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Former Springfield Mayor Charles Ryan dies

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Charles Ryan, seen here in 2018, was a former mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Was mayor in both the 1960s and 2000s

A legendary figure in western Massachusetts government, politics, and the law has died.

Former Springfield Mayor Charlies Ryan, a central figure during pivotal times in the city’s history, died Monday. He was 94.

Ryan served two separate stints as mayor decades apart – first in the 1960s for three terms and then for two terms starting in 2004. It gives him the distinction of being the only Springfield mayor to serve in two different centuries.

Mayor Domenic Sarno, who succeeded Ryan said in a statement that he was “a gentlemen of unquestioned integrity,” who “manifested a very shrewd mind with compassion.”

In a 2017 interview with Focus Springfield Community Television, Ryan said he was motivated to go into public service by President John F Kennedy’s inaugural address.

“He looked into the camera and said ‘Don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country’ and I had never really thought of it that way,” Ryan said. “If you want to know how it happened and when it happened, that really started it.”

Ryan recalled that when he ran for mayor the first time at the age of 33, his opponents said he was too young.

“And then when I ran ten years ago, they said I was too old to be mayor,” Ryan said. He joked that “next time I’m going to come back and do it when I am 50.”

Both of Ryan’s times in office came at momentous periods in the city’s history. During the 1960s, amidst the upheaval of the civil rights movement the city was dealt a major economic blow when the U.S. Department of Defense closed the Springfield Armory.

After leaving the mayor’s office the first time, Ryan became a prominent attorney who stayed active in public affairs.

With the city on the verge of bankruptcy, Ryan ran and was elected mayor again in 2003. He brokered a bailout that resulted in a state board being put in charge of the city’s finances for several years.

Tim Rooke, who was a City Councilor then, said Ryan was the right mayor at the right time.

“He worked very closely with the Springfield Financial Control Board and turned a $30 million deficit into a $40 million surplus,” Rooke said.

Former City Councilor Barbara Garvey, who was friends with Ryan and his late wife Joan since the 1940s, said he was a great student of American history.

“Charlie was so knowledgeable and so appreciative of the depths of detail and his recall and his memory was just astounding,” Garvey said.

“That was an important part of his life and for us it improved us and made us so much more committed to the service of public life because of him,” she said.

Springfield owes its current form of government to Ryan, who led a charter change referendum campaign in the 1950s.

His other enduring legacy is the City Library system. He transferred control of the libraries from a private board of trustees to a public body and created the Springfield Library Foundation to maintain a permanent endowment for the system.

Stephen Cary is the chair of the Springfield Library Commission and vice-chair of Springfield Library Foundation.

“(Mayor Sarno) calls (Ryan) the ‘Godfather of the library’ and jokes that he cut an amazing deal with Andrew Carnegie,” Cary said. “There was no smarter person in the city when he was putting all this together and seeing it through even up to last month when we were presented a $200,000 gift from his former law partner’s family.”

“We’re going to miss him,” Cary said.

Ryan was predeceased by Joan, his wife of 62 years, in 2015. They had 11 children.

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.