Sheila Russell, former mayor of Cambridge, dies at 87 – The Boston Globe

A lifelong Cambridge resident who entered politics after her husband, former Cambridge mayor Leonard J. Russell, died in workplace, Mrs. Russell served on the Metropolis Council for 14 years. She was 87 and her well being had been failing when she died Dec. 12 in her Cambridge residence.

A mom of 5, Mrs. Russell supported her husband’s political ambitions and had by no means run for workplace when he died, at age 52, in January 1985 following surgical procedure.

A few of his supporters, together with her personal kinfolk, thought she ought to then comply with in her husband’s public service footsteps.

“We have been sitting across the day of the funeral and speaking,” Mrs. Russell advised The Crimson, Harvard College’s scholar newspaper, in 1996, when she turned mayor. “I assumed they have been kidding after they stated, ‘Why don’t you run?’ “

They weren’t joking and she or he quickly was a candidate.

She was elected to the Metropolis Council in 1985 and served till 1999. When she left her council put up, The Boston Globe reported that Sheila and Leonard Russell had been the one spouses to each function Cambridge mayor.

In Cambridge, the council elects the mayor by majority vote from amongst its ranks to preside over the council and chair the College Committee. Mrs. Russell was mayor in 1996 and 1997.

When she left the council, the Globe reported that her accomplishments had included hiring Bobbie D’Alessandro as faculties superintendent, serving to prepared the ground for town to open the Cambridge Citywide Senior Heart in 1995, and being a part of the efforts to ascertain the anticrime job power in North Cambridge.

The Russell Youth and Group Heart in West Cambridge is known as for her, and she or he additionally was a key backer of bringing the Irish Famine Memorial to Cambridge Widespread. Mrs. Russell invited Mary Robinson, Eire’s then-president, to preside and converse on the 1997 dedication ceremony.

All through the political careers of Sheila and Leonard Russell, their household was a part of the couple’s Metropolis Council campaigns.

“Each two years, come August, we knew what we needed to do: placing indicators up, going door to door, holding indicators, going to fund-raisers,” stated their son, Lenny of Hull. “All of us chipped in, all 5 of us.”

He added that his father was “happiest when he was in Cambridge politics, and my mom, too. They liked the constituents and so they preferred the campaigns.”

Sheila and Leonard weren’t the identical as candidates, councilors, or mayors, nevertheless, their son stated.

“Individuals preferred to say she was the brains of the operation,” Lenny stated. “My father was the enjoyable politician. My mom was the good politician.”

Sheila T. Doyle was born in Cambridge in 1935 and grew up in North Cambridge, a daughter of James Doyle, an iron employee, and Lillian Sullivan Doyle, a homemaker.

The North Cambridge of her youth was tight-knit to the purpose of being cautious of outsiders, Sheila Russell recalled in a 1995 Globe interview.

Some neighbors by no means considered Lillian as actually from North Cambridge, “despite the fact that my mom lived there for many of her life and married a person who was born and raised there,” Mrs. Russell stated. “She was all the time thought-about an outsider, the woman from East Cambridge.”

The third of 4 siblings, Sheila graduated from what was then St. John’s Excessive College in Cambridge and wrote for the coed newspaper.

“She was a really artistic author,” stated her sister, Nancy Navin of Hingham. “She gave a variety of her effort and time to high school issues, as a result of that was her nature. No matter she was concerned in, she labored the toughest at.”

Sheila met Leonard Russell at a dance placed on by a faculty related to what was then Our Girl of Pity Church in North Cambridge, which was known as the French church as a result of so many French-Canadian residents attended Mass there.

“It was an actual romance from the get-go,” her sister stated. “And so they all the time danced lots. They have been excellent on the dance ground collectively.”

Mrs. Russell spent a lot of her early grownup years elevating the couple’s kids.

“She was mom,” her sister stated. “She labored laborious at that. She had 5 kids, so it wasn’t simple to maintain monitor of all of them.”

For the final dozen or so years of his life, Mr. Russell was an government of a Cambridge waste disposal agency, in accordance with his Globe obit.

As politicians, he and Mrs. Russell each campaigned and served as independents.

“I got here from a really nonpolitical household myself,” she advised The Crimson in 1996. “My husband received me into politics. Now I’m a junkie.”

Her sister stated Mr. Russell “was an actual highly effective persona,” and that Mrs. Russell’s life “previous to her public life was supporting his efforts. She discovered her personal footing when she turned a metropolis councilor. She liked it.”

Mrs. Russell’s humorousness was an asset in public life.

“She had typical Irish wit. Any dangerous second, she might flip it proper round,” her son stated.

Sullivan stated Mrs. Russell “might take a tricky scenario and produce a ‘sit back’ to it.

“She took the time to hearken to folks, which I feel was key,” he added. “Caring for constituent companies was huge — caring for individuals who didn’t have a voice. Generally folks would get misplaced in purple tape. Sheila could be their champion.”

He stated the phrases on the Irish Famine Memorial on Cambridge Widespread captured her method to public service: “By no means Once more Ought to a Individuals Starve in a World of A lot.”

“That’s how she felt,” Sullivan stated, “and that’s why she cared about individuals who in any other case would have fallen by means of the cracks.”

Along with her son, Lenny, and sister, Nancy, Mrs. Russell leaves three daughters, Eileen Struzziery of Hull, Nancy Grabowski of Somerville, and Katie Somers of Peabody; 10 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. One other son, William, died in 2019.

A funeral Mass was stated Tuesday in Saint John the Evangelist Church in North Cambridge.

In a Globe interview a number of weeks after she turned mayor, Mrs. Russell spoke about how outfitting her workplace reminded her of the rising function of ladies in main Cambridge authorities.

Joined by Kathy Born, who was then a metropolis councilor, Mrs. Russell “went right down to storage to see if there was any furnishings left that I might use,” she recalled in 1996.

“We discovered all these stunning portraits of distinguished white males,” she stated. “I’ve all of them hanging in my workplace. It’s only a reminder of how far now we have come.”

Bryan Marquard might be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.