Mulrey explains the corporate change in Zoomed licensing hearing.
An unexpected name came up at a routine Boston Licensing Board hearing this morning: Dapper O'Neil.
Stephen Mulrey, owner of Amrheins and Mul's Diner, was before the board seeking to change the formal name of the corporation that owns the place - and to change the names of the owners of that corporation.
It's a completely routine process, and the board will likely vote to approve the change at a meeting tomorrow. In this case, though, Mulrey was seeking to swap in his name for his father, Joseph, who died 20 years ago.
What took so long? "Dapper O'Neil used always do my license," Mulrey explained. And after all those years, who looks at corporate documents?
Although O'Neil is best remembered today as a bombastic at-large councilor, he had served as a member of the licensing board between 1963 and 1971. Amrheins, Inc. was formally created as a corporation in 1965, according to Secretary of State records.
O'Neil was first appointed to the board by Gov. Endicott "Chub" Peabody, for whom he had worked as a chauffeur - a job he'd also had with James Michael Curley - back when the governor still appointed members of the licensing board. He served until 1971, when then City Councilor Louise Day Hicks became a congresswoman and he became her replacement because he came in tenth in the previous election for what was then a nine-member council.
O'Neil died in 2007.