Massachusetts Treasurer
Foster Furcolo took which position from Jul 1952 to 1955?
Foster Furcolo John Foster Furcolo ( July 29 , 1911 – July 5 , 1995 ) was an American lawyer , writer , and Democratic Party politician from Massachusetts . He was the states 60th governor , and also represented the state as a member of the United States House of Representatives . He was the first Italian-American governor of the state , and an active promoter of community colleges . Born in New Haven , Connecticut and educated at Yale , Furcolo practiced law before serving in the United States Navy during World War II . He first won election to Congress in 1948 , and served most of two terms , resigning after being appointed Massachusetts Treasurer in 1952 by Governor Paul A . Dever . He won two terms as governor , serving from 1957 to 1961 . In addition to supporting community colleges , he also furthered the redevelopment of parts of Boston , supporting development of the Prudential Center and Government Center . His administration was overshadowed by corruption scandals , but no charges against him made it to trial . He was twice an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate . He was the author of several books , including a novel set amid events surrounding the World War II Katyn massacre . Early years . John Foster Furcolo was born in New Haven , Connecticut , on July 29 , 1911 . His father , Charles Furcolo , was an Italian immigrant and a doctor , and his mother was an Irish immigrant . Furcolo attended public schools in Longmeadow , Massachusetts and New Haven . He then attended Yale University , where he graduated in 1933 , and finally Yale Law School , where he received his LL.B . in 1936 . At Yale he played a variety of sports , serving on both the boxing team ( as a welterweight ) and the baseball team . According to his brother Charles , he played second base . He was undefeated as a boxer and was encouraged to turn professional , but chose not to . He also engaged in literary pursuits , writing short stories and plays that were produced locally . Furcolo dropped use of his first name when he entered politics . In 1937 Furcolo moved to Springfield , Massachusetts , where he opened a law practice . He specialized in criminal and civil trial work , and quickly rose in prominence , the quality of his legal preparation and trial work receiving favorable notice from others in the legal community . After a few years he moved his growing family to neighboring Longmeadow . He made his first bid for public office in 1942 , an unsuccessful run for district attorney . During World War II he served in U.S . Navy as a lieutenant ( junior grade ) aboard , a transport vessel in the Pacific , which participated in the Invasion of Okinawa . He was a member of the Indian Orchard Council number 183 of the Knights of Columbus . House of Representatives . In 1946 Furcolo stood for election as a Democratic Party candidate for the 2nd Congressional District seat , running against incumbent Charles R . Clason . He lost by 3,000 votes , a narrow margin , in an election dominated in the state by Republican victories . In 1948 , he again ran against Clason , and won by a comfortable margin , buoyed by the support of war veterans and organized labor . In 1950 , Furcolo was challenged by Polish-American Republican Charles Skibinski , who sought to capitalize on the large number of Polish-Americans in the district in a campaign in which there were no major issues . Furcolo retained his seat , winning by more than 10,000 out of over 130,000 votes cast . Furcolo served in the House of Representatives from January 3 , 1949 , until his resignation on September 30 , 1952 . He drew national attention when he was the first freshman representative to be invited to the White House by President Harry S . Truman to discuss legislative matters . He innovatively introduced the idea of a peoples council , composed of individuals from a cross-section of his districts interests , which he could consult to gauge opinion on legislative matters . His major legislative proposal , introduced early in his first term , was for a scholarship loan program to help needy high school graduates attend college . Furcolo was adopted as a protégé by the powerful majority leader of the house , Massachusetts Congressman John W . McCormack . McCormack engineered Furcolos appointment to the powerful House Appropriations Committee . This appointment rankled John F . Kennedy , elected to the body with Furcolo , and Kennedy later blamed Furcolo for hampering his attempts to gain patronage influence from McCormack . In 1951 Furcolo was appointed to a special committee established to investigate reports of mass killings of Polish military officers and intelligentsia by the Soviets during World War II in the Katyn Forest . Furcolos appointment to this committee ( which was otherwise dominated by Polish-Americans ) was also the work of McCormack , likely because of the large Polish-American population in Furcolos district . The committee concluded that the killings had been perpetrated by the Soviet secret service ( NKVD ) , and sought to bring a case before the International Court of Justice . Furcolo used what he learned from the committees investigations to write a novel , Rendezvous at Katyn , which is set amid those events . Massachusetts Treasurer . On July 5 , 1952 , Furcolo was appointed by Governor Paul A . Dever to be the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts , to replace John E . Hurley , who had resigned to accept a position as clerk of the Boston Municipal Court . Dever made the appointment in part to break up what was seen as Irish-American domination of the government . Congress was in recess at the time of the appointment , so Furcolo did not formally resign his Congressional seat until September . In November 1952 , Furcolo was elected in his own right to the Treasurers office despite Devers loss of the governors seat ; he held that position until January 1955 . In 1954 Furcolo ran for the U.S . Senate , but was narrowly defeated by incumbent Republican Leverett A . Saltonstall . The election exposed the personal feud between Furcolo and Kennedy to the public . Kennedy refused to make a public endorsement of Furcolo in a televised appearance , and Saltonstall recounted in his memoir that Kennedys campaign staff worked with his in opposition to Furcolo , and that Saltonstall regularly announced legislation he and Kennedy had cosponsored . Furcolo later learned that Kennedy had lent Ted Sorensen , a key member of his staff , to the Saltonstall campaign , and that Kennedys father Joseph had financially supported Saltonstalls campaign . Massachusetts Governor . Furcolo ran for Governor of Massachusetts in 1956 , easily winning the Democratic party nomination and primary . The campaign against Republican Lieutenant Governor Sumner G . Whittier was vitriolic , with each accusing the other of distorting his legislative record . Furcolo was further characterized by Republicans as a part of the Dever political machine who would be beholden to Boston interests . Senator Kennedy in this election specifically endorsed Furcolo for the office . Furcolo won the election and was re-elected in 1958 , easily defeating former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Charles Gibbons , who was chosen by the Republicans as a write-in candidate after their chosen nominee , Attorney General George Fingold , died two months before the election . Furcolo was governor from 1957 to 1961 . Furcolo was a vigorous and active chief executive , working long hours in the office . He came to the office with large-scale visions and worked hard , sometimes stubbornly and against other party interests , to realize some of them . He was not always seen as a team player by members of his own party in the legislature whose backgrounds he did not generally share . This was particularly manifested in his push for a broad-based sales tax , opposition to which had been enshrined in the Democratic Party platform ; the proposal went down to bipartisan defeat in the legislature . During his administration , Furcolo established a network of regional community colleges throughout the Commonwealth , and fought for increases in state worker salaries , as well as improvements in workmens compensation and unemployment benefits . He introduced income-tax withholding from payroll checks , leading to a significant increase in state revenue . According to the states 1960 report , it ranked first in the nation in education and at or near the top in other social programs . He also appointed the states youngest state purchasing agent , Bernard Bunny Solomon , who saved taxpayers hundreds of thousands annually . Furcolo was a skeptic on the subject of the death penalty , ordering a study of the institution shortly after taking office , and commuted the death sentences of four men while governor . Legislative moves by the state legislature to ban capital punishment stalled in the house during his tenure . Furcolo was an influential figure in the development of Bostons Government Center area as a nexus of local , federal and state offices . He was the first to propose that a federal office building planned for the Back Bay area of the city instead become part of a major redevelopment effort in the declining Scollay Square neighborhood . The effort was primarily spearheaded by Boston Mayors John B . Hynes and John F . Collins , but Furcolo was a regular presence moving the Government Center proposals forward and supporting them at the state level . Using the pseudonym John Foster , in 1957 Furcolo published a comic novel , Let George Do It! , about a campaign for a state legislature seat . In addition to Government Center , Furcolo was also instrumental in the development of Bostons Prudential Center . The site of an unused railyard in the Back Bay had for some years been the subject of development proposals . Prudential Insurance sought limitations on Bostons tax assessments on the proposed development , and portions of the site were also being considered for use as an extension of the Massachusetts Turnpike . Furcolo helped to broker the deal , making it possible for Prudential to begin construction . The Supreme Judicial Court struck down aspects of the deal regarding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority ( MTA , now the MBTA ) , leading to a work stoppage on the project in 1960 . Furcolos administration was marked by the continuing trend of corruption in state government that had been growing in prior administrations . One notable series of cases involved the construction of the parking garage under the Boston Common . Furcolo established the Massachusetts Parking Commission to oversee the effort , but did not place it under any sort of oversight . The commission was self-financed by floating bonds , and a number of actors were later documented to extract more the $800,000 from the commissions construction funds by a variety of schemes . Four people were convicted and served prison time for these acts . A second major scandal , involving collusion between state public works officials , appraisers and landowners along planned interstate highway routes , took place in the 1950s . Details of the scams , described by politicians at that time as the granddaddy of highway-related malfeasance , were squelched by a Democratic-controlled Congressional investigation until after the 1960 election , apparently to avoid embarrassing Kennedy in his run for president . The scandal resulted in the conviction of several Massachusetts highway officials . Second run for Senate . In 1960 Furcolo again ran for the U.S . Senate , and was widely expected to gain the Democratic Party nomination easily . However , former Springfield mayor Thomas OConnor capitalized on the corruption scandals during Furcolos administration and defeated him in the primary . Furcolo attributed his defeat to his support for the sales tax proposal . During Furcolos lame-duck period , John F . Kennedy resigned his Senate seat in December 1960 after winning the presidential election , putting Furcolo in position to appoint a temporary replacement . He initially sought to appoint himself , but was pressured by the Kennedys to appoint Benjamin Smith ( a college roommate of Kennedys brother Joseph ) instead . The Kennedys wanted the seat to go to younger brother Edward ( as it eventually did in the November 1962 special election ) , but he was ineligible due to age at the time of the appointment . Later years . Furcolo took the loss badly , and decided to leave politics . He returned to private practice , moving to Needham and his law firm to Newton . Four years after leaving office , he was indicted on charges of arranging for a bribe to be paid to members of the Governors Council ( while he was still governor ) to secure an appointment for a supporter . The indictment against him was eventually dismissed for lack of evidence , but four councilors were convicted on a variety of charges . In 1966 , Furcolo sought the Democratic nomination for Massachusetts attorney general but lost the nomination to former Lieutenant Governor Francis X . Bellotti in September . He worked from 1967 to 1972 as an assistant district attorney for Middlesex County . In 1969 , he served on the U.S . Attorney Generals Advisory Committee on Narcotics . Furcolo also began teaching law in 1969 . Over the next five years he taught legal ethics at Portia Law School ( now the New England School of Law ) , criminal law at Massachusetts Bay Community College , and government at a number of the states community colleges . He was selected as an administrative law judge with the U.S . Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission in 1975 , a post he held through 1989 . Furcolo maintained an interest in higher education after his departure from elective politics . While a United States Representative he secured the passage of legislation offering loans to needy students , and while governor he enacted significant reforms in the states university system , granting the individual schools in the system fiscal autonomy . In 1973 he was hired as a full-time professor of public service , working across the entire state college system . He served for many years on the states board of regents , which was responsible for overseeing the state-run institutions of higher learning . In this capacity , he was often a minority voice in seeking to improve the states colleges and universities . Because he was dissatisfied with that bodys work , in 1981 he supported the formation of an advocacy group to lobby for improvements . Furcolo died of heart failure at the age of 83 on July 5 , 1995 , in Cambridge , Massachusetts , and is buried in Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline , Massachusetts . Family , awards , and legacy . Furcolo was married three times . His first wife Kay , with whom he had five children , died in 1964 . In 1967 he married Lucy Carra , who also served as a federal administrative law judge ; they had no children . Estranged from Lucy in 1972 , he became embroiled in legal disputes with her relatives after her death in 1979 . In 1980 , Furcolo married Constance M . Gleason , who survived him . In 2009 Furcolos support of community colleges was commemorated when the state formally named its network the Governor Foster Furcolo Community College System . He was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta by the government of Poland for his role in the investigation of Katyn , and he also received the Italian Star of Solidarity . He was awarded honorary degrees from Boston University , Portia Law School , Suffolk University , the University of Massachusetts , and a number of other schools . Publications . In addition to books , Furcolo wrote articles , stories and essays for a wide variety of publications . His books include :