59 Years Later, A Public Servant Exits

Next Wednesday morning, Patricia Lawlor plans to show up for the same employer she has served since Dwight Eisenhower was president.

She plans to arrive at City Hall by 6:30 as usual. Before anyone else gets there.

She’ll check that the proper flags are stationed outside the mayor’s office and on the Green. She’ll pick up the newspapers and distribute them to offices on all six floors. She’ll make coffee. She’ll go through the mail, get to work writing proclamations, preparing and witnessing contract signings, sending flowers to relatives of people who’ve died. Answering people’s questions all day. Then, come 7 p.m., she’ll head home.

But this time, she vows, she’ll go home for good.

Lawlor is believed to be city government’s longest-serving city employee. (Click here to read about the runner-up.) She’s also its most beloved. She had been threatening to retire for years.

Now Lawlor has officially decided to retire. She has begun clearing out her office. Her paperwork’s in. The flowers and phone calls and tributes have begun pouring in. It seems as though city government’s Cal Ripken really is retiring after a remarkable streak of devoting 59 years to the public as a city government worker, the last 38 of them as the eyes, heart, and motor of the mayor’s suite. She has done that work tirelessly under various titles, currently ​“deputy chief of staff.” Whatever the formal title, she has been the definition of the term ​“public servant.”

Mayors come and go in New Haven. Pattie Lawlor stays. So government can keep running.

So some people won’t believe it until Lawlor’s chair in the second floor entrance to the mayoral chief of staff’s office is empty next Thursday morning.

Or, in the case of mayoral Chief of Staff Tomas Reyes, they choose not to believe it.

“She’s not going anywhere,” he said Thursday during one of his countless daily stops into Lawlor’s office to get information.

Then he added: ​“I’m going to keep on saying it.”

Lawlor informed him that, yes, she really means it this time. It’s time to go.

She can barely walk because of an ulcerated sore on her left leg, which kept her out of work this spring during treatment and which is returning. She has trouble breathing, too, thanks to the emphysema that can trace its roots to a three-pack-a-day smoking habit during the cigarette-haze days of the 1980s Biagio DiLieto administration. (City Hall ​“was like a steam house” in those days, she said.) The slow walk two doors down the corridor to the mayor’s office takes the wind out of her.

Plus, at 77, ​“I want to know what it’s like not to have to get up in the morning and get dressed and be at work,” Lawlor said. After getting to know everyone else’s kids and grandchildren, she wants to get to know her own 16-month-old granddaughter Peyton.

She’s leaving with no regrets. Just endless fond memories. And generations of city workers who learned from her how to navigate government and help people of all walks of life.

“I loved it. I love getting up and going to work here. I love helping people. Every day is different,” Lawlor said. ​“I was born in New Haven; I am committed.”

Public Service DNA

Lawlor grew up on Legion Avenue. Government service and politics were in her family’s DNA. Lawlor’s father Pasquale was a lifetime city worker, eventually serving as supervisor of sidewalks. Her brother Vincent would become Democratic Town Chairman (as would Vincent Jr.).

When Pattie was 18 and graduated from James Hillhouse High School, she told her father she didn’t plan to attend college. He informed her she should therefore work for the city.

She landed at the 200 Orange St. Hall of Records, fielding fire and police calls and dispatching firefighters at what was then the emergency communications center.

“We used to sit up on high stools with earphones on,” she recalled. ​“You had a big giant board, You worked with plugs.”

But first she transferred in 1967 to the Redevelopment Agency, a now vestigial city department that once employed an army of workers spending millions of dollars a year charting the destruction of impoverished neighborhoods for the dream of rebuilding a model city. The office was in the former Powell Building across from the Green. Lawlor’s job: handling the paperwork on demolition contracts.

That was a full-time chore; New Haven got more urban renewal money per capita than any other U.S. city to demolish buildings. ​“Everything was coming down,” Lawlor recalled. ​“The whole Hill was coming down.” Including much of Legion Avenue, though not the house on the far western end where she grew up. When she married her husband Edward, they moved to Norton Parkway.

Richard C. Lee was New Haven’s mayor at the time. The mayor’s office was enlisting Lawlor to help out in the office during staff lunch breaks.

Lawlor didn’t get to know him. She was intimidated by him, she recalled. ​“We called him ​‘Little Caesar,” she said.

Subsequent mayors (except Frank Logue) would continue to summon her to fill in. She was no longer easily intimidated. She would get to know all of them up close, and grow loyal.

Bart Guida? ​“He was a great guy,” she recalled. ​“It was so sad how he died.” (Guida shot himself on the grounds of Wilbur Cross High School in 1978, two years after leaving office.)

When Biagio DiLieto (“He was a great mayor; he had a fantastic staff”) took office in 1980, he brought Lawlor over to work full time as a receptionist. She moved to monitoring the sprawling roster of boards and commissions (a task she has continued to perform) and to assist the office’s legislative liaison. Everyone in city government — employees, elected officials, members of the public seeking help — came to know her, respect her, depend on her institutional knowledge.

By the time John Daniels became mayor in 1990 (“He was one of the kindest people; he was just a gentle man”), City Hall had ​“temporarily” moved to 770 Chapel St. pending a long-delayed rebuilding of the Church Street property. And Lawlor had become a fixture, accumulating more day-to-day responsibilities for keeping the mayor’s office running. Suddenly the fog cleared: the Daniels team cleared the air and made City Hall smoke free. At her husband’s urging, Lawlor took the opportunity to quit, although not soon enough to prevent her subsequent emphysema.

As the city’s first black mayor, who defeated the political machine, Daniels came into office facing a mountain of expectations from people in the community who formerly felt shut out of government. He had the misfortune of governing during the depths of a devastating recession. Lawlor watched as Daniels had to say no time and again to many friends and allies; she saw the toll it took on him.

Daniels’ successor, John DeStefano (“probably the smartest man I ever met; he kept his team going all the time; he always had ideas”), had previously worked with Lawlor as a DiLieto aide. He kept her on as well as City Hall moved back to, well, City Hall, on Church Street, and he too depended on her.

“She would organize all the events in City Hall. It was her domain,” DeStefano recalled Thursday. He remembered her as a ​“sweetheart” and a hard worker, ​“dedicated and loyal to the city. If there was a snowstorm, we would send a squad car to come and get her” to keep City Hall running.

“Mom”

Young city workers learned quickly that they could find guidance from Lawlor in navigating government. She became their confidante, their mentor.

Lawlor’s gravel voice and no-nonsense demeanor have sometimes fooled people, for a moment. Then come the knowing raised eye, the cackle, the smile, and the open soul that accepts everybody.

Current city parks and recreation chief Rebecca Bombero, for instance, leaned on Lawlor’s knowledge often when she began working in the budget office and then the legislative staff under Mayor DeStefano.

“If you needed help figuring out something or how to navigate, you went to her office. She knows how the city works,” Bombero said. ​“Patty was the train conductor; she made the sure the trains rain on time. She was like a mom to everybody. She was incredibly dedicated.”

She’d watch how Lawlor would ​“run the show” at Mayor’s Night Out events. ​“She would bring somebody over to you to talk to, explain the situation they were having so you could help them. Or she would help them.”

Lawlor was most comfortable doing that without taking the limelight. ​“I’m a behind-the-scenes person,” she said. ​“I like it that way.” She refused to allow people to honor her at events (until in 2017 Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison convinced her to accept the Black and Hispanic Caucus’ Pioneer Award at its annual gala; it took three tries).

By example, Lawlor taught others in City Hall ​“how to deal with residents, how to show respect for everybody,” Bombero said.

Or as Lawlor herself put it: ​“I treat people the way I would like them to treat me. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.”

And if you’re not nice to her?

“I’ll try my best. I work through it.”

On Bended Knee

DeStefano’s 20-year reign ended in December 2013. Lawlor announced that after 24 years of tireless government work, she was finally ready to retire.

Tomas Reyes had other ideas.

He had worked with Lawlor when he served as president of the (then-titled) Board of Aldermen. Now the new mayor, Toni Harp, had chosen Reyes as her chief of staff. Reyes knew that Lawlor knew better than anyone how the building and the mayor’s office operates day to day.

So he went to see her and got down on one knee.

“I thought he was going to ask me to marry him,” Lawlor recalled.

Instead he asked her to stay on the job.

“Six months,” he pleaded.

OK, she said. Six months.

Six months later Reyes and Harp, who had also come to depend her, pleaded with her to stay longer. They prevailed.

So for the past five years, they haven’t had to worry whether contracts would get signed and delivered, rooms secured and food ordered for public events, the proper flags raised on the Green (the Italian flag, for instance for the Columbus Day Parade, or the Mexican or Ecuadorian or Irish flag for other annual celebrations) and maintained outside the mayor’s office, checks distributed … whether City Hall would basically be open for business and running.

Now, with her precarious health, they do understand Lawlor has to move on, Mayor Harp said Thursday.

Not that she welcomes the news.

“We absolutely depend on her,” Harp said. ​“She has so much institutional knowledge. People often come to Patty; she knows how to soothe somebody who had a bad day. She’s almost indispensable. She’s being waiting for years to retire; she’s given us her blood, sweat and tears. She’s a gem.”

For these final days in her job, Lawlor has received a steady stream of hugs and flowers and best wishes.

Jordan Johnson was in her office Friday picking up a check from her for the last time — and was actually wistful about it.

Johnson, who’s 24, got to know Lawlor soon after beginning work as a part-time intern for the city’s prison re-entry project one floor down from her office. ​“She’s been like a fairy godmother to me. She looks out for me,” Jordan said. Lawlor helped him find more part-time intern work in the building. Perhaps more importantly she reassured him whenever he felt agitated, uncertain about his fate, especially in the face of pending budget cuts.

“She’s the first one I come to when I think things are getting tough with the city,” Johnson said. ​“She tells me, ​‘Keep the faith. People come and go. Stay true to yourself; good things come to people who wait.’”

Lawlor does leave on one sad final note. While Lawlor was out for months earlier this year while her leg healed, a City Hall administrative aide with whom she worked closely for 22 years betrayed her trust. The aide allegedly took the city credit card entrusted to Lawlor and ran up $11,000 in bills for hotel rooms and other personal expenses.

Harp fired the aide, whom police have arrested.

“I’m heartbroken over her. She was like a daughter. I thought she would take my job one day,” Lawlor said. ​“I wish she would have come to me. I could have helped her.”

After finishing crying about it, Lawlor said, she came to accept that ​“she didn’t do this to me. That’s how I got through it.” Now she’s hoping her former co-worker ​“gets through it” too. ​“Hopefully she’ll be right. She’s a smart girl.”

That incident had absolutely nothing to do with Lawlor’s decision to retire, she said. ​“Hell no! I’m leaving because I need oxygen,” between her breathing problems and difficulty walking. Not to mention, after all these years filling her office with photos of other people’s children and grandchildren, finally spending the time to get to know her own toddler granddaughter in upstate New York.

So this time there’s no turning back, Lawlor insisted. Though … if it takes a while to find a replacement … and then someone needs helping learning who does what around City Hall and where to order food for a reception in the atrium or where to forward signed contracts…. If she’s not out of town with little Peyton, Lawlor said, she just might be available to pop in now and then.

But definitely, she said, she won’t do that for, well, a good month.

And as for who’s going to arrange this retirement party at City Hall, someone else will need to start learning the drill.