Funeral for mayor menino biography

BOSTON (AP) — Thomas Menino, Boston’s longest-serving mayor and one of the most beloved, was remembered at his funeral Monday as “the doer of small things,” a city leader less interested in the national political stage than the day-to-day minutiae of running the city, from making sure garbage was picked up to improving public schools.

Menino’s City Hall successor, Mayor Marty Walsh, opened the private ceremony at Most Precious Blood Parish in Hyde Park, where Menino was baptized and served as an altar boy, by hailing him as a “relentless, big-hearted, people-loving urban mechanic.”

“He’s has gone to fix potholes in heaven,” Walsh said to laughter.

Walsh said Menino, who died Thursday at the age of 71, “believed in underdogs” because the former insurance salesman who rose to become mayor knew what it meant to be underestimated.

“He didn’t believe in old Boston and new Boston.

He beli