Top Boston lawyer wields clout to help community
One summer afternoon in 1984, a young employee in the Boston law firm Mintz Levin, training for a triathlon, went swimming in Gloucester Harbor. He worked in the firm’s IT department, and had little interaction with the firm’s attorneys, let alone its chairman, Bob Popeo, the East Boston-born son of Italian immigrants then emerging as the most sought after and influential Boston lawyer of his generation.
Some kids driving a motorboat in the harbor, drunk from a few too many beers, failed to see the young man swimming and rammed into him, shearing off his arm. Popeo, on vacation in New Hampshire, got wind of this and jumped into action, Popeo-style: A member of his extended flock was in trouble, and he was going to do something about it. So he hit the phones, hiring a team of frog men to dive in Gloucester Harbor to find the young man’s arm to see if it could be surgically reattached in time. As it turned out, they retrieved the arm, but too late for it to be reattached. When the young man woke in a Boston hospital, the chairman of his firm, Bob Popeo, was sitting there.
Over five decades practicing law in Boston, Popeo has become plenty well known, his mental agility, strategic genius and dazzling array of relationships combining to land him a regular spot on lists of the most influential people in the city. Not long ago, two partners sat in his office watching as he choreographed a complicated high wire act on behalf of a client, telephone cradled to his face as he placed an elaborate series of calls to people he just happened to know. “Children,” one partner quipped to the other after observing Popeo work his magic, “do not try this at home.” Philanthropist Jack Connors, long the dean of Boston’s civic establishment, put it this way years ago. “If you get in a lot of trouble in this town and you need a lawyer,” Connors told an interviewer, “the first thing you do is call Bob Popeo. Then you call your wife.”
But it is the values he absorbed from his family and the East Boston neighborhood he grew up in that have driven Popeo’s remarkable life — values like compassion and community. It is no wonder that, given his pick of corner offices in a Boston skyscraper, he chose the one overlooking East Boston. That he has never forgotten his roots is apparent to thousands whose lives he has touched. There has always been a steady stream of Mintz Levin clerical workers, food services personnel and secretaries no less than lawyers who have ventured to his office on the top floor of One Financial Center and knocked hesitatingly on Popeo’s open door, seeking help with a family crisis, a medical issue or a child hoping to get into a particular school. “Mr. Popeo, are you busy?” they ask, knowing that the truthful answer would be “You have no idea.” “Absolutely not,” Popeo lies, waving them in and turning to what for him is the truly important business of figuring out a way to help.
It is poetic and proper, therefore, that Popeo, famously adamant about not permitting himself to be honored, is making an exception, one that he hopes will benefit the community that launched him. Next month the East Boston Social Centers, a non-profit that has been providing nutritional, educational and social services support for East Boston families for a century, is honoring Popeo. The proceeds will help diverse families, many of them immigrants, with whom Bob Popeo, for all of his success, identifies in a profound way. Justin Pasquariello, EBSC’s executive director, touts its emphasis on community, on mentoring and, as he puts it, on “empowering individuals and families.” The organization has chosen a genuine local hero to help ensure that it continues to skillfully fulfill its mission for the next century.