described as a result of planners who got it right. and the family writes that Quincy Market’s success now feels inevitable. “Hardly anyone remembers Quincy Market before they fixed it up.”.

The family ends with grief shared across generations: mourning Frank, along with my father, who died a few years ago. In their telling, the City Hall stories aren’t just personal lore. They’re a way to remember staffers and the progress they helped make in the Boston that’s gone.

Barney Frank Kevin White Boston Redevelopment Authority Hale Champion Department of Housing and Urban Development John McCormack Quincy Market Faneuil Hall Big Dig Massachusetts Port Authority