Tributes to Mel King, Tim Wakefield, and other giants we lost in 2023

1966-2023

Tim Wakefield arrived in Boston in 1995 with a tenuous hold on his baseball future after being released by the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates. From that inglorious beginning, he forged an extraordinary career.

No one pitched more or longer in a Red Sox uniform than Wakefield. For 3,006 innings across 17 seasons, he employed his mystifying knuckleball to practice a form of mound sorcery. He won 186 games with the team, earned two World Series rings as a player, and, in 2009, became an All-Star as a 42-year-old.

And yet, his sudden death in October at age 57, from complications related to brain cancer, was felt so deeply less because of his on-field accomplishments than for his commitment to team, city, and community. In an organization with a long history of cornerstone players, Wakefield will be remembered as a cornerstone human being.

Wakefield believed that playing for the Red Sox was a privilege that permitted him to help others. He forged lasting relationships with innumerable cancer patients and survivors through The Jimmy Fund; with children with complex needs through his Wakefield Warriors program at Franciscan Children’s; with veterans through the Home Base program; and so many more.

Wakefield remained part of the fabric of the Sox after retirement, serving as honorary chairman of the team’s charitable foundation and making TV appearances as a NESN analyst. He had a regal presence at Fenway, a recognition of his legacy as someone who, while never the best player on the Red Sox, embodied the very best of the organization.

“He exemplifies what this uniform is,” said longtime teammate

Jason Varitek. “And it’s not just the name on the back. It’s the name on the front. It’s what he’s done in the community, what he’s represented. He exemplifies what it means to be a Red Sox.” – Alex Speier

1928 - 2023

When I think of the legacy of the great Boston trailblazer Mel King, my mind instantly turns to brunch.

Allow me to explain.

Mel and Joyce King were famous for Sunday brunches at their home in the South End. Any and all were welcome. No invitations needed. And their living room would be packed with people hoping to learn the secrets of building grass-roots political power from the undisputed master.

To his core, Mel was about nothing so much as creating community. And he was peerless at it.

King, who died in March at the age of 94, was most famous for being Boston’s first serious Black mayoral candidate. In 1983, with Boston struggling to emerge from the disorder and racist violence that accompanied court-ordered school desegregation, King and the eventual victor, Ray Flynn, waged a campaign devoted to finding a better path for the city.

Flynn prevailed, but King’s Rainbow Coalition was the beginning of the end of the white Irish stranglehold on power in the city. Decades later, people speak with pride about being part of King’s campaign, his movement.

King had a powerful presence and an unforgettable mystique. He was a state representative who never really seemed like a politician, the man who insisted on wearing dashikis on the floor of the Massachusetts House. (A longstanding rule requiring jackets and ties was scrapped after King made it clear he wouldn’t observe it.) He was a poet. He was a man who always spoke in terms of “we” not “I.”

Politicians often speak about being mere representatives of their followers, yet they rarely sound as if they mean it. But the hundreds of mourners who lined Columbus Avenue to honor King when he died told a different story. They weren’t just saying goodbye to a person. They were mourning a small piece of themselves. – Adrian Walker

1932 - 2023

To many in Boston’s Chinese-American community, he was known simply as Uncle Frank.

That would be Frank Chin, who for more than half a century was a driving force in making sure Asian-Americans had a voice in local politics and government. His passing in October, at the age of 91, marked the end of an era.

Many would agree — including Michelle Wu herself — that she would not be mayor of Boston if not for the political groundwork Chin laid in the decades before her historic election in 2021.

Chin, who was born in Boston, seemed to know instinctively that getting involved in politics would be a lifeline for the growing Asian-American community. He served as the city’s purchasing agent for three mayors — Kevin White, Ray Flynn, and Tom Menino. But he did so much more. Many saw him as the unofficial mayor of Chinatown courted by would-be mayors, governors, and other candidates for office who wanted to figure out how to win the Asian-American vote.

Politics and community-building were also family affairs for Chin, who worked closely with his brother Billy, a well-known restaurateur, to create businesses, affordable housing, and other social-service organizations in Chinatown.

As the only Asian-American columnist at the Globe, the power of Chin and his brother has never been lost on me. I can still remember having dim sum years ago with Chin, as he held court at Great Taste Bakery & Restaurant in Chinatown.

We are unlikely to see another Uncle Frank, but his legacy lives on showing generations of Asian-Americans just how much we can accomplish together. – Shirley Leung

1947 - 2023

The document the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts receives the most requests for is not Sarah Wunsch’s defense of the right to record on-duty police officers. Or her passionate argument for access to reproductive health care for trafficking victims.

Rather, it is the testimony submitted on behalf of her beloved bull terrier, Czonka, a tongue-in-cheek plea, written in the dog’s voice, opposing a bill that would have forced some dog breeds to be muzzled and chained in public. As was typical of the tiny, tenacious attorney, Wunsch succeeded. The bill failed.

As the longtime deputy legal director of the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU, Wunsch spent decades defending the underdog. If the Red Sox — her team of choice — gained an early lead, she’d start rooting for their opponent to even the scales.

When Wunsch, 75, died late this summer from complications of a stroke suffered three years earlier, her legacy continued. Her relentless pursuit of the right of the public to record on-duty police — spun out of a 2007 arrest of a fellow lawyer in Boston Common — introduced an essential check on police misconduct. Over a decade later, 17-year-old Darnella Frazier filmed the killing of George Floyd — the moment that ignited global protests and led to the murder conviction of officer Derek Chauvin.

“Despite her track record, Sarah was not an aggressive person. She was actually quite soft-spoken. She was equally at home giving an oral argument in court and at a community meeting in listening mode,” says Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. “It’s rare to be able to move from the halls of power to the street seamlessly.”

Wunsch’s legal battles brought novel, deeply human challenges before the courts, aimed at guarding a sweep of public and private conduct, including panhandling, wearing certain hairstyles in school, and providing contraceptives to victims of trafficking.

When the Trump administration blocked nationals of seven majority-Muslim countries from visiting the US, Wunsch helped secure a court order to block the ban. She was also at Logan Airport, flashing a smile and welcoming a plane of people from Iran.

“Sarah very kindly asked people in power to do what was right,” Matthew Segal, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU, wrote after she died. “And if they didn’t, she would very kindly, and with love, sue the living daylights out of them.” – Hanna Krueger

1941-2023

Why can’t we curb humans’ worst impulses to mistreat one another based on race, religion, or ethnicity before they result in appalling chapters of history? As a young schoolteacher, Margot Stern Strom posed this question, the seed of her life’s mission to combat injustice.

Through the education nonprofit Facing History & Ourselves, which she cofounded in Brookline in 1976 with colleague Bill Parsons, she prodded millions of adolescents and teachers to become “upstanders” instead of bystanders. As a middle school social studies teacher, she had attended a Holocaust workshop with Parsons and realized how little she knew about the rarely taught history of the Nazis’ systematic murder of 6 million European Jews. Teaching without that knowledge, Strom later told interviewers, made her part of the silence that prevented her students from finding parallels between the past and current moral questions.

Growing up as a Chicago-born Jewish girl in the segregated South had awakened her to societal acceptance of fundamental unfairness. “There was a powerful silence about race and racism and no mention of antisemitism or the Holocaust,” Strom wrote.

Facing History now supports teachers in every state and in more than 100 countries, extending its reach through in-person programs and anti-hate curricula. It expanded to include many injustices, such as the Armenian genocide, apartheid in South Africa, Jim Crow laws, and the killing of George Floyd.

Challenges emerged along the way, notably when the US Education Department repeatedly rejected grant applications in the 1980s for Facing History’s failure to include the views of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.

Strom, who died at age 81 in March, was incredulous at the time. “What in the world is the view of the Nazis, that it’s good to murder people?” – Judy Rakowsky

1962 - 2023

When Rick Hoyt first made his way to the Boston Marathon starting line in 1980, he felt unwelcome. “They didn’t want us there,” recalled his late father, Dick Hoyt. “The runners didn’t think we belonged with them. The wheelchair division wouldn’t accept us, either.”

Today, a bronze statue in Hopkinton of the father pushing his son in a wheelchair celebrates Team Hoyt’s mission to gain acceptance in a race once limited to the able-bodied — and their desire to pave the way for others.

“I use running to help motivate people and inspire them,” said Rick Hoyt, who died in May at 61 from complications with his respiratory system.

Hoyt’s cerebral palsy made him a non-vocal quadriplegic. His parents were unwilling to heed doctors who advised them to institutionalize him. Once Tufts engineers created a computer that enabled him to communicate by using head movements — his first words were “Go Bruins!” — Rick blossomed and eventually graduated from Boston University.

What Rick wanted most was a chance to compete in a sport. So he partnered with his father. “I was simply loaning my arms and legs to my son,” said Dick Hoyt, who died in 2021 at the age of 80.

Team Hoyt went on to compete in more than 1,100 road races and triathlons, including almost every Boston Marathon from 1980 until 2014 — becoming trailblazers along the way.

Their persistent presence helped create opportunities for people with disabilities, including race categories for para and adaptive athletes and handcyclists. Hoyt’s legacy — and joy for racing — will live on in the countless people he inspired. – John Powers