Op-Ed; From ordinary folks, extraordinary deeds

THOMAS M. KEANE JR.
838 words
18 October 2002
Boston Herald
All Editions
017
English
(Copyright 2002)

Packing to move his office in 1984, Sam Tyler found an old photo of a display window at Filene's. Amidst the well-tailored mannequins was a small exhibit honoring a couple of Boston's municipal employees.

Tyler, then and now executive director of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, was struck by the idea behind the display. The Research Bureau, it turned out, had sponsored that exhibit in 1960 but, lasting only two years, it was a half-hearted effort.

Tyler decided to revive it. Last night, for the 17th year in a row, the Research Bureau made good on that effort, giving its Shattuck Awards to seven exceptional city employees who, Tyler says, make the city work.

The Research Bureau is an independent, business-funded watchdog group. Founded during the reformist 1930s, it spends much of its time critiquing city government. That might make it seem an odd entity to sponsor awards praising bureaucrats, but Tyler sees no contradiction. The founders of the Research Bureau believed deeply in the power and possibilities of good government.

"We are at City Hall all the time," Tyler says. "We see every day the commitment and dedication of city employees. But these people usually get no public recognition of their work. We decided to change that."

The Shattuck award is named after Henry Lee Shattuck, a businessman and politician who helped found the Research Bureau. Nominations start in March, with a letter circulated to City Hall employees asking for suggestions to be made in confidence. To win, one must be nominated by someone else. In the early days, department heads usually proposed the winners. Now, recommendations come from all quarters: bosses, co-workers, former Shattuck recipients and ordinary citizens.

Since the award's inception, Tyler says only one person has nominated himself. He didn't win.

A committee of the bureau's board of directors makes the selections. The awards are then announced in October. The winners are rarely aware they are even under consideration.

Odds are you've heard of few of this year's winners. Each holds a job most of us would think of as ordinary, yet performs it in a way that is extraordinary.

Renee Payne-Callender, for example, is a police detective who gently and sensitively investigates some of the most horrible crimes of all - sexual assaults against children. Gretchen Chalmus- Johnson, a custodian, understands that the respectful environment she creates in turn teaches respect to the kids at Roxbury's Early Learning Center. Richard Garver, a planner at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, has a vision of what the city might become that he connects with the detailed, pragmatic work of creating plans that actually get built.

In recent years, the Research Bureau has expanded the awards, adding what it calls its City Champions, usually given to one person from the business community and another from the nonprofit world. One of this year's City Champions is Robert Beal,a real estate developer who has also committed himself to a plethora of local organizations, including heading the Zoological Society and the Artery Business Committee.

The other is the Rev. Gregory Groover, pastor of the Charles Street AME Church, who has been a leader of the anti-crime Ten Point Coalition and the Black Ministerial Alliance. Groover last year provided critical support to the education-reform group Boston United for Children, which successfully pushed for crucial changes to the Boston teachers contract.

The theme of the City Champion is obvious: individuals who go beyond the demands of their everyday jobs to make a mark on the wider world.

The Research Bureau also added a category - awarded occasionally - that it calls the Chairman's Award. Given to particularly outstanding department heads (such as Police Chief Paul Evans, the late Parks Commissioner Justine Liff or Chief Financial Officer Edward Collins), this year it went to Sally Degan Glora, the city auditor. A 30-year city employee, Glora was Boston's first female auditor. But it's not her gender that got her the award; rather, she has tightened up the fiscal management in ways that make Boston one of the better-run U.S. cities.

Still, the heart of the Shattuck is its original idea of picking out relatively anonymous people and celebrating their accomplishments. Aside from the three mentioned earlier, the list includes two police officers (Sgt. Michael O'Connor and Patrolman Stephen Hofferty) who pioneered community policing long before it was officially adopted by the department; an organizer of youth sports for the Parks Department (William Ryan) and a more-than-full- time paraprofessional (Renee Beckett-Simmons) at Brighton's Hamilton school.

Even after the heroics of Sept. 11, jibes and knocks on government workers are common. Seventeen years ago Tyler understood that this was wrong. The Shattuck Awards recognize that in many respects, working for the public can be the noblest profession of all.

Tom Keane can be reached at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.

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