Time and again throughout his long life, Thomas P. Costin Jr. has helped write history’s first draft and set in motion events that made an indelible mark on our nation’s course.
Costin turned 95 this week and he would laugh if you called him a visionary. But consider how, in 1955 at the age of 29, he was elected to be the city of Lynn’s youngest mayor after serving eight years on the City Council.
During his 1956 inaugural speech, he pushed for local approval of the State Planning Act to give the city Planning Board the authority it lacked to impact local development.
Flash forward to 2021 as Lynn councilors grapple with a comprehensive housing plan that relies on guidance from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council — an acknowledged statewide planning authority.
It was Joseph P. Kennedy who called Costin and asked the Marine and Boston College graduate to advise his son, John F. Kennedy, on ways to advance the young congressman’s political future.
Costin led the registration drive that was crucial to helping Kennedy win his 1958 U.S. Senate race. Without the win, Kennedy’s political credibility as a presidential contender would not have materialized.
Flash forward to late 1963 when Costin, serving as Lynn postmaster after receiving a presidential appointment to the job, traveled to Texas where he heard ominous warnings about President Kennedy’s impending visit to the state.
Costin’s many Kennedy stories include an emotion-fraught recollection of how he traveled to the nation’s capital to relay the threats to Kennedy. He didn’t get a chance to meet with the president and the rest, as they say, is history.
Standing at the head of the 30,000-strong National Association of Postmasters of the United States, Costin helped craft and pass through Congress the Postal Reorganization Act of 1971.
Flash forward to 1986 when Costin foresaw megacorporations like Amazon looming on the horizon when he warned about the consequences to the Postal Service without lean management and cost containment. “We’re out of business — and there are people out there just waiting for this,” he said.
Costin retired as postmaster in 1992 and promptly rededicated himself to serving Lynn. His involvement with the Lynn Business Partnership and unflagging interest in extending Blue Line rapid transit to the city is a cause carried on by political successors like state Sen. Brendan P. Crighton and Mayor Thomas M. McGee.
When the Willow Street post office was rededicated on May 24, 2019 in Costin’s honor, U.S. Rep. Seth W. Moulton was on hand to talk about the congressional effort to make rededication a reality and about how Costin urged the fellow Marine to seek public office. “I wouldn’t be here without you,” Moulton uttered, in a classic example of political understatement.
“I shall not be satisfied until we have rebuilt Lynn,” Costin said in his 1959 mayoral victory speech after becoming only the city’s second mayor to win a third term (J. Fred Manning in 1939 was the first).
The urgency electrifying those words and the immensity of the task Costin envisioned are as relevant to Lynn today as they were the night he spoke them.
Happy birthday, Tom Costin. You continue to loom large in a city you helped shape.
