Alan Lupo, 1938-2008

ON HIS PROWLING walks around the city, Al Lupo would always carry a heavy pocketful of quarters, so he'd be sure to have some coins handy for any unfortunate he'd meet. His philosophy was to give without hesitation and to everyone. He had a way of placing the coins in a person's hand and giving it a vigorous shake, so that anyone watching would see nothing exchanged but a friendly greeting, human to human.

That humanity sums up the life and work of Al Lupo, who died yesterday at age 70. Whether he was writing about transportation policy or ward-boss politics - or writing the columns that appeared on the opposite page for 10 years - the heart of the man was always right there, beating and bleeding for his subjects.

"Because I grew up in a family and in a neighborhood that had no voice, I have tried in some small way to be a voice for those whose feelings are too rarely heard, or even expressed," he wrote in his last column for the op-ed page, in 1993.

The Lupo column was a big, juicy, often hilarious slice of urban life peopled with bookies and cabbies and waitresses and dog-walkers. Even when he began writing for the suburban weeklies he managed to find the grit behind the green lawns. But it was poetry with a purpose: His reporting helped stop the inner belt roadway that would have torn a scar through neighborhoods from Jamaica Plain to Cambridgeport. (See his indispensable book "Rites of Way" for more.) His chronicle of the busing years, "Liberty's Chosen Home," should be required reading for every college student - and every Globe reporter - who hopes to understand what makes Boston tick.

Alan Lupo was this community's historian and its clarion. Humanity is poorer for his passing.