Ray Flynn

I read Boston Herald reporter Gayle Cawley’s piece (“Ed Flynn  defends his dad,” Dec. 30) and wanted to comment that everything Ed Flynn said about his dad was 100% correct. I have been friends with Ray Flynn going back to the late ’70s when I was 24 years old and he 33. I knew him when he was a young Southie state rep and when he was on the old 9-member City Council. I was with him when he ran for mayor in 1983.

When it came to race relations in this city, there was no better or more responsible leader who always tried to bring people together than Ray Flynn. Even during the turmoil of forced busing, Ray was a voice of calm and reason. Both sides of the busing would often get angry with him for not fully supporting their cause and viewpoint.

I never saw him as a right-leaning demagogue of which this city had plenty. He truly was very much a populist. He always sought to do what was right, not what was easy.

Chuck Stuart’s case surely brought out the worst in us, most of us including elected officials and newspaper publishers too. Too many of us fell hook, line and sinker for the Stuart fable.

No politician is perfect. We are human, we make errors of judgement and action. Looking back I am sure Ray Flynn was not that happy with his actions or that of most of Boston’s elected leaders. However, what gets lost is that after the case ended, Mayor Flynn went to the Mission Hill projects and apologized for his actions and the city’s actions. He surely recognized the hurt he caused unintentionally.

Boston has never had a mayor who truly understood the city neighborhoods and the city’s residents as well as Mayor Flynn. His son, Eddie Flynn is also right, race relations will most likely never really be solved but it is something you work at everyday. He learned that by example following his father doing his job from the time when he was a young boy.

It is easy to apologize 34 years after the fact but much harder when you show up at a project door not knowing the response one might get.

Sal Giarratani

East Boston

Ukraine

The war in Ukraine that started November 2022 is still going on with no stoppage after two years. The United States has supplied Ukraine with $75 billion which includes humanitarian, financial and military support. President Joseph Robinette Biden is urging Congress to pass $61.4 billion with additional support for Ukraine. Putin is up for reelection for president in Russia in March 2024, it’s predictable he’ll win. I understand President Zelenskyy will never give up and President Putin will never give up. To stop a war requires a third country to step in and start the process of negotiating a truce between the two countries and believe this will happen after Nov. 5, 2024.

Tony Meschini

Scituate