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14. Man of the Century
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241 14 H H H H H Man of the Century When Moakley returned from Cuba in January 1998, moviegoers were flocking to a new film set in South Boston starring twoyoungactors,MattDamonandBenAffleck,called“Good Will Hunting.” Both played typical working-class young men, but Damon ’s character, Will, an adopted child, was a math genius. Will wouldn’t leave South Boston to cross the river to Cambridge where he might have gone to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; but through the efforts of his buddy, a girlfriend, and a quirky psychologist, Will learns to confront his inner demons and realize his potential. The film surfaced one of the great themes in American fiction: the talented lad from an insular community that views ambition with suspicion and social climbing as disloyalty. Joe Moakley’s great skill was to balance these contrasting values of ambition and community loyalty. In the last years of his life he made a significant contribution toward physically transforming his neighborhood, much the way Will transformed himself; and to play out his role on the world stage. Moakley would cross the seas to El Salvador, Cuba, and the Vatican, and come home to South Boston a hero. No one else could champion the cause of foreign aid to Salvadoran farmers, negotiate with Fidel Castro, and yet win the admiration of South Boston. Moakley was that rare politician of provincial origin whose empathy grew throughout his career. H H H In the early 1990s, Moakley put forward a new vision for the Seaport District of South Boston, located across the channel from the downtown Fort Point neighborhood and northeast of the residential end of the peninsula above Summer Street. There a series of disused piers jutted into 242 H joe moakley’s journey the Boston Inner Harbor, facing Logan Airport, and a tangle of railroad tracks and parking lots cluttered the landscape. Its sole attractions were the World Trade Center office complex, set on the Commonwealth Pier, two neighboring fancy restaurants—Jimmy’s Harborside and Anthony’s Pier Four—and a charming relic called the No Name, where workingclass diners could get a good cheap fish chowder. Moakley had moved his office to the World Trade Center in the 1980s. He could look out at the Fan Pier, named for the shape of the railroad tracks now overgrown with weeds. A decade earlier, far-sighted officials in the state and city administrations pondered a much bigger urban planning problem. Highway 93 sliced through downtown Boston on giant stanchions, separating the North End from downtown, casting malignant shadows and rendering much of downtown generally unappealing. The highway choked with traffic during rush hours, sending impatient motorists onto already clogged city streets. During the 1980s, Governor Michael Dukakis and his transportation secretary, Fred Salvucci, boldly resolved to depress the Central Artery and add a third tunnel to Logan Airport. A project engineer for what later became known as the “Big Dig,” more formally as the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project, remarked that the construction challenge was akin to performing heart surgery on an ambulatory patient. The attendant political and financial problems would vex planners and politicians for a generation. Moakley joined a succession of governors, his House colleagues, and senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry in shaking loose $13 billion from federal and state coffers to complete the most expensive construction project in American history.1 Meanwhile, federal judges in the District Court and Court of Appeals chafed at lodgings they felt to be inadequate to handle the region’s growing caseload. Located in a twenty-two-story 1933 building just off Boston’s Post Office Square, justices led by Stephen Breyer, Douglas D. Woodlock, and Moakley’s 1970 primary campaign rival David Nelson began pressing city and state officials for a new location, and the General Services Administration for a new building. A flow of communications began among all three levels of government, all three branches of the federal government , and a variety of neighborhood civic associations. The downtown business groups and Mayor Flynn advocated a site near New Chardon Street and the Government Center.2 [54.167.52.238] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:12 GMT) man of the century H 243 Moakley literally had his eye on the Fan Pier, which he could see from his window. He argued that for security purposes, a free-standing building bounded by water would be best. The justices liked the idea. The Fan Pier was a potentially magnificent...