Marty Pino, Counselor, Coach, East Boston Hero, 50

[DGH]

.

Marty Pino, whose lifelong devotion to Eastie kids made him a local
hero and a father figure to hundreds, died last Friday, February 28,
2003, in his Webster Street home in East Boston, Massachusetts, nearly
eight years after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, at
the abe of 50.

As an East Boston youth basketball coach, Marty Pino inspired his
players with goofy sayings like "One, two, three, peanut butter!" At
summer camp, his booming voice would whip the dining hall into a
"Kumbaya" frenzy. And at Marty's Ice Cream Shop in Maverick Square in
the 1980s, children knew the large man behind the counter would give
them a treat, even if they had no money to pay for it.

At his wake on Monday, traffic was snarled throughout East Boston, as
more than 1,500 people crammed the McGrath Funeral Home - everyone
from his boyhood chum, Senate President Robert Travaglini; to members
of The Outlaws, an Eastie biker group; to those whose lives he
changed.

The son of Sicilian immigrants, Mr. Pino was a poor businessman - he
eventually had to sell his ice cream shop because he gave away so much
food, said his wife, Coleen. But he succeeded in his one true
ambition: putting smiles on people's faces.

At East Boston Camps in Westford, a summer camp for city youths, Mr.
Pino was famous for waking up the troops at 2 a.m. and leading them to
a field to gaze at the stars. Donning Sha-Na-Na attire, he and other
friends would sing for charity to the hoots and hollers of the local
social center crowd. Ever true to East Boston, he borrowed a melody
from singer John Denver and penned "Thank God I'm a City Boy."

"Who could forget him beginning a story in English and finishing it in
gibberish, or showing a group of kids or even the nurse at Mass.
General how his thumb [magically] detached," said friend John Forbes,
giving Mr. Pino's eulogy on Tuesday. "As a T-ball coach, [his] rules
were simple: have fun, don't look at the scoreboard, everyone plays
and no boo-boo faces."

Even in Mr. Pino's final days, he inspired levity. With the Rev. John
Parks on the way to administer last rites last Thursday, Coleen Pino
asked her dying husband if he wanted to hear some music. Unable to
speak, he smiled and squeezed her hand.

"Get your butts off the couch," Coleen Pino said to their 17-year-old
son, also named Marty, and the members of his high school rock band.
"Play with all your heart and soul. Rock the roof off this house."

And so, as family and friends, former Dom Savio Preparatory High
School classmates, and some of the now young adults whose lives Mr.
Pino helped shape during his 30 years as a youth counselor and coach
gathered around him, rock music blared from the basement.

"The band is playing unbelievably loud, and the priest is praying over
my husband," recalled Coleen Pino, who left her teaching job to care
for Mr. Pino as his disease progressed. "You know, this is just how
Marty would have loved it."

He died the following day, holding on until his elder son, Anthony, a
student at Johnson & Wales University, had returned from Rhode Island
to be by his side.

Mr. Pino last worked as materials manager at LSG Sky Chef at Logan
Airport. He was also a bus driver for the Ridewell Bus Co., director
of the Maverick Social Center, and a camp counselor.

A regular face on Jeffries Point streets in the 1970s and early 1980s,
Mr. Pino would rise before work, treat three or four troubled high
school students to breakfast, then drive them to school to make sure
they didn't skip out. "The Breakfast Club," said Anthony Pino, never
forgot what his father did for them.

"Every Father's Day, we get a stack of cards," he said. "They say
thank you. You were my real father. I didn't have a father."

"A lot of people will say this is what I learned from Marty: You do
for kids," said friend Debbi White.

Maria Pino said her brother, who was deeply religious, helped others
because he believed it was the Christian thing to do.

As Mr. Pino's health deteriorated, classmates from Dom Savio's Class
of 1970 came to his side, organizing weekly visits, erecting a
billboard in Central Square with Mr. Pino's e-mail address for
well-wishers to send him notes, and convincing Mayor Thomas M. Menino
to declare the last Saturday of last November ''Marty Pino Day'' in
Eastie.

Those classmates, together with former East Boston Camps co-workers,
also organized a tribute banquet in Mr. Pino's honor last year
attended by nearly 400 people. Mr. Pino, never one for the spotlight,
wasn't keen on the idea, his wife said.

"He told me that every camp counselor, every basketball coach, every
baseball coach does it because they want to see kids smile, not
because they want recognition," she said.

As friends and family left his gravesite at Woodlawn Cemetery in
Everett on Tuesday, at Mr. Pino's request, the rock 'n' roll sounds of
Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" blared from a portable stereo.
Mr. Pino, his sons explained, wanted everyone to know he was still
having fun.

"He just had a tremendous spirit. A tremendous amount of charisma,"
said friend Jim McGrane. "And he never saw a kid he didn't like."