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When George Casey Jr.
was growing up, in All-
ston, on Army bases across
the US, Germany, and Ja-
pan, and on the campuses
of BC High and George-
town, everybody knew
him as the general’s son.
It was not a bad thing,
but in those days, in the middle of the
Vietnam War, it was a complicated thing.
No one likes to live in their father’s
shadow, and George Casey Sr. cast a long
and impressive one. He received a Silver
Star in Korea, for his valor on Heartbreak
Ridge. He served three tours in Vietnam,
receivingmoremedalsthancouldfiton
his uniform. He was a soldier’s soldier, and
eventually a general’s general.
Like most kids, George Casey Jr. tried to
walk sideways, to step out of that shadow.
His father wanted him to go to West
Point, so he made half-hearted attempts to
get into the service academies. Instead, he
ended up where he wanted to go: George-
town University.
He enlisted in ROTC, intending to have
a short career in the Army, to please his fa-
ther as much as anything, but his ambition
was to be a lawyer. He loved the law, its po-
tential to right wrongs and level playing
fields and make the Constitution that sol-
diers fought and died for a living, breath-
ing document.
Then, on July 7, 1970, with his George-
town graduation parties still ringing in his
ears, everything changed: His father and
six others were killed when their helicop-
ter went down in Cambodia. Major Gener-
al George Casey Sr. had been on his way to
visit soldiers who had been wounded in
the battle at Parrot’s Beak.
Like George Bailey in Frank Capra’s
classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” who threw
away his dream of traveling the world
when his family needed him, George Casey
Jr. threw away his dream of becoming a
lawyer.
“If he had lived, I might not have stayed
in the Army,” George Casey told me. “I just
didn’t want to be the general’s son. I want-
ed to go to law school.”
But then, the more he learned about his
dad, about the way his father carried him-
self as a soldier and a man, he decided he
did, in fact, want to be the general’s son.
But, again, it was complicated.
“As I progressed through the Army, I
looked at my bosses through the idealistic
lens of what people told me about my fa-
ther,” General Casey told me. “When you
are killed in action, you are larger than
life. The leader presented to me was flaw-
less, and none of the others measured up.
It wasn’t until I was a colonel that I real-
ized no one is that good.”
It was an enormous relief to realize that
his father was not an idealized symbol of
perfection but a real person with flaws like
everyone else. But it also triggered a long-
ing.
“One of my regrets is not knowing my
dad as a man, because I was just 21 when
he died,” he said.
The son eventually outranked his fa-
ther, rising to become the head of the Ar-
my, the service’s 36th chief of staff. He
held that post from 2007 to 2011, when
the Army was engaged in wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
In the middle of one of those wars,
when he was the commanding general of
US forces in Iraq from 2004 to 2007, Gen-
eral Casey was sitting in his office in Bagh-
dad when an earnest young officer ap-
peared. His name was Brian Golden, and
when he’s not deployed with his Army
unit, he is director of the Boston Planning
& Development Agency. Golden was hold-
ing an old photograph of the Casey home-
stead on Franklin Street in Allston.
Golden grew up near the Caseys and
knew the family history, that the general’s
grandfather was Dr. John Casey, chief of
medical services at St. Elizabeth’s, and if
you were born at St. E’s back in the day,
chances are Doc Casey brought you into
this world. Doc Casey never charged the
local priests and nuns for his medical ser-
vices, as long as they agreed to pray for his
five sons, all in harm’s way during World
War II.
To Golden, the Caseys epitomized self-
less public service, and he believed at least
someone in the family should be recog-
CULLEN, Page BThe general
and his son
Kevin Cullen
Business
PAGES B6-
Forbreakingnews,goto
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business
By Felice Belman
GLOBE STAFFS
tanding in Keene,
N.H., last week, former
vice president Joe
Biden remarked on the
natural beauty of...
Vermont. The week be-
fore, President
Trump called New
Hampshire “cen-
tral casting for the closing of fac-
tories” — before his election,
that is. And days before that,
Representative Seth Moulton,
still in the presidential race at
that point, panned New
Hampshire’s Interstate 93
widening project.
Note to would-be presi-
dents: There are more effec-
tive ways to impress and flat-
ter New Hampshire voters,
whose first-in-the-nation
support you desperately
need. Some unsolicited
ideas for those campaigning
up north:
RLearn the difference
between New Hampshire and Ver-
mont. From the Granite State perspec-
tive, New Hampshire is the right-side-
up triangle. Vermont is upside-down.
White Mountains versus Green Moun-
tains. Dartmouth and UNH versus
Middlebury and UVM. Tax-free shop-
ping versus... not.
RLearn to speak like a local. Con-
cord, the state capital, is pronounced
CON-quered. Berlin, New Hampshire’snorthernmost city, is BER-lin, unlike
the one in Germany. It’s located in Coos
(CO-ahss) County — please don’t call it
Kooz. The lovely Piscataqua River sepa-
rating Portsmouth from Maine is pro-
nounced P’SKA-da-qua.
RThe top of Mount Washington, the
highest peak in the Northeast, would
be an excellent backdrop for a cam-
paign speech on climate change. You
can get there by car, by cog railway,
or by foot. Just don’t get lost on the
way up and expect the Fish &
Game Department to rescue you.
Voters don’t look kindly on that
sort of mishap.
RThe Red Arrow Diner in
Manchester is great — but if
you really want to impress,
schmooze with the breakfast
crowd at Polly’s Pancake
Parlor up in Sugar Hill. Ask
for New Hampshire maple
syrup — not that other
kind.
RIf you’re a long-
shot Democrat, make a
campaign stop at Robie’s
Country Store in Hooksett. That’s the
spot where Jimmy Carter introduced
himself back in 1975, only to hear the
proprietor, Lloyd Robie, reply, “Jimmy
who?” Mortifying in the moment, per-
haps, but Jimmy Who eventually ran a
classic New Hampshire grass-roots
campaign and landed in the White
House. Not a bad role model.
RAre you a candidate whose cam-
paign is facing an existential crisis?
NEW HAMPSHIRE, Page BHOW TO MAKE
FRIENDS IN
NEWHAMPSHIRE
A guide for would-be presidents
ERIN CLARK FOR THE BOSTON GLOBEBARRY CHIN/GLOBE STA
FFJONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFFJoe Biden (top left) while in
Keene, N.H., mentioned the
beauty of Vermont. Oops!
President Trump called New
Hampshire “central casting
for the closing of factories.”
And Seth Moulton (top right),
who dropped out of the
presidential race, disparaged
a highway project.PAUL ROMNER/ADOBEBy Naomi Martin
and Dan Adams
GLOBE STAFF
Despite marriage equality,
LGBTQ Americans in 2019 still
face many challenges, including
higher rates of teen suicide and
the prospect of being denied
homes or losing jobs over their
sexual orientation.
But to Samson Racioppi and
fellow organizers of a Straight
Pride Parade on Saturday in Bos-
ton — an event expected to draw
dozens of supporters and per-
haps 800 counterprotesters —
heterosexuals are victims, too.
Straight people have “been
disregarded, and that’s a form of
attack,” Racioppi said, citing a
Netflix show about drag queens
and his friend’s preteen daughter
questioning her gender. “People
need to be reassured that even
though there’s all this mixed
messaging, it’s still perfectly nat-
ural to identify as a heterosexu-
al.”
LGBTQ leaders, however, say
that the parade — despite orga-
nizers’ insistence that they seek
to celebrate straight people, not
tear down others — is led by radi-
STRAIGHT PARADE, Page BParade
planners
saythey’re
victims
By Emily Sweeney
GLOBE STAFF
Paul A. Steber was sitting in class one
day last year when the discussion turned
to gun control. Steber slammed his fist on
his desk.
“Obama’s trying to take our guns!” he
said, one of his classmates at the Newman
School in Boston recalled Thursday.
Kyle McFatter, 18, remembers the out-
burst clearly, since President Barack
Obama by that point had been out of of-
fice for almost two years. This week, as
Steber was arrested in North Carolina for
allegedly plotting to “shoot up” his college
campus, the episode took on a more omi-
nous tone.“He definitely at times felt a little un-
hinged,” he said. “A little bit not as stable
as you’d like to see.”
Steber, 19, is charged with having two
guns — a semiautomatic pistol and a dou-
ble-barrel shotgun — in his dorm room at
High Point University and with “commu-
nicating a threat of mass violence” on ed-
ucational property.
The authorities said Steber bought the
weapons last week, had been researching
mass shootings for about nine months,
and had a “plan and timeline to kill peo-
ple.”
Steber pleaded not guilty Wednesday
and was ordered held without bail for 10
STEBER, Page BForN.C.suspect,gunswerekey
Classmate recalls him as opinionated, easily riled
By Danny McDonald
GLOBE STAFF
and Maria Lovato
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
The MBTA on Thursday had
another one of those days when
several seemingly isolated mis-
haps combined to produce a
commuting nightmare, adding
to a summer of service disrup-
tions across the system that has
increased pressure on Beacon
Hill to act more quickly and
forcefully to update the aging
public transit network.
The brunt of the interrup-
tions on Thursday fell on com-
muters out of North Station,
with three of its four main
branches suffering cancellations
or severe delays during the eve-
ning trip home. First an equip-
ment malfunction shut down the
Lowell line for several hours and
forced the cancellation of some
Haverhill trains; then a problem
with the drawbridge between Sa-
lem and Beverly caused severe
delays for trains to Rockport and
Newburyport.
In Somerville, a drill being
used in the construction of the
Green Line extension forced the
T to suspend trains along the ad-
jacent Lowell line. The T told rid-
ers to take the Orange Line to
Wellington and board buses
from there. Some passengers re-
ported that their buses received
police escorts between Welling-
ton and Woburn.
At North Station, commuters
expressed frustration at the lat-
est incidents to hit the MBTA.
“I left work early today,” Mi-
chael Cogliabese said. “I thought
I was going to get home early;
apparently not.”
Another rider, Laura Zeugner,
called the commuting mishap “a
very large inconvenience.”
“One of the nice things about
COMMUTING, Page BTtrains
halted
bydrill,
bridge
Commuters face
troubles to north
Paul A. Steber, who
went to Newman
School in the Back
Bay, is charged
with threatening
mass violence.