Valley Politics Photo Review

Look back and remember.

Recently I was rummaging through my vaults and came across these old pictures. Most of them originally appeared in The Baystate Objectivist and are now out of print. In a Valley in which, politically at least, we too often stumble down Amnesia Lane, let these pics help us to reclaim our past.

This 2004 photo was taken at the second meeting of the state-imposed Financial Control Board and shows then Mayor Charlie Ryan and City Council President Dominic Sarno. If Charlie seems to be looking at Sarno a little apprehensively then he may have had good reason - Sarno would eventually take his job!

The old veteran teaching the young pup as FCB Chairman Alan LaBovidge walks past in the background. 

This photo shows the Sampsons, father and son, at their Pine Point music shop, shortly after it was robbed at gunpoint. The crime was never solved. In the left hand corner notice a poster for Tony MacAlpine, one of my classmates at The World Famous Thomas M. Balliet Elementary School who went on to have a successful career as a West coast rock star and sessions musician. 

 

Here is legendary Springfield activist Bob Powell (husband of Karen) and Pete Sygnatore, who has earned rave reviews as the man who cleaned up Springfield's notoriously corrupt Liquor License Commission. I believe this picture was taken at Charlie Ryan's 2004 inaugural. 

I think this picture was taken at the same inaugural. It shows in the back row State Senator Brian Lees, State Senator Tommy Petrolati, State Sen. Buoniconti, Superintendent Joe Burke and former Springfield Mayor Ted Dimauro. In the front row are City Councilors Jose Tosado, Kateri Walsh and Bud Williams with City Clerk Bill Metzger. 

Here is former Clerk Metzger taking notes at a Control Board meeting. The FCB ultimately decided that City Hall could not get a fresh start or create a new culture as long as such an old-timer like Metzger was around, and he was gently forced out. This picture captures a sense of his growing isolation during his last days. 

Oh wow, it's the beloved Playtown, where many a Springfield school skipper squandered many a quarter!

A motley crew gathers at STCC: Springfield City Councilor Bill Foley, his cousin Congressman Richard Neal and Councilor Bud Williams in 1999.

 



Longtime Springfield civil rights activist Attorney Mickey Harris at a MassGOP convention in 1994.

The old McNamara's bar at Stearns Square. It was a classic longtime establishment forced out of business by the Albano Administration in order to hand over the location to a cartel of Albano insiders. Remodeled and renamed The Pour House, it became notorious as the preferred hangout for the sleaziest elements of local politics, in particular the Ardolino Gang. 

The dean of Western Mass TV broadcasters, Ray Hershel, at a Police Commission meeting during the Meara era. I don't recognize the person next to him. 

Activist Eamon T. O'Sullivan, who is best known for attacking local pols with his answering machine messages, relaxes at Russell's Restaurant in Pine Point with the owner, Sandy Russell in 2003. 

 



Eamon used to occasionally come on The Tony Gill Show on WAIC. Here he is advising former Chicopee Mayor Richard Kos during a commercial break. 

In City Hall, insurance guru (now School Committee member) Chris Collins watches as finance guru Mary T. walks past in 2004. 

Today Bo Sullivan is best known as WHYN's long-running morning co-host. At the time I took this photo of him at the WHYN studios he was the producer for The Dan Yorke Show in the mid 90's.

I'll be searching through my vaults periodically and showing whatever other gems I find.