City tips its cap to the man who made Public Works work

Mayors, presidents, and generals are honored here with statues. A congressional heavyweight and a Red Sox hall of famer both have their names emblazoned on tunnels. A governor and a civil rights leader earned bridges. And Boston's longtime public works czar, whose 39-year tenure of clearing snow and fixing streets spanned three mayors?

Joseph Casazza got a hulking, dusty brown warehouse lurking in the shadow of the Southeast Expressway.

"If you want glamour, you don't go into public works," Casazza said yesterday, his face flush from all the fuss at the formal dedication of the building yesterday afternoon.

Casazza almost looked glamorous in his dark pinstriped suit as he stood with the mayor at a podium at the main public works yard that had been previously referred to by its street address, Frontage Road. Behind them that squat structure was adorned with metallic letters that will forever designate it the Joseph F. Casazza Public Works Facility. With mounds of salt and sand on the horizon, the man of the hour was lauded by City Council members and some 70 other dignitaries.

"Some of us wish when we leave government, that we'll have this many friends," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said. "He dedicated his life to rain, sleet, and snow."

Hired by Mayor Kevin White in 1968, Casazza ran the city's public works department until his retirement in January 2007. It was a job that necessitated keeping a cot in his office for those round-the-clock storms. In Casazza's 39 years, roughly 138 feet of snow fell on Boston, according to National Weather Service records. That's a pile exactly as high as the roof of City Hall that he helped clear from the city's narrow, meandering streets.

"How did he win the confidence of three mayors?" asked Robert E. Travaglini, the former state Senate president. "Because he delivered."

As politicians lathered praise, Casazza kept his eyes cast down at the gravel in the parking lot at his feet. The faint smell of asphalt filled the air, and trucks lumbered and clanged overhead on the Southeast Expressway.

At 74, Casazza insisted that he had made peace with retirement, a task that proved difficult. Most of all, he said he missed the simple joy of helping people. "A public works guy, he solves problems, gets the job done," he said.

When pushed, Casazza acknowledged that he also missed that surge of adrenaline he once felt at the first few flakes of a snowstorm.

"It's probably like if you played baseball or basketball for all your life and you are sitting in the stands watching it," Casazza said. "You want to be out there."

He glanced at the crowd of well-wishers, which included Casazza's grandchildren, his sons and daughters, and his wife, Mimi, who he has been with for some 50 years. The sun glinted off the silver letters of his name on the building.

"They'll probably still call it 'Frontage Road,' Lord knows," Casazza said with a shrug and a wistful smile. "But it will mean something, to the people who are important to me."