Danny Ryan was the pope of Savin Hill
A week after they buried the pope of Rome, Danny Ryan, the pope of Savin Hill, died after a brief illness in, of all places, Florida. He was 81.
After his retirement, he and his wife Dottie spent their winters there, and they moved to Braintree in 2009, but he, and that heart that finally gave out, was never far from Savin Hill.
For a quarter-century, Ryan was a court officer at Boston Municipal Court. Being in that courtroom, and in the cells in the bowels of the court, seeing people at the most vulnerable and worst moments of their lives, inspired a compassion for his fellow human beings, whoever they were, wherever they came from.
On many occasions, just before he was about to pass sentence, William Tierney, the longtime chief justice at BMC, would look at the defendant standing before him, and Ryan would be at Tierney's side, whispering, 'He's not a bad guy, your honor.'
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It was Ryan's considered opinion that many of the people who ended up standing before Tierney and other judges were there because of substance abuse, be it booze or whatever.
And so it became Ryan's mission in life to save as many of them as he could, to nudge them toward their first 12-step meeting, to sponsor as many souls as he could, to keep them in those halls long enough that their heads could clear, that they could see with the same clarity he acquired in 1975, when he got sober.
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Ryan got people jobs, with the city, the state, the corner market, a construction site.
He was old school. He had a flip phone. He didn't text. But he did not see the city or Dorchester as some static place. He didn't like the idea of pulling up the ladder from the newest arrivals. He knew that whatever bigoted things people might say about various immigrants today was said about Irish immigrants like his parents more than a century before.
When Linda Dorcena Forry, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, ran for state Senate in 2013, Ryan stood outside the Ward 13, Precinct 10 polling place at the Cristo Rey School, campaigning for her.
'Danny was a fierce advocate for people he believed in,' Dorcena Forry told me. 'When he backed you, he was all in. For me, there was no better person to have in your corner on Election Day.'
She said the only thing Ryan asked for in return was that politicians use their office to help people who needed it.
'It was never about him,' Dorcena Forry said. 'It was about helping others.'
Politicians courted him.
'If you wanted to run for office in Dorchester, if you didn't have Danny's imprimatur, save your money. You're not going to win,' Jim Brett, the former longtime state rep from Dorchester, told me.
Over the weekend, as news of Ryan's death spread, Brett bumped into several men who mourned Ryan.
'AA guys, and they all said the same thing: 'He turned my life around. He saved my life.' He was their champion,' Brett said. 'Over the years, all the calls I got from Danny were for someone else. 'Can you help this guy? He's down and out.' He was a one-man employment agency for people who were down and out.'
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Brett said Ryan understood politics better than most politicians, that politics was about helping those who needed it.
'I may have been the rep in Savin Hill,' Brett said, 'but Danny was the pope of Savin Hill.'
Ryan was an early mentor and backer of Marty Walsh, the former mayor who grew up in Savin Hill.
Walsh said it would be impossible to calculate how many people Ryan steered into recovery or helped get jobs.
When Walsh first ran for state rep, Ryan was arrested while campaigning for him, for standing too close to a polling site. Walsh said when a concerned woman neighbor saw Ryan sitting in the back of a police cruiser, she asked how she could help, and Ryan yelled out the window, 'Vote for Marty Walsh!'
Bob Scannell, president and chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dorchester, said Ryan coached kids in various sports and regularly plopped himself down in his office, looking to help someone.
'He'd sit in my office and call whoever was mayor or governor at the time, and they always took his call,' Scannell said.
Every Christmas, Ryan showed up at Scannell's office with a list of toys he needed to deliver to poor families all over Dorchester. Mike Joyce, the club's senior vice president of operations, would drive Ryan around, Rudolph leading Santa.
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And that's another thing about Danny Ryan. For all he accomplished in life, for all the lives he changed for the better, for all the miles he covered, he didn't drive. He bummed rides.
'Never applied for a license. Never got one,' Dottie, his wife of 46 years, told me. 'I drove myself to the hospital to have babies.'
Those babies, four girls — Melissa, Danielle, Shannon, and Kasey — grew up strong and independent and were Ryan's pride and joy, as was Michael Clooney, a disabled family member who lived with Danny and Dottie for years until he died in 2023.
Dottie Ryan has been overwhelmed by the response from people after her husband died.
'I've got over a thousand texts,' she said, 'and they all say the same thing: thank you for sharing him with us.'
Father John Unni, the priest who will say Ryan's funeral Mass next week, said Ryan's blunt speaking often masked 'his compassion and understanding for the human condition.'
'Never have I met a man with so much faith, God-given insight, practicality, sense of humor and generous spirit,' Unni said. 'He'd say, 'Padre, it's all God! God's undefeated!'
So was Danny Ryan.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
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