City Streets: A Memoir

Navy pilot Frank Del Vecchio returned home on a weekend leave only to find his neighborhood had disappeared. Boston's West End was being demolished in an urban renewal land grab, its twelve thousand immigrant Jewish and Italian residents summarily displaced. This was the turning point for Frank-he resigned his Navy commission and instead chose to battle political corruption. CITY STREETS is the story of a kid from the Depression era who wins a college scholarship, goes through Navy flight training, serves as a carrier pilot, and lands at Harvard Law School. From saving Boston's historic Charlestown neighborhood, to working with Martin Luther King, Jr. on projects for inner-city Washington D.C., Del Vecchio's memoir vividly recalls a time of struggle, idealism and hard-won triumphs.