Wow. He was a great man. BU was nothing when he took it over. Now it’s a first class school.
He was fantastic when he ran for governor.
Fiery individual for sure, RIP Dr Silber. If my memory is correct he got into some hot water for taking out life insurance policies on all kids in his college. Naturally some would die of natural causes etc, and in theory they had insurable interest, but the benefactor was the school. That got changed real quick...
He actually was the Dem nominee for governor in Massachusetts back in the ‘80s. A horrible shame that sub-RINO piece of slime William Weld defeated him.
One of the last decent Democrats (along with Zell Miller and Glenn Poshard).
Howie Carr is talking about Silber right now. He was up by 9 points, but lost the election because an interview went wrong.
I was thinking about John Silber a little while back. Weld, the Republican, ran to Silber's left and won, picking up a lot of very liberal Democrats. Romney followed that strategy in his race against Kennedy four years later. It didn't work for him.
“In Texas, Dr. Silber was considered a liberal, because of his opposition to the death penalty and support for civil rights. He liked to recount how the John Birch Society would tape his lectures to send to the FBI as evidence he was a communist.”
I think John Birch had a point here. If he’s in Texas and doesn’t like the Death Penalty, then he should KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT. Civil Rights is debatable, depending on how it’s defined and whether one cares about the outcome of the movement.
‘A son, David, died in 1994.”
He died of AIDS. I remember the obituary, even from that long ago. Dr. Silber may have been a hard-core social conservative, but he let his kid down - probably too busy for ‘trivial family matters’.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/01/obituaries/david-j-silber-theater-actor-41.html
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said the new name for Sherborn St. was "fitting" as an honor for Silber. "Was there any other way?" Menino quipped, referring to Silber's four decades of influence on the B.U. campus.
I guess the book The Wit and Wisdom" of Tom Menino will have at least one page after all.
RIP. This is the man that should’ve beaten the execrable William Weld.