4 minute read
Building Student-Athlete Strength and Character
Dan Rea ’70 endows new varsity weight room.
Photo taken by Bill Brett
STUDENT-ATHLETE STRENGTH
By Andrea Kennedy
More than 100 cheering student-athletes greeted Boston broadcast journalist Dan Rea ’70, H’08 at UMass Boston’s Clark Athletic Center on September 27 as he arrived for the ribbon cutting of the university’s newest student space: the Dan Rea ’70 Boston State College Varsity Training Facility. With a generous gift to the facility in December 2020, Rea and his family empowered an overhaul of the varsity teams’ weight room. They also established a permanent endowment—the first in Beacon Athletics history—that will ensure the facility stays state of the art for generations of Beacons.
Amid balloons, shining weight racks, and pristine treadmills, Rea gathered with nearly 200 friends, students, and staff to celebrate what Director of Athletics Jacqui Schuman called the tools “for training our athletes to the highest levels of performance.” But the space is intended to build more than students’ bodies. Schuman pointed to a quote from Rea emblazoned on the training-room wall:
“Athletics improve our world,” it reads, “because, whatever our differences, fair competition fosters mutual respect both on and off the fields of play.”
Rea believes deeply in the transformative power of sports. Growing up an athletic kid in Boston’s Readville neighborhood, he chose to attend Boston State College (BSC) largely because of BSC’s athletics programs. (BSC merged with UMass Boston in 1982, making Rea and his former classmates UMass Boston alumni). Though he had what he laughingly describes as an “unexceptional college sports career” on the freshman hockey and varsity baseball teams, he found it an important formative experience.
“Sports is the great American commonality,” Rea said. “One of the things I learned from sports, growing up in the city, is that all sorts of people from different backgrounds enjoyed the same thing. Sports has probably done more to break down barriers in this country than virtually any other aspect of our society.” The level playing field Rea found in sports became an ideal that he has pursued throughout his professional life, through both law and journalism. After a brief stint in the military, Rea enrolled in Boston University’s law school. There, at a classmate’s suggestion, he launched a weekly talk show on the university’s radio station and rekindled a childhood fascination with radio’s power to connect people.
When he heard that Boston’s WBZ NewsRadio was looking for a Saturday night talk show host, Rea applied and got the position. He hosted the show while practicing law for several years until WBZ-TV began tapping him for on-air legal analysis. He asked for a shot at reporting, and a new career was born.
Rea broadcast to Boston for WBZ-TV for 31 years, winning two regional Emmy Awards and interviewing some of the most prominent figures of the day, including every U.S. president from Gerald Ford to Barack Obama (as well as then–Vice President Joe Biden).
But he loved covering small stories, too, especially those that could help Bostonians in need, such as a boy with spina bifida in Dorchester who was collecting cans to buy himself a $2,000 adaptive bike. “To be able to use the power of television to help someone? There was no greater high,” said Rea.
Rea helped no one more than Joe Salvati. Salvati and three other men were framed for a 1965 murder they didn’t commit by FBI agents protecting their guilty sources. Over 15 years of investigative reporting, Rea exposed their wrongful imprisonment. When their conviction was overturned, he retired from television. “The day the judge awarded the four of them $101 million was my last day on TV…. I started my talk show that night.”
That show, WBZ’s NightSide, airs political discussion every weeknight, reaching audiences in 38 states. Rea visualizes the show as “North America’s back porch”—a place to put your feet up and talk. “All points of view are welcome,” Rea says. “NightSide is a place where reasonable people can disagree reasonably. I mean, do you not talk to your family because you are a Red Sox fan and they like the Yankees? No!” He laughs. “It always comes back to sports with me!”
Back at the ribbon cutting for the Dan Rea ’70 Boston State College Varsity Training Facility, surrounded by former BSC teammates, Rea admitted to being “blown away” by the moment.
“Dan knows firsthand the role that sports play in developing the character of young people,” said UMass Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. Cutting the ribbon at the ceremony, Rea—avid athlete, crusading newscaster, mayor of America’s back porch, and champion of fair play—dedicated the facility to the student-athletes whose characters he hopes it will shape.
“Never have I conducted a more important ceremony than this,” he told them. “This is for all of you.”
