Suburban guides put Hub's best foot forward

To keep their standing in Boston by Foot, an organization that offers tours of the city, guides must give at least six tours a year. That's not a problem for Denny Donaldson.

The 81-year-old Duxbury resident gave 77 tours last year, and 100 the year before.

''I call this my career, because this is what I was meant for," she said in an interview.

Donaldson is one of about 200 volunteers who give tours for Boston by Foot, a nonprofit group now in its 29th year. Like Donaldson, most guides don't live in Boston. For them, the city technically isn't home, but they still identify with it.

Julianne Mehegan, an imaging technology consultant who lives in Hingham, said giving tours of the Hub helps her keep connected.

''It gets you into the city," she said. ''Sometimes you get out here in the suburbs and it's kind of hard to leave home, if you don't work in town."

Donaldson, who takes the commuter rail from Hanson to South Station, then walks wherever she needs to go, finds Boston a rush.

''I like living in the suburbs, where it's relaxing," she said, ''and when I go into Boston the adrenaline kicks in."

Polly Flansburgh, president and founder of Boston by Foot, got the idea for the group in 1976 from a woman who gave comparable tours of Chicago. Hard as it is to imagine today -- with Duck Boats and trolleys and former parking-meter spots set aside for tour buses -- there were few organized tours of Boston at the time. Flansburgh, a Lincoln resident, developed a tour-guide course based on lectures, books on Boston history and architecture, and actual tours.

Today the organization offers regularly scheduled 90-minute tours from May through October, covering Beacon Hill, the North End, Victorian Back Bay, literary landmarks, Boston Underground, and the Heart of the Freedom Trail, along with a Freedom Trail tour designed for children. There also are specialized tours-of-the-month developed by guides.

About 10,000 people a year take the tours, most of which cost about $10. Revenues cover expenses, which run about $100,000 a year and include advertising and promotional materials.

The training is rigorous. Guides-in-training attend five-hour sessions on five consecutive Saturdays during the spring. The sessions include a two-hour lecture by an authority on some facet of Boston's history and buildings, followed by small discussion groups and then a 90-minute training tour. Students must complete four research papers during the course and take a two-part final exam: a written test featuring slides of buildings, and a tour test, during which each student must give a short presentation from memory on a particular building.

And volunteering costs money. Guides-in-training pay $95 for the course, not including materials. They're not done once they pass, either -- to keep their standing, each guide must give at least six tours a year. The training, while hard, ensures a certain standard of knowledge.

Rob Radloff, chairman of the Boston Foundation for Architecture, a nonprofit organization that supports Boston by Foot with grants, said the guides provide valuable information about the city's buildings.

''It's a well-thought-through explanation of the architecture, but in understandable layman's terms," Radloff said. ''They really spend time to get the message right."

That's because many guides are hooked on the city.

''I love Boston with a deep purple passion, and when I heard about this I knew I had to do it," said Donaldson, who moved with her husband to the Boston area in 1949. ''I was raised in Cleveland. I always knew there had to be something better than that. Then when I came to Boston I felt as though I'd died and gone to heaven. I can get anybody interested in Boston."

Part of the fun is that many of the customers also get into the act, with questions and comments that add to the experience. People who take walking tours tend to be more interested in historical and architectural facts than those who take other types of tours, guides say.

''You have an audience that's enthusiastic. I think they're really interested in what you're saying. They want more depth. They ask good questions. And I think it keeps you on your toes," Mehegan said. ''They're interested in the details, as well as the stories and anecdotes, and there are so many great anecdotes of Beacon Hill."

Such as why the sidewalks there are still made of brick. City officials during one of the administrations of Mayor James Michael Curley had a plan to replace the bricks with cement, but mothers from the neighborhood blocked the workers by parking baby carriages on the bricks and refusing to move, Mehegan said. After a meeting with Curley, the mothers got their way, and the bricks remain.

Still, guides concede they don't know everything.

''I always like it when there's a question I can't answer," said Walter Gallagher, an Easton resident who has given Boston by Foot tours since the early 1980s, ''because now you've got to research it."

In addition to asking interesting questions, people taking the tours sometimes show unusual determination, particularly if they are from out of town

''One time, in the pouring rain I took a pregnant woman around," Donaldson said, estimating that the woman was about seven months along. ''She had to buy an umbrella. But she said that was her only day. I gave her a good tour."