Barry Bluestone

Bagley; McCullough

After Mumford, I attended the University of Michigan where I completed my undergraduate degree and Ph.D. in Economics. There I was active in student government and Students for a Democratic Society. In 1971, I moved to Boston, Massachusetts to assume a teaching/research position at Boston College. Expecting to spend just two years in Boston before returning to the midwest, I ended up spending 16 years at BC and then 11 years at the University of Massachusetts Boston where I directed the Ph.D. program in Public Policy (and, incidentally met my future wife who had graduated from Mumford in 1966! I ended up marrying my "high school sweetheart" ... who I didn't meet for the very first time until 1986.) In 1999, I moved to Northeastern University in Boston where I have worked ever since. I began the Center for Urban and Regional Policy (which in 2008 was renamed the Kitty an Michael Dukakis Center) and then helped build Northeastern's new School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and "retired" as dean of that school in June 2012. In 1995 I spent time in Washington, D.C. as Special Policy Advisor to House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt. During my fifty years at Boston College, UMass Boston, and Northeastern University, I worked on issues of urban and regional policy focusing on affordable housing, transportation, economic development, and education. I retired from university teaching and research in 2018

My wife and I (Mary Ellen Colten) lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1987 when we were married until her death in 2017. Our son, Josh, went to school in Cambridge and sadly turned down Michigan to attend Northwestern ... at least we got him to the Midwest.) We have also been lucky to have a home on Cape Cod in Truro, Massachusetts where I have been spending a lot more time since retirement. I've taken up golf again ... after not playing since high school and college. I still get a lot of miles in each summer on my road bike ... although my "triathlon" team (the "Four Forties") which consisted of four guys (me on bike, two friends in a canoe, and a runner) stopped competing in the Josh Billings RunAground in Western Mass after twenty years when we all turned sixty.

Despite the 50 plus years I have now spent in Boston, Detroit still is "home" and while I don't get to the city as often as I used to, every trip there is still a great pleasure. In my work, I had the opportunity to give speeches all across the country, often with an urban theme. I always begin by telling stories of Detroit and how it was the richest, most exciting, and friendliest city in the nation back when we were at Mumford.

In my junior year, Coach Jim Kelly invited me to try out for the Varsity Football team. At 5'7" and 140 lbs ... and not particularly speedy ... I was hardly star material. Coach Kelly kept urging me on and I only got in one game for two plays that year and didn't play football in my senior year. But that football experience gave me a sense of self-confidence that I had lacked before, and it has served me well ever since.

If memory serves, the Mustang football team had a front line mostly comprised of white kids and a backfield anchored by Tommy Binion and David Montgomery. The year was 1961, the first year of the freedom rides in the South. This was before the March on Washington, before the civil rights laws of the 1960s. Where else in America would you find a high school where the quarterback was African-American and the third string pulling guard was a small, slow white kid next to a massive right tackle (Steve Frank), also white. I don't think anyone of us could have gone to a better school anywhere in the country or grown up in an environment so wonderfully well ahead of its time.

Cycling, golf, sailing

Goals! Enjoy retirement and travel as much as possible until I can't!

Finally retired officially at the end of 2018 ... but still seem to keep busy

Yes, I agree.