Former Mayor Herbie Quinn, a polarizing figure, leaves behind a lasting impression

By RAY DUCKLER

Monitor staff

Published: 07-10-2017 11:52 PM

Herbie’s backers loved him, struck by his humble start and bare-knuckled fight for government transparency, and his penchant to help the poor and elderly in a city that sometimes ignored them.

To others, though, he was a monkey wrench, a troublemaker, a burst of counterproductive energy running against the status quo, simply to make a name for himself.

Either way, the death of former Concord mayor J. Herbert Quinn last Thursday at the age of 86 is sure to spark debate and conversation among those who knew him, and those who know anything about him.

His wife of 66 years, Concord-native Carolyn (French) Quinn, did not know the cause of death when reached by phone at the couples’ home in Florida. She said a ceremony will be held here sometime next month. They are survived by three children.

The Quinns moved south 25 years ago. By then, Herbie’s career had been more colorful than a box of crayons. He was elected mayor in 1965. He was forced out of office less than two years later after a long-running feud with the Monitor’s editorial writer, Jim Langley, whom Herbie tried to have arrested, and with local officials who believed he was stepping on their toes.

In just 20 months, Herbie shook the city’s political landscape like an earthquake with his bigger-than-life personality and controversial behavior. He became Concord’s first Irish Catholic mayor, and his passion and loyalty to his roots later led to a fringe connection with the Irish Republican Army and time in a federal prison for contempt of court.

But, as the first director of the Concord Housing Authority, he also helped create a housing system for seniors and another one for poor people, and he convinced officials to spend money to build Memorial Field and expand Beaver Meadow Golf Course.

“I would say that Herbie was a wonderful young kid,” said Tom Hardiman of Concord, Herbie’s lifelong friend. “He was a poor boy who worked hard and then got a little power, and I don’t know if he handled it correctly. I’m not saying he didn’t, but he was a terrific young man.”

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Right from the start, Herbie’s life symbolized toughness, grit and determination. His parents divorced, he moved in with his grandparents at the age of 3, then lived with four foster families.

Part of his childhood was spent in the Fosterville section of Concord, near Blossom Hill Cemetery. The kids there were street-tough.

“The kids from Penacook would go around Long Pond on their bikes to get to Concord,” said Concord’s Nancy Sullivan Stewart, whose father, Frank Sullivan, was close friends with Herbie. “They wanted to avoid the Irish Catholic neighborhood.”

Irish roots in general dug deep in Concord soil, and that included the Hardiman family. Tom Hardiman’s son, 62-year-old Bill Hardiman, remembers Herbie as a nomadic teen who joined his family on a part-time basis.

“Some days he stayed with family in Concord, and one was my grandmother,” said Bill Hardiman, who lives in Concord and works for the Department of Transportation. “My grandmother was right off the boat from Ireland, but she always had a bed and meal for Herbie, so he was like family.”

At some point he was reunited with his mother in Portsmouth, yet he continued to attend St. John’s High School in Concord, where he played football and baseball with Tom Hardiman. He wore football cleats to school, too poor to afford regular shoes.

Sometimes Herbie would hitchhike to school, and sometimes he’d get picked up by Charles Dale, a Portsmouth resident who happened to be New Hampshire’s governor at the time.

“A lot to do with his political aspirations was riding with (Dale),” Bill Hardiman said.

Before politics, he was in the Navy, serving on three aircraft carriers during the Korean War. He was invited to the annual Army-Navy college football game in 1960, and, from the stadium reviewing stand, met President John Kennedy’s family and Vice President Lyndon Johnson, according to a recent, short autobiography Herbie sent to friends.

He was in the trucking business and the insurance business, coached youth sports and, after his political career ended, worked on the Alaskan Pipeline as a union member. All the while, his out-sized personality left a deep impression on young people in Concord.

“The guy who came to our house and laughed and told stories,” Stewart said. “He was supportive of ideas, and he got you job interviews, like at restaurants. If you were selling crafts in junior high, he would have a sign made up for you. He looked out for people.”

He also made people mad, especially after winning the mayoral election in November of 1965. Helped by his rugged good looks, street-wise background, outspoken manner and promise to shed a spotlight on city government, Herbie won the election by 33 votes.

“He won similar to (President) Trump,” Tom Hardiman said, “in that less well-to-do people got on the bandwagon, and that’s how he got elected.”

Herbie immediately went after the established order in Concord, with its conservative base of wealthy lawyers and business leaders.

His many battles were documented in the encyclopedic Crosscurrents of Change: Concord, N.H. in the 20th Century, published by the Concord Historical Society.

He pushed the aldermen to open their finance committee meetings. He tried to force department leaders to move press releases through his office. He opened an investigation into the city’s chief of police over a fund created through public contributions. And he constantly cited conflicts of interest among high-ranking officials.

Residents with clout lived without water meters in their homes, while poor people “did not have free water,” Stewart noted.

“People say Herbie was corrupt, but he was in a corrupt environment,” Stewart continued. “Was he perfect? Who knows? He was elected because this city was a corrupt city. Herbie didn’t have a drink. He was a clean-living dude.”

While Herbie didn’t drink, the Monitor’s editorial writer at the time, Jim Langley, the paper’s former publisher, did. Langley forever railed against Herbie in print, saying the mayor was a “would-be dictator ... who thinks the government became his personal property when he won election as mayor. He is bent on making all employees serve him, not the community.”

Herbie sought revenge. On June 28, 1967, he notified police to look for Langley leaving the Brick Tower Motel’s Gold Brick Lounge, suggesting Langley might be driving drunk.

Langley, it turned out, had already left. Herbie then asked the officer to hide the truth and instead tell his captain that there had been a disturbance at Rollins Park, according to court documents. The officer, though, told his superior what had actually happened, adding that the mayor had requested that he lie.

From there, the New Hampshire Supreme Court vacated an earlier court decision and agreed with the aldermen that he should be removed from office, making him the only mayor in the city’s history to be ousted.

The final decision proved so unpopular with citizens that police were needed to escort aldermen home after the final decision had been made.

Dave Tardif, who still lives in Concord, went to school with Herbie, played sports with him and was an alderman at the time he was tossed from office.

He declined to answer any questions about him and the incident with Langley, other than to say, “the record speaks for itself.”

Reached at her home in Port Richey, Fla., Herbie’s widow, Carolyn Quinn, said the couple’s life was never awkward in Concord afterward.

“We all took that very well,” Carolyn Quinn said. “I went to work every day and no one approached me about it, and we survived that very well as a family.”

Herbie turned the matter into a joke, according to Stewart.

“Herbie called the Langley Parkway the DWI Parkway,” she said. “He was the master of phrases, and he connected the dots.”

Controversy continued to follow Quinn after his impeachment when, in 1975, he refused to testify in federal court on what he knew about alleged gun-running to Northern Ireland.

“Mr. Quinn’s sentence was postponed earlier this month to allow time for a hernia operation,” the New York Times reported at the time. “Before the federal marshal took Mr. Quinn to jail, he checked him into a hospital briefly for removal of surgical stitches.”

“I read court documents,” Bill Hardiman said. “Herbie said he did not testify because of fear of retribution.”

In the years since, after finishing his work in Alaska, the Quinns moved to Florida, where Herbie worked security detail at the Toronto Blue Jays’ spring training site in Dunedin.

He returned to Concord last month with Carolyn to dedicate a granite tower and bench at Blossom Hill Cemetery, their way of thanking Gold Star families, veterans, first responders, parents, teachers, students, the disabled and the elderly.

“It was his gift to the people of Concord,” said Bill Hardiman, who spoke at the ceremony.

Hardiman said Herbie seemed fine at the time. An email he received from Carolyn shortly after his death suggested he declined quickly.

The Quinns already have a large tombstone, the final resting place for Herbie, Carolyn, their children and grandchildren, at Calvary Cemetery.

It’s highlighted by a bear in the center, just above the family name, representing his time in Alaska. The bear, once black, but recently gilded, and faces North State Street.

“Anytime you go by, even at night, you can still see it,” Carolyn Quinn said.

(Ray Duckler can be reached at 369-3304, rduckler@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @rayduckler.)

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