Quite a few years ago we as an auditing group at Empire BlueCross and BlueShield were treated to a presentation by Matthew Troy, a former City Councilman and a Queens County leader. Air brushed from his introduction was the felony conviction and jail time he received for misappropriating funds from one of his clients. My colleagues were basically all younger than I, or didn't live in either of the New York City boroughs, so they were completely unaware of what I was aware of.
The loose theme of the presentation was ethics. Mattie spoke with no notes, extemporaneously for nearly an hour. He was funny as hell and told some stories that really were about ethics.
I knew from an audit I had done that Matthew Troy was the benefits manager for the Long Island Gas Retailers Association (LIGRA), one of our insured groups. He had emerged from prison and was working his way to getting his legal license restored.
He was pretty much an Irish Buddy Hackett, spinning one tale after another. He said he lived by the motto: "I always tell the truth, unless I can't." He related the time when he was Queens County Democratic leader and a retired police captain came into his office with a briefcase filled with cash. The police captain wanted to be appointed a judge. Mattie, ever vigilant on vetting candidates for judgeship said, "Fine, are you a lawyer?"
No mention was ever made of the decision, no names were given, and the sum of money was never mentioned. He was making a point about the temptations placed in your path. There was of course no mention made of any obstacles he placed in that path.
Mentioned in the obituary for James R. McManus was the role county leaders had in nominating, or even appointing judges. Not many people realize there is this layer of influence that exists beneath elected officials.
The domination of West Side, Hell's Kitchen politics goes as far back as James's great-uncle, who at the turn of the last century defeated George Washington Plunkitt for the district leader's job. Plunkitt was not shy about how he operated. "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em."
That is somewhat like the Townes Van Zandt song about Poncho Villa that goes, "he wore his gun outside belt for all the honest world to see."
You have to imagine that Thomas R. McManus's ascension was not on a reform-minded ticket. It was for continuity.
James R's guiding light was "honest graft." "I wouldn't do anything for money that I wouldn't do for free."
In that early 20th-century part of Manhattan there were any number of gambling halls and brothels, many of which were on the West Side in the district referred to as Hell's Kitchen. When you read about Lieutenant Charles Becker, the only NYC policeman executed for murder you get a sense of the graft-driven era.
One policeman was so happy to be promoted or transferred to the area that he proclaimed he had been eating chuck steak off his extra-curricular earnings where he came from, but now that he was on Manhattan's West Side where the action was, he was going to be eating tenderloin. Apocryphal or not, the district did come to be known as The Tenderloin. In the 1960s, a retired police detective who hung out at the family shop still referred to the area as The Tenderloin. In the 1960s there was even a Broadway musical with that title.
I never really knew the political affiliation of my family. I suspect they were Republicans. I only say this because there was an East Side Republican Club I used to see on Second Avenue, one flight up. The district leader was Vincent F. Albano, a clubhouse politician not unlike James McManus. Albano was a protégé of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. We did the flowers for his daughter's wedding.
At one point, my father was jealous of the florist three blocks up the avenue, Sakas, who annually was the polling place on Election Day. Until one year, out of the blue, we got to be the designated polling place. For some reason my father thought being the polling place would be good for business. It was an experience being in the middle of voting machines, paper ballots, and Board of Election people with their giant ledgers.
As for creating business, we didn't make a single sale the entire day. We had the polling place for one year. One and done. I can only imagine we got the designation through some political influence, perhaps Mr. Albano's.
For all the colorfulness of the McManus life, there is not a single word in the obit that refers to an indictment, a conviction, or jail time. The only transgression mentioned was the use of the family funeral home address as the residence of nine family members signing a nominating petition. The signatures were thrown out.
Jimmy Breslin has been on my mind lately because of the recent HBO documentary on his and Pete Hamill's life. Hamill is still with us, but Jimmy passed away in 2017. One of the segments touched on Jimmy running for City Council president in 1969 on the ticket with Norman Mailer running for mayor. There were a lot of moving parts to the 1960s.
In that era, Election Day was a holiday, and the bars were closed until after the polls closed. Jimmy apologized for being a part of the process that required the bars to be closed on Election Day.
From earlier pieces on Breslin I knew that he lived on the West Side, perhaps in the Lincoln Center area. His second wife was Ronnie Eldridge, who was a former member of the City Council. Could Breslin have been buried out of the McManus funeral home?
The question was posed to Sam Roberts, who wrote the obit. He answered that he didn't believe Jimmy was waked out of a Hell's Kitchen funeral parlor.
But interestingly enough, James R. McManus wasn't waked out of the family funeral home. But Crestwood Funeral Home is still in Hell's Kitchen.
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