Hiroko Masuike / The New York Times
Matthew Boylan, a reference librarian at the New York Public Library, in New York, June 13, 2018. For Boylan, the Father’s Day holiday prompts reflections of the time his father, a Harvard-educated prosecutor, became involved in a harrowing extortion trial in the 1960s.
Tuesday, June 19, 2018 | 2 a.m.
NEW YORK — As a reference librarian at the New York Public Library, Matthew J. Boylan, 58, spends his days fielding questions from the public on Ask NYPL, the library’s call-in information line.
Even in the age of Google, Boylan’s role as researcher for the public remains vital, from barroom bets, to questions about eviction from older tenants, to children asking why the sky is blue.
Calls that get routed to his desk, at the library’s venerable main branch at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, often reflect the trends of the moment: big news stories, big books or films coming out, royal weddings.
Lately, questions have come in about a new Martin Scorsese film in the works, “The Irishman,” and Boylan has had to explain that the movie partly involves the notorious disappearance of the Teamsters boss James R. Hoffa in 1975, which has long been suspected of being a mob hit organized by Tony Provenzano, a Genovese mob capo, and others.
Questions about Provenzano — or Hoffa, for that matter — get Boylan recalling his father, Matthew P. Boylan, a distinguished lawyer and prosecutor who died in 2009.
“Whenever these things come up, it really gets me thinking about my father,” Boylan said. “Especially around Father’s Day. I miss him a lot — his advice, his perspective.”
In the early 1960s, when the older Boylan was an assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey working for the Department of Justice, which was run by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, he successfully prosecuted Provenzano in a high-profile federal racketeering case.
The case was of keen interest to Kennedy, who had previously pursued both Hoffa and Provenzano. Boylan even listed Kennedy as a possible witness.
As it happens, the younger Boylan has also been fielding calls at the library lately about Kennedy since this month is the 50th anniversary of his assassination.
For some, Father’s Day might recall tender moments tossing a ball with dad or riding bikes or going for ice cream. But for the younger Boylan, the holiday prompts more hard-boiled reflections of the time his father, a young, strait-laced, Harvard-educated prosecutor, became involved in a harrowing extortion trial that was daunting for the entire family.
For the younger Boylan, the trial played out when he was a small boy, and it remains a formative event in his life and career.
On his desk at the library this week was a family prize: a signed photograph of Kennedy with a personal inscription to the older Boylan: “With appreciation and high regards.”
“For Kennedy at the time, this trial was Priority One — it was personal,” Boylan said. “He would have my father call him, or fly to Washington, for updates throughout the trial. One of my earliest memories was seeing my father getting off a government plane at Newark Airport and having his hat blown straight down the runway.”
Provenzano — known widely as Tony Pro — strong-armed his way to power in the crime-ridden Teamsters union, with a violent approach to campaigning and a knack for making enemies disappear.
During the trial, the judge sequestered the jittery jury in a hotel, where two suspicious fires were set, though they caused no real damage. A rival of Provenzano was found shot to death in Hoboken, New Jersey, before he could testify against him.
“The original choice for prosecutor was so frightened, he had a heart attack,” Boylan said. “Then Robert Kennedy called my father and warned him: ‘You know they will try to kill you, Matt.'”
Kennedy’s pursuit of Teamsters corruption began in the 1950s, when as chief counsel to the Senate Rackets Committee, he questioned Provenzano, who continually invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer.
“Tony Pro took the Fifth 44 times,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview, recalling his mother, Ethel Kennedy, bringing him to the hearings as a child to watch his father question Hoffa and a series of alleged mobsters.
The younger Kennedy said his father’s interest in the Provenzano trial unfolding in Newark would have been “right in character” with his habit of keeping a hand in local prosecutions of mob activity and union corruption around the country.
“He was personally involved and hands-on, encouraging the local guys on the front lines of fighting the mob,” Kennedy said. “He wanted to encourage them and make sure they were operating strategically. He liked young, tough guys willing to stand up for what they believed in.”
The older Boylan was 31 during the trial, a few years out of Harvard Law School, and did not back down to Tony Pro’s intimidation tactics.
The younger Boylan said that, as a young child, he found a handgun in his father’s sock drawer that, in an unusual move, the FBI issued to the prosecutor for protection.
“Provenzano sent goons to our house to bang on our door in the middle of the night, to put fear into us,” Boylan recalled.
Provenzano, a stocky former amateur boxer, was quoted in The New York Herald Tribune as saying of Boylan, “He’s a good boy, but when two fighters get in the ring, one has to win and one has to lose. And they both have to fight as hard as they can.”
Provenzano, a second-in-command ally of Hoffa in the Teamsters, was convicted in the 1963 extortion trial and sent to a federal prison where Hoffa was also taken after a jury tampering conviction.
The two men became rivals there, which helped lead, years later, to Provenzano becoming a key figure in Hoffa’s disappearance, which was never solved.
Other news coverage of Provenzano’s trial included columns by Jimmy Breslin for The New York Herald Tribune that described Provenzano taking his union-owned Cadillac to court and wearing a sharkskin suit, a diamond pinkie ring and a gold watch.
“He does not talk too well but you do not need an elocution course to run a Teamsters union,” Breslin wrote. “You need muscle, and Tony has plenty of that.”
Shortly before Boylan died, he heard Breslin single him out by name, in citing the Tony Pro case as one of the best trials he covered in his long newspaper career.
“I’m glad my father got to hear that,” the younger Boylan said, adding that his father was heartbroken when Kennedy was assassinated and devoted himself throughout his career to public service.
Like father, like son. The younger Boylan, who studied history at Columbia University and graduated from Duke University School of Law, left behind a law career to enjoy a wider realm of research for the public.
“That case colored my father’s career, and it never left me either,” he said. “So I’ve spent my career doing public-spirited research for other people, as a direct consequence of what arose out of my father’s experience working for Robert Kennedy and putting away Tony Pro.”
