Medeiros served 32 years on the Westfield City Council and was twice acting mayor of the Whip City
Former Westfield City Council President Charles W. Medeiros, who died June 16, is shown here center, flanked by John J. Bonavita, left, owner of the Tavern restaurant in Westfield, and Hampden County Sheriff Michael J. Ashe, right, during a retirement celebration held Sept. 26, 2009, at the Sons of Erin in Westfield.
WESTFIELD – “Some things in life aren’t supposed to change,” one veteran politician remarked here on Thursday morning.
The political landscape of the Whip City is changed, though, with this week’s death of one of the city’s longest serving city councilors and a former mayor, Charles W. Medeiros.
“They broke the mold after Charlie I think,” said another longtime public servant, former Ward 4 Councilor Barbara Swords. “He didn’t mind taking on anyone or anything.”
Medeiros, often bombastic, never shy, always intense but also, some attest, a sweetheart of a guy, died early Thursday at the Governor’s House. He had been battling lung cancer in his final weeks. He was 65.
When he retired from politics in 2009, Medeiros had served 32 years as a councilor, was council president for eight terms and had twice served as mayor in six-month stints when those serving as chief executive stepped aside.
Medeiros cut his teeth in the world of politics as the campaign coordinator for the late state Rep. Robert W. McGinn, another legend in his own time of Westfield politics back in 1960s and early 1970s. First elected as a member of the city’s Recreation Commission, Medeiros, even then as a newcomer, never shrank from confronting issues or talking about things in public.
At one point in 1971, as recreation commissioner, he found himself called before the City Council to answer questions about whether he’d butted heads – literally – with then-Mayor John Palczynski. “Well, I didn’t hit him,” Medeiros is reported to have told the council when asked if he’d come to blows with the mayor.
In 1973, the same year he was named an “Outstanding Young Man in America” by the Jaycees, Medeiros’ first attempt at a City Council seat failed. But, returning to the political arena in 1975, Medeiros ran for an at-large post and was elected with a group of young newcomers to politics who made for an interesting contrast with old-guard councilors.
The late Richard Swords was among that group of stalwarts who Medeiros joined in his early years on the council; Swords’ widow, Barbara Swords, would later become a council colleague to Medeiros.
“Charles was always respectful of me because of Dick,” Mrs. Swords recalled. “He would be mad with me for always poking around in his Ward 1, but he never lost his patience and never yelled at me.”
Barbara Swords, who led council efforts to protect the Barnes Aquifer that sits beneath a good chunk of what was Medieros’ home ward on the city’s North Side, said she worked to help Medeiros understand her environmental concerns and the need to protect the underground water resource. “He was always very respectful even though he felt like wringing my neck, I’m sure.”
“You either liked (Charlie) or you didn’t, but he made a lot of friends and he helped a lot of people. He was just so good a person,” said Swords, who’s also retired from politics.
The stories about Medeiros are legion, like the 1978 psychological sparring match he had with former council president Edwin Morawiec. Medeiros began eating peanuts – crunching them right out loud – at the council meetings; an angered Morawiec turned to the council’rs ethics subcommittee and got an opinion from the city solicitor which gave him the right to end the munching by Medeiros.
“I didn’t do it disrupt the entire council, only one person. I believe the council president and I have reconciled our differences,” Medeiros told the press as he called a truce.
Former Mayor Richard K. Sullivan had heard all the stories – and some myths – about Mediros by the time he met him in the 1980s as a young politician “He was certainly bombastic and kind of prone to be in your face,” said Sullivan, who is now state secretary of energy and the environment. “He tried to be somewhat intimidating.”
Though their styles and approaches to politics were totally different, the two became allies in many causes, Sullivan said. “Charlie was totally grounded in his beliefs; he represented the blue-collar worker, the average citizen of Westfield. He was the best at knowing what was going on at the ground, knowing what mattered to them. He was an absolute street politician, and he did it well.”
Not always on the same side of an issue, Sullivan said, he and Medeiros developed a friendship which lasted to the end. “We probably voted against each other (on the City Council) more times than not, but he never lied to me. He always told me what he was doing and why.”
Sullivan said he is likely not to be alone in learning that Medeiros’ most proud moment as a councilor was that he never voted against a School Department budget.
“It surprised me a little bit,” the former mayor said of the response Medeiros gave to his recent question about the legacy he may leave. “He could be loud and bombastic on the floor the council (chambers), and he only had an eighth-grade education. But, that answer (about supporting school budgets) that tells you something about him. Not to say the hard-scrabble outside wasn’t necessarily an act, but inside he was always trying to do the right thing for the city of Westfield.”
It was those instincts to help people which made Medeiros a consumate politician, added close friend Michael Powers. A lawyer who grew up in West Springfield and who worked for the likes of U.S. Rep. Edward P. Boland and longtime Hampden district attorney Matthew J. Ryan, Powers said Medeiros held strong to the old ways of doing right by his constituents.
"He had the desire to serve and to do the right thing for people. All he cared about was everybody else. He always put everything and everyone else above himself. He was the consumate public servant," Powers said. In fact, in his final days in a Springfield hospital, Medeiros shared with Powers his desire to go home. "He wanted to die in his city."
Funeral arrangements are incomplete; read more in The Republican on Friday.
Then acting Westfield Mayor Charles W. Medeiros reads to kindergarten, first and second graders during the annual mayor's holiday read at St. Mary's School in 2007. Medeiros died on June 16.