BSO: On Bennett Walsh

I first met Bennett Walsh around the turn of the century in the studios of WHYN radio located next to the Springfield Civic Center. It was just after we finished taping The Reporter's Roundtable starring Kateri Walsh. Here's Kateri last year on the right with my sister Beverly.

On the day I met Kateri's son, about a half dozen of us were standing around chatting in the office area just outside the broadcasting studio when Bennett, who was home on leave at the time, showed up dressed in his Marine uniform to escort his mother to a late lunch at The Fort. Somehow, the conversation turned to the Macarena, a turn of the century dance craze we old fogie media types had heard of, but knew nothing about.

"Oh it goes like this!" Bennett exclaimed, and then proceeded to demonstrate for us how it was done. The sight of this uniformed Marine doing this silly dance for us had the guests, producers and office workers all roaring with laughter.

But there was no one laughing decades later when Bennett had to appear in court last week for the conclusion of a bullshit array of charges stemming from the inadvertent deaths of residents of the Holyoke Soldier's Home, where Walsh was the director, in the confusing early days of the Covid panic.

There was no evidence that any of the mistakes made contributing to the deaths were done on purpose or could have been done differently based on the information that was available at the time. The whole tragedy was obviously just one of those awful things that happen for which no one can be justifiably blamed.

But having a different agenda was then Attorney General Maura Healey, who for purely political reasons decided to exploit the tragedy to advance her campaign for governor by insisting on bringing charges against Walsh and others. The ruse worked, as Healey did indeed become the next governor. However, this week the court agreed that the charges were overblown. As the Associated Press explained:

....the court had to take into account the fact that this was in the early days of the pandemic when the dangers of the disease were poorly understood and the facility, like many nursing homes at the time, was hamstrung by a lack of staffing and limited testing. They also argued that Walsh raised the alarm about conditions at the home but that those warnings didn’t go up the chain of command.

Maura Healey of course knew all this when she cruelly extended the suffering of all concerned by dragging out the process so she could grandstand over the tragedy for her own political gain, completely indifferent to the suffering she caused. Here is a picture that appeared in the Boston Herald the day after the charges against Walsh were all but dismissed with only three months probation. The picture shows Bennett Walsh looking like a broken man a long way removed from the dancing soldier in the WHYN studios.

As Massachusetts falls into a doom loop brought on by the waves of illegal immigrants swamping the state because Maura Healey refuses to repeal our ridiculous guaranteed housing laws, she may well come to be regarded as the most terrible governor in Massachusetts history.

We already know she should also come to be regarded as a terrible human being.