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In that era, “Boston politics was a struggle for the spoils of government between the Irish and the Boston Brahmins,” said former US representative Chester G. Atkins. “Joe was a significant part of moving politics beyond that to something that was professionalized, that was governed by rules and fairness, and on delivering services to everybody, not just to certain ethnic groups.”
Mr. Slavet, who also had been the first leader of the anti-poverty agency Action for Boston Community Development, was 104 when he died May 4 in NewBridge on the Charles in Dedham, where he had been living.
As a key Boston official from the late-1940s into the 1960s, Mr. Slavet was “in a lot of ways the last living link to the transition of Boston from James Michael Curley to Hynes” and beyond, said Atkins, who before Congress had served in the Massachusetts House and Senate.
“Joe was in the scrum for a long time and was always respected as being thoughtful,” said Larry DiCara, a former Boston city councilor.
“Looking back, he was fearless, even when he was on a public payroll,” DiCara said. “He let it be known when he thought something was right or something was wrong. Some might have thought of him as a bit of a scold.”
In June 1960, amid what Mr. Slavet called the “frustrating and bitter experiences with the multimillion-dollar Prudential Center and Government Center projects,” he published a detailed and concise essay in The Boston Globe, breaking down why construction was lagging.
“Many of the crises, snarls, and wrangles which have beset the two projects can be attributed to planning pitfalls,” he wrote, detailing everything from an inhospitable tax climate to “the absence of a single city agency staffed by experience professionals to pull all the pieces together, to harmonize conflicting viewpoints, and to keep things moving.”
After his leadership roles with the Boston Municipal Research Bureau and ABCD, Mr. Slavet moved into academia, first at Boston University, where he held a leadership role with the urban affairs department, and then at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he was a senior fellow at the McCormack Institute.
“He transitioned from a player in government and quasi-government entities to being an academic and was a pioneer in the early academic programs that looked at urban crises,” Atkins said.
In those university roles, “Joe was one of the earliest, and perhaps the earliest and most comprehensive thinker, about what we call today workforce housing,” Atkins said. “A lot of his work on housing is as relevant today as when he wrote it in the ‘70s and ‘80s.”
Born in Boston on March 31, 1920, Joseph S. Slavet was a son of American-born Anna Adelman Slavet, and Dan Slavet.
In a 2007 interview for the Veterans History Project that is in the Library of Congress, Mr. Slavet said his father was born in an area that was then part of Russia, and had arrived in the United States as a teenager. Mr. Slavet said his father had been an apprentice plumber who later worked in a plumbing and hardware supply business.
The older of two brothers, Mr. Slavet graduated from English High School and was a professional musician by his teen years.
“By 15, I was in a jazz band that played in ballrooms throughout New England,” he said in the Veterans History Project oral history.
He said he used his saxophonist income from those regional gigs to pay his way through Boston University, after turning down an offer to join a nationally touring band that would have paid the equivalent of about $3,000 a week in today’s dollars.
While a BU student, he learned that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. “When I heard that, I turned to my mother and I told her that I think my life has taken another turn,” he recalled.
Serving in the Army, he landed in Normandy, France, seven days into the D-Day invasion. A gunnery officer, he was in charge of 40mm anti-aircraft weapons.
His unit was in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. A few months later, the unit discovered a mass grave near a concentration camp.
“This was my first personal experience of what Hitler had done to the Jews,” he said in the oral history.
“Our officers were so enraged,” he recalled, and his unit insisted that because of their complicity with the Nazis, residents of the nearby village should remove the remains of those in the mass grave and give them all proper burials. Among those in the village there was “a lot of handwringing and denying and crying,” he said.
Back home after the war, Mr. Slavet resumed his education. Having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from Boston University, he received a master’s in history from BU and a master’s in public administration from Syracuse University.
He also met Muriel Vigor at a dance. They married in 1947 and raised their family in West Roxbury. Mrs. Slavet died in 2011, and Mr. Slavet had lived in the Orchard Cove retirement community in Canton before moving to NewBridge on the Charles.
Staying involved in public policy research long after his colleagues had retired, Mr. Slavet “didn’t stop working,” said his daughter Beth of Washington, D.C. “He always said he did some of his best work in his 80s.”
Mr. Slavet “was generally regarded as the straightest of straight arrows,” DiCara said.
A service has been held for Mr. Slavet, who in addition to Beth leaves two other daughters, Amy Glaser of Easton and Julie of Philadelphia; four grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren.
Mr. Slavet spoke only Yiddish when he started school as a boy, and he delivered his Bar Mitzvah speech in Yiddish. Just before turning 104, he attended his great-grandson’s bris “and he spoke so eloquently there,” Beth said. “He had an incredible life.”
Through his work in public service and academia, Mr. Slavet had a career “that spanned the significant transition of Boston from a city in decline to a city that once again became a city on a hill, and he was a pioneer in the marriage of higher education and municipal policy,” Atkins said.
“To the very end Joe was calling balls and strikes, commenting on politics, calling people out who were self-serving, and praising people who were acting in the public interest.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.
Local News
A Boston man who allegedly assaulted a transgender woman at a Blue Line MBTA station on Halloween is facing charges of assault and violating the victim’s civil rights, officials said.
Gregory Burnett, 53, pleaded not guilty to assault and battery causing serious bodily injury, assault and battery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (his foot), and a civil rights violation with injury, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said.
The woman, 41, told police that another passenger boarded the train at Maverick, immediately approached her, and shouted “derogatory terms” at her, the DA said. Burnett allegedly said statements including “you’re not a woman, you’re a man.”
Burnett then punched and kicked her, including in the crotch area. The woman tried to defend herself, the DA said, but Burnett grabbed her foot and caused her to fall and fracture her wrist.
Other passengers helped the woman defend herself against Burnett and get him off the train, officials said.
The woman reported the incident to police the next day and said “she felt targeted due to her gender identity based on Burnett’s remarks during the assault,” the DA said.
MBTA police used witness descriptions and surveillance video to identify Burnett and apprehend him at Maverick last Tuesday, according to Hayden’s office.
Burnett was initially held in jail after being found dangerous in court, but was released last week on conditions to stay at home outside of work hours, according to court records. With a GPS, he is confined to his home outside of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. He is also required to maintain employment, stay away from any witnesses, not commit any further offenses, and not possess any firearms.
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Book Club
Last month, “The Boston Globe Story of the Celtics,” a comprehensive book of nearly every recorded moment in Celtics history, was released. The book’s editor Chad Finn, a sports columnist for The Boston Globe and Boston.com, collected hundreds of Celtics stories written by renowned sports reporters, such as Bob Ryan and Jackie MacMullan, since the team’s inception in 1946.
For Boston.com’s Book Club, Finn joined Boston.com sports writer Hayden Bird to discuss his process and insights in editing his book. Watch the full video, or read highlights of the discussion below.
Below is an abbreviated version of the discussion, which has been edited and condensed for clarity.
With something like this, where it’s a compilation of the Globe‘s coverage of the Celtics throughout their mutual histories, the one thing you’re really wondering about is: Was everything covered?
I think it was a little bit more complicated, a little bit more reason to worry about it, with the Celtics book because of the race element with Bill Russell. Did they cover some of the stuff that players endured back then? Not being able to eat with their teammates when they would go to North Carolina for an exhibition game or something like that. So it was very satisfying, and also a bit of a relief, to find out that the Globe … had covered every single step, every single significant story along the way with the Celtics, from their launch in 1946 until putting out banner No. 18 a couple of weeks ago.
The first thing you have to do is sit down and make a thorough list of every significant thing chronologically that happened in Celtics history. Once you have that list of 450 different things that happened in Celtics lore, then you go into the archives and you say, “Do we have this?”
A lot of it is also our researcher, Jerry Manion, who’s just an absolute expert at finding what you’re looking for. I can’t tell you how many times in putting this book together where I would message Jerry and say, “Can you find that?” and I’d have it five minutes later. To be able to have that kind of support when you’re putting together a project that could be overwhelming is incredible. I’m incredibly grateful for that.
The game stories and the stories from the coverage tended to be play by play, whereas nowadays, it’s a little bit of a look ahead, or a little bit of context on what you just saw, because you know about Jayson Tatum’s dunk and Jaylen Brown’s three-pointer that tied the game. Back then, that was news to you in the morning. You didn’t see it yourself.
One is Bob Ryan’s lead when they drafted Larry Bird. Red Auerbach took him while he still had a year left of college in Indiana State because back then there was a loophole … where you could draft a player if his college class had graduated.
Bob Ryan had seen Larry Bird play in person. He knew what Red had just pulled off, and his lead basically said Red didn’t just look like he swallowed the canary, it looked like he swallowed the whole aviary — perfect lead for Larry Bird. The whole column turned out to be prescient about how Larry’s career would go. I have some favorite stories in the book, but that one would be right up there in the top five just because of how he started it, how he wrote it, and how right he was.
I learned that the quality of writing really elevated in the late ‘60s. People took more chances with their writing.
In 1969, Leigh Montville got hired at the Globe, and I think if you asked every Globe columnist that has worked here the last 50 years, they would tell you Leigh Montville was the best columnist of all in terms of pure writing ability. He was lyrical, and he joined the beat covering the Celtics in Bill Russell’s last year.
There was another writer at the same time named Bob Sales. His style was very easy to read and thoughtful, and did not shy away from opinions that probably were considered pretty progressive at the time. He was very supportive of the Black players on the Celtics. I thought Bob Sales, even more than Leigh Montville because he came before him, was somebody who really changed the style of writing about the Celtics and the approach that people took to it.
Then a whole different topic, but Bob Ryan came around. He started the Globe the same day as [Peter] Gammons in 1968 as interns. When he took over the NBA beat in the early ‘70s, it changed everything.
If there was an incident, or if they were not treated as equals — which happened a lot — to their white teammates, the Globe wrote about it. And I wasn’t sure going into the book if that was going to be the case, and it was.
There are still misconceptions about how the Celtics handled race, and a big part of that is because their team — that a certain generation remembers so well — is Bird, McHale, Danny Ainge. There was a perception: Oh yeah, Celtics, Boston, White. I mean they had the best white players, but it had nothing to do with race why they were here, and Celtics history tells you that.
Look at Celtics history, and Red just wanted to win. He didn’t care about the race or color of his players. He just wanted the best players, and that was well ahead of its time back then.
You get into the eighties, and Magic and Bird change the game in a bunch of different ways — saying they save the league really isn’t an exaggeration. To have grown up watching that, it was really cool to be able to get into that phase of the book where we are doing things that I remember and that I witnessed.
But it was the hardest chapter in the book to edit, and it’s by far the biggest chapter in the book, for two reasons. Obviously they accomplished a lot, and they won the three titles in that era, and there were so many memorable games, the Lakers and the rivalry, the Sixers, and later on the Pistons. And with a book like this, you can’t just put the championships in it. There were so many games that resonated with people along the way.
The other thing was the quality of the writing was mind-blowing. It was Bob Ryan at the peak of his powers; it was Dan Shaughnessy, Montville; Jackie MacMullan came along in the late ‘80s. So the hardest thing I had to do with this book was pick which story to use without being redundant when two or three of them wrote about the same subject. Which one do I use?
I dedicated the book to my daughter who’s the biggest Celtics fan I know. I also dedicated to Bob Ryan, who is my writing hero.
I also think just writing about the family aspect of it — that’s become a really big thing with the Celtics themselves. I’ve never seen a team that was as connected and as willing to allow people around the players, their kids, their wives, to be as big a part of things as the 2024 Celtics were.
I think it bonded them together even more where they’ve developed this culture, where it’s just greater than what they have on the court.
Catch up on the latest Boston.com Book Club pick and join the virtual author discussions.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu spoke to a joint committee on Beacon Hill Wednesday to advance her revised tax proposal.
The mayor urged lawmakers to approve it in time for Gov. Maura Healey’s signature. Wu called the revised plan, with more protections for small businesses, a compromise, balancing the needs of residents and the business community.
Boston’s commissioner of assessing used a paperclip as a visual aid during the presentation to lawmakers to illustrate a new balance: An effort to offset revenue losses caused by vacant business space by shifting and increasing the tax burden onto commercial properties.
“We need residents to have enough money in their pockets at the end of every month to go out and support our businesses,” Wu said.
She warned that homeowners could face steep property tax increases without the plan, which would likely be passed on to renters.
Lawmakers, however, pushed back, questioning the city’s financial needs.
“We all have to think about tightening our belts,” said Massachusetts State Sen. Susan Moran.
Wu countered, citing the need to address long-overdue salary adjustments for municipal workers.
“We had to sort of adjust the salaries after about four years of not having cost-of-living increases for municipal workers — the police contract, for example,” she explained.
Mayor Michelle Wu announced that she’s reached a deal to temporarily raise tax rates for local businesses amid a revenue shortfall.
The revised proposal includes measures to protect small businesses, such as raising the personal property tax exemption threshold from $10,000 to $30,000.
Still, some critics remain unconvinced. Business owner Lou Murray argued the tax hike would ultimately trickle down to consumers.
“You tax somebody, they pass on the cost down the ladder,” Murray said.
Supporters like Boston resident Chaton Green said the tax proposal is critical for those already struggling on fixed incomes.
“I was sitting next to a 90-year-old woman, and she said, ‘I still have to work.’ And that broke me,” Green shared.
Because the proposal would temporarily raise Boston’s commercial property tax rate above the state limit, the mayor needs legislative approval to pass it on to the governor.
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