BOSTON – Former Mayor Kevin H. White, who led the city for 16 years including racially turbulent times in the 1970s, died Friday, a family spokesman said. He was 82.

White, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2003, died peacefully at his Boston home surrounded by his family, spokesman and friend George Regan said.

“He was a man who built Boston into the world-class city it is today,” said Regan, who called his loss “devastating.”

White, a white Irish Catholic from a family of politicians, is credited with revitalizing Boston’s downtown and seeing the city through court-ordered busing, but he ended his four-term tenure in 1983 under a cloud of ethics suspicions.

White, a Democrat, was elected Massachusetts secretary of state three times before running for mayor for the first time in 1967 against antibusing activist Louise Day Hicks.

White defeated her with support from the black community and liberals.

After losing a 1970 bid for governor, White was re-elected mayor in 1971, again defeating Hicks. He won again narrowly in 1975 and 1979.

White was considered as a vice presidential running mate to Sen. George McGovern in 1972 but was passed over for Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton, who was later shunted aside for R. Sargent Shriver Jr.

After U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered busing to desegregate public schools in 1974, White protected schoolchildren from violence with federal and state assistance during the period of crisis and in 1976 led a march of 30,000 to protest racial violence.

White was never totally comfortable with busing, however, and called Garrity’s plan “too severe.”

“I wish I knew a way to have taught Garrity or convinced Garrity to be more generous … or softer in his implementation of that order,” White said after his time as mayor.

While the busing crisis brought a stain to the city, White was also revitalizing the city’s downtown, especially the shops and restaurants of Quincy Market, which remains one of the city’s top tourist attractions. He thought the downtown renaissance would make Boston a “world-class city.”

A statue of him was unveiled near Quincy Market in 2006.

 

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