Paul McCann

Paul McCann/28 April 2022

??“If you seek his monument, look around you.”?That is the inscription indicating the resting place of Sir Christopher Wren at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, a church which he designed over a period of almost 50 years.?The same can be said for Paul McCann who passed away this winter.

Paul was a son of South Boston who spent five decades working at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, trying very hard not to get his name in the newspaper.?He did not suffer the fate of other senior city officials who tried so hard to get their names and faces in papers and magazines that their zeal limited their effectiveness. Paul did his work quietly, purposefully, carefully.?He had his own methods for identifying problems and solving them. He was a mentor to many and counselor to even more. It was no surprise that Paul was one of the first recipients of the Henry L. Shattuck Award presented by the Boston Municipal Research Bureau.

I expect a Google search will not reveal many fingerprints.?He wanted it that way.?He would conduct meetings with the benefit of a manilla folder upon which he would take notes.?No thumb drives for Paul!?His word was good, which was why over a period of some 50 years, he worked for almost a dozen BRA directors and served as acting director on many occasions of one of the city’s most important agencies.

Paul was humble. He didn’t talk very much about how tough it was growing up as the middle child of 11 in South Boston.?He enjoyed time sailing his boat and talking about his children and grandchildren.?

If anyone suggests a major deal in Boston of the last fifty years, Paul was in the room but preferred that no one reported that he was in the room.?

Paul loved Boston. He understood the powers of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, having started there as an office boy when he was a teenager when it was just a glimmer in Mayor Hynes’ eye.?He was at the table for all of the major developments in which I participated in one fashion or another: Quincy Market, Copley Place, Charlestown Navy Yard, Post Office Square Park to name a few.?He was there when we put together the package for the new Converse headquarters and the new Liberty Mutual building in the Back Bay, and the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum.?He had a great memory for details and a great sense of history and a great instinct for what would fly and what would not. Boston could use more selfless public servants like Paul McCann

YES, if you seek his monument, look around Boston.?