By Stephanie Hirsch

We start each City Council meeting with moments of silence for community members who have passed away. Some people we discuss are public figures, while others served their community by being the glue that kept a family or neighborhood close. As we hear about how they made a difference, the gaps each person leaves behind are clear, and I am always grateful that we get to reflect on their lives.  Here are two community contributors whose lives we honored recently.

Winifred Murray.

Winifred Murray passed away on August 2 at the age of 92 at her home on Washington Ave. Winifred was born and raised in Somerville, and she never left. She was an employee of Verizon and member of the Telephone Pioneers of America, where she was remembered as “one funny lady who had a heart of gold.” Fittingly for Winnie’s big heart, in lieu of flowers, family requested that donations be sent to the Somerville Library.

The Library Director said that Winnie was “a well-loved library patron, remembered for her kindness, humor, support, and peppermint candies (which she always had on hand and handed out on a regular basis).”

Her neighbor on Franklin Ave remembered Winnie: “When we moved in, she welcomed us and shared stories about the people who used to live in our house. She often talked about how when she was a young mother, the street was full of children all day long, and she and the neighbors raised them together as a community. She always had time to chat and reminisce and offered hugs whenever we saw her. She would say something like ‘Get over here and give me a hug, life is too short, so give me a hug.'”

Winnie was the mother of three, including Margaret and Mary, and Michael who lives in Somerville, and she had the chance to become a grandmother and great grandmother. Her obituary is here.

Stan Koty.

Stan Koty passed away on September 12. He was a long-serving Public Works Commissioner and community contributor over his long career, and was someone I got to work with for the past 15 years.

Here’s where our stories connected and what I learned from Stan. In 2004, I moved from Boston to Ashland Street and to a desk in City Hall, where I joined Mayor Curtatone’s new administrative team to start SomerStat, the Mayor’s data-driven approach to decision making.

When I think about those early days and the City Hall cast of characters, my memory of Stan stands out.

At the time, he and I seemed like opposites. In those days, I thought data analysis would always tell us the right answer. Stan, on the other hand, had a keen intuition and decades of experience. He listened to what people needed, got stuff done, making him the ultimate go-to constituent service problem solver. We had in common stubbornness, a work ethic, and a commitment to the community. But sometimes we disagreed about how to attack a problem.

Over the years, my respect and appreciation for Stan only grew, despite our differences. I respected how hard Stan worked and how he treated me with kindness even after getting into arguments. I admire how he weathered all the changes of the city, from SomerStat, Somerville Rocks, SomerStreets, and all the rest. He kept showing up, getting the job done, and cheerfully. He took it all seriously, but could also laugh about it when need be. I’m sure he could have retired years ago and lived comfortably, but I expect he was never ready for his Somerville story to end.

These past two years, I’ve been an elected official. That means I’m now blessed with the challenge of getting 1,000 constituent wishes granted. So there have been times when I’ve lobbied for the cty to do something. I asked for port-a-potties in parks, and Councilor Clingan and I joined with residents as they begged for the repaving of Stickney Street. However, in these cases, the SomerStat office (the same one I helped found!) has come back saying either NO or MORE ANALYSIS REQUIRED.

That’s frustrating, because the need is obvious and it takes just intuition, experience, and listening – not data analysis – to know what to do. I figure it is kind of karma. My over-reliance on data analysis had come back to haunt me. Karma caught up with me, and said: “You and your constituents don’t get your port-a-potty…”

Getting stuff done is what Stan has always been so good at. Though Stan could’ve laughed on this twist of fate and left me to suffer with unanswered constituent wishes, he helped with these both. He tried to find a way to get the needs met because intuition and common sense said: It’s not that complicated, we need it.

Stan’s passing made me do a lot of thinking about these past 15 years, both the hard times and the fun ones. I’ve thought about how living in a tight-knit community for a long time gives you a chance to face your karma – sometimes your younger self gets proven wrong.

It also lets us come full circle, and find common ground with someone you argued with in another time and place. It turns out sometimes they were right after all, and by then, your older self doesn’t even mind.

Stan was a bigger-than-life public figure, and at the packed funeral mass, the priest said that a person’s life can be measured by the network of relationships they help support, by how they treat community like family. And his children shared how big a role he played in his own family too, encouraging and supporting them all. He was the husband of Gay (who is herself a long-serving community contributor), and he was dad to Chip, Russell (and wife Michelle), Alison (and husband Mark), and Caroline, plus proud grandfather to Gianna, James, and one on the way.

Rest in peace, Stan, and thank you to taking this Somerville journey together. Stan’s obituary is here.