The following excerpts are from Governor Deval Patrick’s 
remarks at the funeral of Former Mayor Thomas M. Menino
 on Monday, Nov. 3 at Most Precious Blood Parish, Hyde Park.

Ten years ago I went to visit Mayor Menino to ask for his support in my first run for governor.  He said “no” – he was already supporting someone else.  Then we talked for an hour, the legendary Mayor of Boston engaging me about why I wanted to run and how I was thinking about putting a campaign together.  At the end of it, he said, “I can’t be with you, but I won’t hurt you.”

I had met the Mayor before that, but I wouldn’t say we knew each other well.  I had never run for office, had two percent name recognition, no money and a volunteer staff of three – including me.  Yet the great man patiently shared his time and wisdom with a political newcomer.  And that was the thing with him.  He seemed to make time for everybody, even a political nobody like me.  His politics were very personal that way…

You saw it again and again.  On every school visit or ribbon cutting we did together, at every benefit or nonprofit gala, surrounded by officials and the city’s elite, he would focus on the kids, on the neighborhood residents who came out to see what the fuss was about, on the obvious newcomers.  He had time for everybody.  He had a keen sense that the attention paid to them would or could make a difference, make them stand up a little straighter, feel a little more confident or at home in this City.  Their attention to him was fuel for his work.  After more than 20 years of this kind of personal politics, it hardly surprises me that half the city’s residents report that they have met him.  What surprises me is that it was only half.

Some say the Mayor had a thin skin, but my experience was the opposite - he was great fun to tease.  In fact, Tom Menino could be downright playful.  When I was in the hospital recovering from hip replacement surgery, he sent me a soccer ball and a jump rope with a note that read, “Quit faking and get out of bed.”  There was that famous eye roll, that “gimme a break,” whenever he thought the comment or situation was ridiculous -- like when he and Angela came to dinner with Diane and me at our un-air-conditioned home on the hottest night in the history of time, after which he invited us home to their house to sleep in comfort.  We were cast in a skit together once at the annual “Banned in Boston” performance and when the script called for him to say the word “guacamole,” it just wouldn’t come out right.  On the third try, the audience and I were in stitches.  He just rolled his eyes and smiled...

…He is rightly praised as the “urban mechanic,” the doer of small things like repairing potholes or collecting garbage or replacing broken streetlights to make the City more livable and attractive and safe.  But he was also the thinker of big things.  It took a big imagination to see that the Seaport District or Dudley Square could take the shape they have taken, or the East Boston or Charlestown waterfront or Franklin Park.  He spoke often and with real passion about his agenda for racial healing, about making the City a welcome place for people of color and immigrants.  Many of the small mechanics connected to that big agenda.  I love and he loved the moniker of “urban mechanic;” but there was more to Tom Menino than that.

The morning of that fateful Marathon last year, I went to visit Tom in the hospital.  He never missed a Marathon but his doctors told him he would have to miss this one.  He asked me to perform the mayor’s traditional duty and crown the elite male winner.  I was honored to do so.  When the bombs went off later that day, and we had a full-blown crisis to manage, we were in touch but we understood that he needed to recover, and that staying put was best for him.  But he checked himself out the hospital to be present with us and for us – and that show of strength and resolve helped Boston be strong again.

Angela, I know your heart is broken.  He told me once that his favorite thing in the world -- ever better than shopping -- was to be home for dinner with you.  He rarely went out to his weekly round of Saturday night events without you, so at least you could be together. It seems especially sad that he would be taken just at the point when you got his undivided attention.  We promise to be there for you to help fill some small part of this huge void.  And we thank you for the grace and strength you have shown in these difficult days and weeks, and in all the days of your lives together.

Last Sunday, when Diane and I visited him in the hospital for the last time, Tom was alert but having trouble speaking.  The last real conversation we had was by phone the week before when he urged me to have fun in these last couple of months as governor and said “don’t let the knuckleheads get you down.”  Classic, succinct and useful advice from one of the best.

Tom Menino, thank you for being my friend, for making time for the meek as well as the mighty, for coaching this newcomer as you have so many others, and for the exceptional example of honorable public service not just as the job you did, but the man you were.  May God rest your soul and give peace and comfort to us all.