For immigrants' son, family was first

Christopher Gabrieli, one of three Democratic candidates for governor, was interviewed Tuesday by the Globe's Scott Helman and New England Cable News's Jim Braude as part of a series of conversations with candidates for the corner office. The interviews are focusing on the candidates' backgrounds, as part of extensive coverage of their records and plans for the state. Future interviews with the candidates will focus on the issues.

Q. Step back . . . for a moment and tell us who you are and where you came from.

A. I grew up in Buffalo, New York. My parents were immigrants to the United States. . . . I now appreciate how extraordinary it is what they went through to start life over in a foreign country and learn a new language.

Q. Why did they get to Buffalo?

A. I think my father had an opportunity to be associated with the State University of New York at Buffalo. . . . It was a great place to grow up, and I felt very at home there and had a very tight family. When you have no other relatives -- none, zero, my older brother and I and my parents -- we were as tight-knit as a family can be.

Q. How long did you live in Buffalo?

A. Until I was 18, 17. [Then] . . . I came here, to Massachusetts, to Harvard.

Q. We go on your website; all it says about you is ''as a young man, Chris left medical school to help his father's struggling business." Is it a conscious decision not to talk about the young Chris Gabrieli, or is it just that you're focused laser-like on the present?

A. I've thought about that some and, obviously, as it happens, several of the other candidates in this race also have some common experiences with me. Obviously, when your parents come from another country and they leave because of World War II and the ravages that come from that and start completely over, I mean, they too started with absolutely nothing and they dealt with extremely difficult things. I think now, my father, who never saw any member of his family again. His parents, who lived quite a number of years afterwards, his brother who died, he learned much later, in a camp as part of World War II. Never to see those people again from age 26 on. I mean, the guy never used an excuse, it was never an issue with him, nothing had to be explained away. . . .

Q. What kind of a kid were you?

A. I think I was a classic younger brother; I was the kid trying to catch up. My brother's four years older than me. He's a wonderful guy. He's my dearest, dearest companion in life. . . . He's a professor at MIT. He just moved here a year ago with his wife, and he's my closest person in the world to me.

Q. Was there any indication . . . before you moved to Massachusetts, any indication that politics would be part of your life?

A. I've thought about that because my parents, in one sense they were very unpolitical. They weren't involved particularly in the United States in politics. . . . I mean, these are people who had to flee everything because of decisions about government, so they are super patriotic. . . . I was born in 1960. But I remember Earth Day, and the first marches, and a real consciousness. . . .

Q. How about Vietnam, were you conscious of the war?

A. Yes, very conscious. My brother was in the draft lottery, and by the time it eventually played out he wasn't, it didn't matter, but at the time he didn't know that. And my parents felt strongly, they were very patriotic, but they also felt it was a mistake. . . .

Q. So what did Harvard do to the boy, to Chris Gabrieli?

A. I had a great group of roommates who are my dearest friends to this day. . . . This is our 25th reunion this year from college, so I'm looking forward to hosting a few of them. One of them I roomed with in New York afterwards and he's godfather to my son and I'm godfather to his daughter. Another one is godfather to my youngest son. We were real close. Those are extraordinary experiences. The thing I loved about Harvard was that it was so intense, and I loved that. I mean, anything you wanted to do. If you wanted to play tennis, you could do it with somebody who was pro-caliber. If you wanted to learn about neuroscience, you could do it with someone who was a Nobel Prize winner. If you were interested in politics -- I remember my roommate from Massachusetts, his father had been on the judicial nominating group, and we went and we sat with Governor Dukakis. He was in his period when [Governor Edward] King was in office; he was over at the Institute Of Politics. You know, what an extraordinary experience for someone just beginning to take an interest in politics just to go across the street.

Q. So, you're at Harvard, you go to medical school. Was that the Chris Gabrieli path, you were going to be a doctor?

A. Research. Research is what really interested me. My brother was going to get his PhD at the time. . . . I was going to get the MD, he'd get the PhD. . . .

Q. You dropped out of medical school to help with your father's business, right?

A. My father had sort of tried to start a business. He wasn't a businessman. He was a wonderful man, brilliant, creative, imaginative, [but] not a businessman. Didn't understand the part about revenues, kind of got the expenses. The family was up against a wall a little bit. The only way to do anything about it was there were these people called venture capitalists who wanted to invest in a new company if I was going to leave medical school to run it. And it was a tough decision for my family, to depend in any part on your 23-year-old son is a wrenching thing. On the other hand, from my perspective, it was an incredible opportunity to give back. My parents did everything to give to my brother and I and it was a pleasure.

Q. Is faith part of your [life]?

A. A modest role. My wife and I are pretty active in a church here, Church of the Advent, where we got married. . . .

Q. You've got five kids, and you live in Beacon Hill. What's the weekend trip like, what's Sunday morning like?

A. The kids go to Sunday school. You mentioned faith and that's just really interesting to see it play out with your kids when you see how you convey the values you have and your sense of religiosity, and I think of myself as having a spiritual dimension. I'm not a big, organized church follower of all the rules, but it's a big part of my life. Sunday mornings lately we've added in going to the Paramount restaurant, which is a great restaurant on Charles Street, which is sort of a diner where everyone orders what they want, which gets us off the hook with five young kids and everyone's picky of course -- one guy wants pancakes and one girl wants a waffle and one wants it with butter and blah, blah, blah. It's an amazingly full household and we have a wonderful time.

Q. Good practice for being governor?

A. I figure if you can handle five kids yelling at you, you can handle the legislative leadership.

Q. In the era of Cellucci, Menino, DiMasi, Travaglini, the era of Italian-American in Massachusetts, the Italian Chris Gabrieli turns out to be Hungarian.

A. I love the ethnic parsing in Massachusetts. The answer is my father's Italian from Venice. He was born in Hungary. I don't know if I'm an eighth Italian or some number like that.

Q. You, like four of the five candidates we read in The Boston Globe yesterday, send your kids to private school . . . You have been a leader of this Massachusetts 20/20 thing, after-school programs, a lot of focus on public education. How did you make that decision?

A. It was real easy. Hilary and I want what every parent I've ever met wants, ''What's the best thing we can find for our kids?" and we think it's a good fit for them. . . . My oldest daughter goes to the same school that Hilary and her sister went to, my oldest son goes to the same school her father went to, so there's some history there for the family. We want what's best for our kids, and I haven't met any parent yet who said, ''No, I don't want what's best for my kids, I want what's best for my political career." I don't think anyone in this race has made a political decision, they made a personal decision. What I've done that maybe not everybody does who sends their kids to private school is said, ''I want schools that work for every kid." Because I have been the beneficiary of extraordinary opportunity in this society and I think there's nothing more satisfying than seeing a kid do well. A kid who didn't get the good luck of maybe two parents, maybe two college-educated parents, maybe two college-educated parents with resources. Boy, is that satisfying, and is that in my mind deeply American to say, ''That kid gets a fair time."

Q. Is it tough for somebody like you, who obviously has great wealth, who has kids in private school, and we understand where you came from, but where you are today . . . to continue to stay connected to people who are living paycheck by paycheck?

A. Look, I had to leave school because of family crisis. I understand what it's like to be up against it. I didn't go over the edge, didn't have to declare bankruptcy, could have, that wasn't a million miles away from us. First of all, I feel that once you experience that, you don't forget that. I certainly am a big believer in having a certain amount of cash, piled up, stashed away so you don't face that kind of challenge again. My parents were the kind of people who their home was their most valuable asset. They remortgaged it a number of times to get us through college and so on. I know exactly what that feels like.

But look, I don't think the way you help people is by necessarily being ''the most like them." The way you help them is by understanding the problems they have in their lives and addressing them. For me, personally, to go to after-school programs where there are probably very few kids at the typical one I go to in the city of Boston who had a similar life to me.

Q. Go to movies?

A. We go to movies. More often now we rent them at home just 'cause of time. What's so much fun is seeing the movies I love with my kids now that they're old enough. We watched on Sunday ''Groundhog Day." I love that movie. . . .

Q. I have a question [about] a very wealthy person who you happen to know, Maria Grasso -- remember that name? [She is Gabrieli's nanny who won $197 million in the lottery in 1999.] Do you still stay in touch with her?

A. Absolutely, she called me yesterday. She's a lovely woman.

Q. What does she do?

A. Whatever she wants. You know what, she's a generous person. She's really helped out a lot of members of her family. She's given away money to some worthy causes. She worked, before she worked for us, she worked to help kids with disabilities in New York, as kind of an aide. She's a very good-hearted person. What's been nice is, we liked her before, we like her now, and I think she feels we're friends who can relate to her in her new circumstance. Sadly, with some of her old friends it's hard. The good news is I've never hit her up for a twenty. I've been tempted.

Q. In politics today, who lives the political life most like Chris Gabrieli would like to live?

A. One guy I really admire is Mark Warner, who I think has done a fabulous job in Virginia. . . . What I admire is here's a guy who came into office, in a tough state, Virginia, to govern. . . . I think he's a futurist. I love people who want to embrace the future. I love that Bill Clinton talked about where we're going, not where we've been. . . . Ted Kennedy is someone, to be honest -- the ability of this guy to stay in the fight, to get John McCain at the table on immigration, Orrin Hatch to the table on child health, you know he is more involved, to be calling DiMasi, pushing on the healthcare bill. I love his intensity.

Q. You live in Louisburg Square in Beacon Hill. Everybody knows that as the home of John Kerry. Do you ever see him walking the dog or picking up the paper?

A. There was a comic moment in the campaign last time. We had a birthday party in September . . . and we had a little thing going with the kids on the street and they were doing the little games and whatnot and John Kerry came out and it was during the most intense point in the presidential race and all the cameras are following him. And I saw him sort of look over, and he had to make this decision. Does he come over, which he would do otherwise to be friendly to a neighbor who he knows and is having a birthday party, but that would bring 800 cameramen over and exploitation on us.

Q. What'd he do?

A. He went down the hill and did what he needed to do, and I appreciated that he realized it was a little family event. I know he cared but knew it would be intrusive.