Boston, MA
Henry Lee, self-effacing savior of the Boston Public Garden, dies at 99 – The Boston Globe
Mr. Lee, an unlikely hero in a development battle that remains a storied chapter in Boston history, died Monday night in Beverly Hospital of cardiac arrest. He was 99 and had divided his time between Beacon Hill and Beverly Farms.
For more than 40 years, he led the Friends of the Public Garden from its origins in a Back Bay living room to its pivotal role as a powerful guardian of Boston landmarks.
Having served in the US Foreign Service earlier in his life, Mr. Lee brought his diplomatic training to bear on negotiating with city and state officials to form private-public partnerships that protected the Public Garden and other green spaces.
And though he worked tirelessly to oppose developer Mort Zuckerman’s initial Park Plaza proposal, Mr. Lee was just as persistent at deflecting acclaim for his own efforts.
“It’s not just modesty,” he told the Globe in 1995, adding that he believed it was “counterproductive” for him to be the focus of too much praise. “Many people work very hard for the Friends,” he said. “I do all the talking, and I get the credit.”
Mr. Lee did more than simply talk, however. During his presidency, he refused to take a salary and ran much of the operation from his home — even typing all correspondence as the organization expanded its activities beyond protection and upkeep of the Public Garden.
“He used to say, ‘We can either spend money on the parks or we can have an office,’ ” said Liz Vizza, his successor as president.
As president, Mr. Lee sometimes personally injected a treatment into trees along the Commonwealth Avenue Mall to blunt the blight of Dutch elm disease. As president emeritus in his 90s, he’d stop by the organization’s office to let everyone know a park bench needed spiffing up or a plaque had slipped from its holder.
“Henry’s combination of sweeping vision with incredible persistence and hard work to get all the little details right has transformed such an important part of how we think of Boston and how we interact with one of the most foundational spaces in the city,” said Mayor Michelle Wu.
Wu praised “the care and attention” he brought “to making sure everyone all across the city can experience beauty in their day-to-day lives and find that pop of color or calming presence. He devoted his life to making sure all of us would have that gift.”
Though born into a household of very modest means, Mr. Lee carried himself with a Boston Brahmin bearing, and his extended family was woven into the city’s history. Then-Governor Frank Sargent, who supported the original Park Plaza proposal, was a relative.
After graduating from Harvard College as a scholarship student and finishing graduate work, Mr. Lee spent several years in the US Foreign Service, which provided essential diplomatic training for his future civic work.
“Henry was a mentor and an inspiration to me and to so many of us in the parks advocacy world,” Vizza said. “He really taught me the true meaning of diplomatic advocacy.”
In an increasingly acrimonious world, Mr. Lee wrapped in a blanket of polite charm his steely will to preserve history and places where anyone and everyone could gather.
“He would often say, ‘You can beat down the doors of City Hall once, but the next time you go they’re going to change the locks,’ ” Vizza recalled. “He knew that to succeed you had to work with people.”
Born in Boston on Jan. 13, 1925, Mr. Lee was the son of Henry Lee and Frances LeMoyne Lee. Though Mr. Lee, his oldest son, and his father shared a first name, none of them used Jr. or III to highlight which generation.
Mr. Lee’s father had been a stellar runner and equestrian steeplechase competitor, but injuries from riding kept him from holding most jobs. His mother had raised two children from a previous marriage in addition to Henry.
When Mr. Lee was a boy, serious ear infections left him so weak that doctors thought he wouldn’t live past 12. “I think he sort of put that forecast to shame,” said his son Henry of Brookline.
Mr. Lee attended the Brooks School in North Andover, took a year off to work in Arizona earning money for Harvard, and then graduated with a bachelor’s degree. He also received a master’s in history from Stanford University.
In 1945, while a Harvard sophomore, Mr. Lee married Joan Cabot Metcalf, whom he had met at a party.
“Dad said, ‘If I didn’t marry her, I would have lost her,’ ” their daughter Karen of Portland, Ore., told The Beacon Hill Times earlier this year.
Joan Lee, a philanthropist who held behind-the-scenes roles in civic organizations, died in 2019.
Mr. Lee’s Foreign Service postings took him to Germany and Washington, D.C., before the family moved back to Boston in the late 1950s.
He taught at Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge and was a teacher and administrator at the Dexter School in Brookline, which overlapped into the civic activism that made him a public figure as he turned to it full-time in retirement.
The Friends of the Public Garden currently has more than 3,000 members from 32 states and an annual budget of $3.6 million. Since 1970, the group has helped raise and invest about $50 million in funds for specific allocations, including maintaining trees and the upkeep of sculptures and sustaining other green spaces.
This year, the organization established the Henry Lee Fund for Boston Parks to honor his legacy of commitment.
Along with the Friends, Mr. Lee led organizations such as the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Charitable Irish Society and a host of other groups.
“I used to kid him: ‘Have you ever been in an organization you weren’t head of,’ ” said his son, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Mr. Lee, his son said, “was my guiding light. He was the one who taught me where the bar is in life: ‘If you want to be a success, this is what you have to do to achieve it.’ “
A highly successful swimmer as a youth, Mr. Lee won numerous victory trophies, but into adulthood he kept only one — for a second-place finish.
“He was in lane seven and thought he was so far ahead of everybody else, but he forgot there was a guy in lane eight, who won,” his son said. “For his whole life he kept that trophy to remind himself that you cannot do anything without giving 100 percent.”
A service will be announced for Mr. Lee, who in addition to his son Henry and daughter Karen leaves another daughter, Eliza Schierloh of Beaumont, Texas; another son, Thomas of Seattle; 10 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
“To a real extent his career began at 54,” Mr. Lee’s son Henry said.
“When Park Plaza fell into his lap,” he added, “all of a sudden all these civic opportunities came his way and he made the best of them. When you walk through the Public Garden today, you look around and say, ‘A part of this is because of him.’ “
Despite all of accomplishments, Mr. Lee was unwilling to boast even a little.
“Although I have never amounted to much, I have had interesting careers in government, education, and numerous civic and historical endeavors,” he wrote in 1998 for the 50th annual report of his Harvard College class.
Though Mr. Lee worried mightily about national and world affairs, he focused his efforts locally — including improving a park that was a stroll away from his Beacon Hill home.
“It may be rationalization, but doing something effective in small compass has seemed in many ways more rewarding than grappling futilely with larger issues,” he wrote. “In all events, I have kept busy and out of trouble.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.
Boston, MA
A crowd scientist is helping the Boston Marathon manage a growing field of 30,000-plus runners
BOSTON (AP) — Running the Boston Marathon is tough enough without having to jostle your way from Hopkinton to Copley Square.
So race organizers this year turned to an expert in crowd science to help them manage the field of more than 32,000 as it travels the 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) through eight Massachusetts cities and towns — some of it on narrow streets laid out during Colonial times.
“There are certain things that we can’t change — that we don’t want to change — because they make the Boston Marathon,” said Marcel Altenburg, a senior lecturer of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain. “Like, I’m a scientist, but I can’t be too science-y about the race. It should stay what it is because that’s what I love. That’s what the runners love.”
The world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon, the Boston race was inspired by the endurance test that made its debut at the inaugural modern Olympics in 1896 — itself a tribute to the route covered by the messenger Pheidippides, who ran to Athens with news of the Greek victory over the Persians in Marathon.
After sharing the news — “Rejoice, we conquer!” — Pheidippides dropped dead.
Organizers of the Boston race would prefer a more pleasant experience for their runners, even as the field has ballooned from 15 in 1897 to as many as 38,000 to meet demand for the 100th edition in 1996. It has settled at around 30,000 since 2015.
As the race grew, it tested the limits of the narrow New England roads and the host cities and towns, which are eager to reopen their streets for regular commutes and commerce as quickly as possible.
“It would be kind of great someday to be able to grow the race a little bit more,” race director Dave McGillivray said. “The problem with this race is that it’s about two things: time and space. We don’t have either. … So, we’re trying to be innovative.”
That’s where Altenburg comes in.
A former German army captain who runs ultra marathons himself, Altenburg has worked with all of the major races, other large sporting events, and airports and exhibitions that tend to attract large crowds on ways to keep things safe and flowing smoothly.
For the Boston Marathon, which draws hundreds of thousands of spectators in addition to the runners, his models allow him to run simulations that help him see how the race might play out under different conditions.
“We have simulated the Boston Marathon more than 100 times to run it once for real. That is the one that counts,” Altenburg said in a telephone interview. “They gave me, pretty much, all creative freedom to simulate more waves, simulate more runners and — within the existing time window — they allowed me to change pretty much anything for the betterment of the running experience.
“And then we checked every aid station, every mile, the finish, every important point, (asking): Is the result better for the runner? Is that something that we should explore further?”
The most noticeable difference on Monday will be that the runners are starting in six waves — groups organized by qualifying time — instead of three. The waves, which were first used in Boston in 2011, help spread things out so that runners don’t have to walk after the start, when Main Street in Hopkinton squeezes to just 39 feet wide.
Other, less obvious changes involve the unloading of the buses at the start, the placement of the water and aid stations, and the finish line chutes, where runners get their medals, perhaps a mylar blanket or a banana, and any medical treatment they might need.
“For an event that’s as old as ours, 130 years, it allowed us to be a startup all over again,” said Lauren Proshan, the chief of race operations and production for the Boston Athletic Association.
“The change isn’t meant to be earth-shattering. It’s to be a smooth experience from start to finish,” she said. “It’s one of those things that you work really, really hard behind the scenes and hope that no one notices — a behind-the-curtain change that makes you feel as if you’re just floating and having a great day.”
Shorter porta potty lines would also be nice.
“What I loved about working with the BAA was how aware they are of what the Boston Marathon is. And they won’t change anything lightly,” Altenburg said. “So it was very detailed work from literally the moment the race last year ended to now. That we check every single option. That we really make sure that if we change something about this historic race, then we know what we’re doing.”
The BAA will look at the feedback over the next three years before deciding about expansion or other changes.
“Fingers crossed, hope for the best, but we’ll get feedback from the participants,” McGillivray said. “And they’ll let us know whether or not it worked or not.”
But keeping the course open longer isn’t an option. And the route isn’t going to change. So there’s only so much that crowd science can help with at one of the toughest tests in sports.
“I can talk. I’m a scientist. I just press a button and it’s going to be,” Altenburg said. “But the runners still have to do it.”
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports
Boston, MA
From across Boston they flock to play for Latin Academy boys’ tennis, a co-op of 29 schools – The Boston Globe
“I’ve done a lot of different things in my life, but there’s no question in my mind that the youth development aspect of what I’ve done with kids and tennis in Boston is the most important work I’ve ever done,” said Crane, who has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to youth tennis.
Once upon a time, Crane served as a sports journalist for the New York Post, the defender general of Vermont, and the executive director of the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission.
He has been the head boys’ tennis coach at Latin Academy since 2009, and last season led the Dragons to their first Division 3 semifinal appearance in program history.
This season, the Dragons are trying to repeat that success, and are doing so with players from five Boston high schools (Latin Academy, O’Bryant, Josiah Quincy Upper, East Boston, and New Mission).
Sophomore Mayfre Moreta, a New Mission student, has never crossed paths in the school hallways with his doubles partner, Gio Waterman, who attends Latin Academy, but the pair still managed to rally from a set down to clinch the deciding No. 2 doubles point in last year’s D3 quarterfinals.
“I think [that win] speaks to our identity as a program,” said Waterman. “It’s so nice to play with all these new guys from other city schools. We share that bond of representing the city of Boston.”
Along with the unique co-op structure, Crane runs a no-cut program that carries roughly 35 kids ranging from seventh to 12th grade every year who vary from beginners to experienced tournament players.
“We don’t cut because we want to teach kids from all over the city how to play the game,” said Crane. “We want to give them a sport that they’ll play for the rest of their lives.”
Mateus Washington, a Latin Academy senior, is in his sixth, and final, year with the program. Although Washington has dueled the state’s top players at No. 1 singles this season, he is just as proud that he gets to lead his teammates every day.
Matthew J Lee/Globe staff
“It’s really cool to see how the seventh-graders of this generation look so much like I did in seventh grade,” said Washington, who has posted a 3-3 record this year. “It’s super eye-opening and enriching to be a part of their development.”
Crane recognizes that the team’s makeup is unique and oftentimes difficult to manage.
“Logistically, it’s difficult. The kids are coming from all over the city, and they can’t all show up at the same time because their schools get out at different times,” said Crane.
But above all, Crane is thankful he can give his kids — many of whom come from low-income situations — the chance to play tennis, as well as offer them summer jobs at Sportsmen’s, Franklin Park Tennis Association, and other tennis facilities around the city.
“What motivates me the most is getting to know these kids, building relationships with them, and figuring out how I can be of help to them. I want to help them grow, help them succeed on and off the court, and help them get ready for the rest of their lives.”
▪ Emily Cilley has yet to lose a match as the head coach of the Swampscott girls.
In Cilley’s first year with the program, the Big Blue (4-0) have put last season’s second-round loss to Dover-Sherborn in the rearview mirror.
Key to their success have been sophomore stars Nikki Carr and Ginger Gregoire. Carr has been dominant at first singles, posting a 4-0 record without dropping a set, and Gregoire has been a great option at second singles, logging a 3-1 record and securing the deciding 3-6, 6-1, 6-1 victory in the season opener against Bishop Fenwick.
“They are both very disciplined players who understand the balance between being cautious and being patient,” said Cilley. “Their technical skills are on point, and they aren’t intimidated by the person across from them.”
The Big Blue’s strong start has catapulted them to the top of the Northeastern Conference. They’ll look to continue their unbeaten streak against St. Mary’s next Saturday.
▪ The girls of Central Catholic are off to their best start in program history.
The Raiders boast a 6-0 record after taking down Lowell 5-0 on Saturday morning. The win was their fifth sweep of the season, with the only non-sweep coming in a 4-1 victory over Notre Dame (Tyngsborough).
Morgan Bateman has looked unstoppable at second singles, as she is yet to drop a set, and Ella Asmar has been just as impressive at third singles, posting an undefeated record.
Although Haley Wolters was responsible for the only loss by a Raiders player this season, she has logged impressive victories at first singles, such as a 6-2, 6-3 win against Chelmsford and a 6-1, 6-1 triumph over Lowell.
The Raiders have a chance to extend their winning streak to nine with matches against North Andover, Lowell, and Haverhill on the horizon, before they clash with undefeated Andover on April 30.
Webb Constable can be reached at webb.constable@globe.com. Follow him on X @webbconstable.
Boston, MA
Practice Report: Bruins Have Last Skate in Boston Before Leaving for Buffalo | Boston Bruins
“It is a division team, we’ve played them enough to know kind of what they’re about. They’ve had a great season. They’re a high rush team, a lot of speed and a lot of skill. It is going to be a fun matchup,” Lindholm said. “It is a fun challenge for us, coming in a little bit as an underdog and prove people wrong.”
Lindholm has also been quarterbacking the second power-play unit, which is primed to feature James Hagens. The 19-year-old forward signed his entry-level contract on April 8 and played in the final two games of the regular season. The B’s, however, did not get on the man advantage in either game, so Sturm has yet to see Hagens on the power play outside of practice. The coach thinks it is one of Hagens’ best assets, though.
“He doesn’t have to play or make special plays. He has some really good players on that unit. As long as he’s going to play fast and keep it simple – I think that is something that might be different from college and NHL,” Sturm said. “I think it will be fine because Buffalo, they will come, they pressure hard. So you don’t want to be surprised. You want to be quick, you want to be fast. That’s something that has to be in his mind.”
Hagens has been skating on the third line with Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov, and that stayed the same in Saturday’s practice. The three youngsters will all be playing in their first NHL postseason.
“Every night you have to give it your all. You have to give everything you possibly have. This is playoff hockey – you want to win every single game like always. Nothing changes, but there are a lot higher stakes,” Hagens said. “This is something you dream of. Something you grow up watching and praying that you could be in the moment one day and be playing in. Now that it’s reality, it’s something that is really surreal.”
After having a whirlwind start to his pro career, it has been helpful for Hagens to get full practices in with the group.
“It’s been great to be able to be out there, practice with these guys. Not only to learn the systems but to be able to talk to teammates, get feedback from coaches,” Hagens said. “Just the repetition, being able to do reps, try to learn day by day.”
The energy is palpable for Boston, but the team knows the work has just begun.
“Everyone is equal in this room. We’re a tight-knit group here, we’re all good buddies…Just go out there and play with that joy that we have in the locker room,” Lindholm said. “It is a really serious time of year, but I think within this room here, just go out there and enjoy, too. Play for each other – I think that’s how you win this time of year.”
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