Lynn pays respects to McManus

LYNN – They came by the thousands, each one filing into St. Pius Church Tuesday with a memory or a story about former Mayor Pat McManus and the ways he touched lives as a friend and civic leader.”‘C’mon, brother,'” said Assistant Parking Director Robert Stilian, quoting one of the oft-used expressions McManus reserved for people he liked. Stilian used to spend weekends at McManus’ Maine retreat, nicknamed the “think tank” by the former mayor.McManus liked to slip off to the Long Lake house on Fridays, leaving aides in his City Hall office to scramble for answers to questions lobbed at them by city department heads or reporters.He will be buried today from St. Pius where he lay in state on Tuesday beneath the honorary white “Mayor of Lynn” helmet bestowed on him by firefighters.A single member from the fire and police departments, each attired in dress uniform, flanked McManus’ casket as mourners filed up St. Pius’ stone steps and took turns paying their respects for a second or two.At 4 p.m., police officers lined up in dress blues and filed by the casket led by Chief John Suslak.Former City Councilor James Cowdell sparred with McManus over city issues on many occasions but on Tuesday, as he waited in line outside St. Pius, Cowdell recalled the one issue McManus never allowed anyone to contest.”You could debate him on a lot of subjects but his love for Lynn was not up for debate.”Many of the people filing into St. Pius were still in shock over the news of McManus’ death at his home last Friday from an apparent heart attack.”I haven’t felt this bad since my brother Georgie died,” said Stilian.Others wondered which dignitaries, even ones as notable as former President Bill Clinton, might attend today’s funeral. As his mayoral tenure neared a decade, McManus traveled frequently to Washington, D.C. where he embraced and took advantage of Clinton’s community policing program and rose to prominence in the U.S. Conference of Mayors.He hoped to make his Washington experience a cornerstone of his comeback run for mayor this summer and fall.Clusters of photographs placed around St. Pius Wednesday showed McManus posing with mock formality, cigar in hand, in front of a shelf of law volumes. Another caught a tired McManus holding his son, John, while a third showed him standing on the Great Wall of China wearing a trench coat.The photos paid tribute not so much to McManus the statesman, but Pat the family man who, along with his wife, Debra, brought their adopted children John, YiYi, Susannah and Marni home from the People’s Republic of China “because,” as McManus enjoyed explaining, “you’d do the same thing if you saw them.”He took pride in the birth of eldest daughter Laura’s son, Donovan, and Yiyi’s modeling accomplishments. He also, as the photos and the crowds in St. Pius attested, enjoyed people.