Stephen Lynch (politician) - Early Life, Education, and Career

Early Life, Education, and Career

Lynch, the fourth of six children, was born March 31, 1955, in the neighborhood of South Boston. He was raised with his five sisters in the Old Colony Housing Project. His father, Francis Lynch, was an ironworker who had dropped out of school in the eighth grade. His mother, Anne (née Havlin), was a night-shift post office worker. Both parents came from fourth-generation South Boston families. He attended St. Augustine Elementary School and South Boston High School. During high school vacations he began working in construction alongside his father. After graduating from high school in 1973, Lynch became an apprentice ironworker. For the next six years he worked on high-altitude structural ironwork throughout the United States for various companies, including General Motors and U.S. Steel.

He was arrested in 1977 for smoking marijuana at a Willie Nelson concert at the Illinois State Fair, leading to a $50 misdemeanor fine. He was again arrested in 1979 for assault and battery of six Iranian students at an anti-American protest in Boston, a charge which was later dropped. Around this time, he developed "a problem with alcohol", leading him to join Alcoholics Anonymous. (He reportedly stopped after meeting his future wife several years later, although he continued to attend occasional meetings through the 2000s.)

Having personal experience with worker safety concerns, Lynch found himself with aspirations beyond his trade. When a 1979 blizzard forced his project in Wisconsin to shut down, he spent the extra time taking courses at the University of Wisconsin. Shortly thereafter, his father was diagnosed with cancer, and so Lynch returned to Boston. In the early 1980s Lynch was elected to the executive board of the Iron Workers Local 7 union. At age 30 he was elected president of the board, the youngest in the local's history. During this time he spent his nights and weekends attending the Wentworth Institute of Technology, from which he graduated cum laude with a bachelor's degree in construction management in 1988.

That year he led a three-week labor strike, refusing to sign a contract with the Associated General Contractors, despite pressure from within his union. The union international ultimately signed the contract without Lynch's approval, causing him to file suit against them. He would later remark, with regard to his political career, "Nothing I ever do will be as volatile as being union president during those times." This debacle forced him to miss the first three weeks of classes at Boston College Law School, where he had enrolled. Despite the setback, he graduated with a J.D. in 1991. After graduating he joined the law office of Gabriel O. Dumont, Jr., representing labor unions and unemployed workers.

Throughout law school and the following years, he often worked pro bono, representing housing project residents at Boston Housing Authority (BHA) hearings. In one high-profile 1994 case, Lynch provided free legal services to 14 teenagers, all white, who were accused of physically attacking a Hispanic teenager and harassing the family of his white girlfriend over a period of six months. Lynch, who claimed the youths had been "overcharged", helped some of the teenagers to avoid criminal charges and eviction by the BHA.

Lynch was a one-time tax delinquent. In the mid-1980s the city of Boston placed liens on four properties he owned due to several thousand dollars of unpaid property taxes. He owed $2,000 in overdue taxes to the state of Massachusetts from 1985 to 1998, and for several years owed $4,000 to the federal IRS.