Talk:Selma Botman

Family Connections

Shouldn't we include the following in this article:

Botman is married to Thomas F. Birmingham. According to Boston Globe columnist Howie Carr, Birmingham’s uncle was a small-town Charlestown, MA hood shot to death in 1969. Birminghams’s father was a Veteran’s agent for the City of Boston indicted for accepting welfare payments for the family of Suitcase Fidler, gangster and partner of the late Eddie Connors in Boston. Charges against the senior Birmingham were dismissed when he hired one William M. Bulger as attorney (Carr, Howie. 2011. Hitman: The Untold Story of Johnny Martorano, Whitey Bulger’s Enforcer. New York: Forge. p. 405). William M. Bulger is the brother of notorious mobster Whitey Bulger of the murderous Winter Hill Gang in Boston. Bulger served as legal counsel to the Birmingham family at that time.

The family relationships continued into the next generation. Botman’s husband, the younger Birmingham, was a protege of William Bulger when he served as Senate President of the Massachusetts Legislature. Birmingham followed Bulger into the Senate, and succeeded Bulger as Senate President in 1996 (Carr, p. 405). William Bulger was President of the University of Massachusetts when Botman was appointed President of the University of Southern Maine, and apparently recommended her strongly to members of the University of Maine System Board of Trustees prior to her appointment. Bulger was later forced to resign as President of the University of Massachusetts after he refused in 2003 to assist the FBI in finding the fugitive Whitey Bulger (Jacoby, Jeff. 2013. “Political Elites Should Shun Bill Bulger.” Boston Globe. June 23). Irving Furbish (talk) 18:22, 27 March 2014 (UTC)