She calls him her most important “unpaid, unlistened-to adviser.”
Lawrence Quinn, 83, is Christine Quinn’s devoted dad, a former union electrical engineer and a World War II Navy veteran who now accompanies his daughter to work every day, as well as to parades, campaign stops and speeches. He even has his own office.
“My major function is picking up envelopes,” says Lawrence of his City Hall duties. “My goal is to be helpful in a general way. I give her advice, but it’s never paid any attention to.”
Lawrence, who raised Christine and her older sister, Ellen, after their mother died of breast cancer, when Christine was 16, remembers his daughter as a troublemaker growing up, a girl who “got along well with the neighborhood kids” and was anointed the “Mayor of Libby Drive” because she was the bossiest kid on her street.
His schedule is almost as grueling as his daughter’s.
“It’s terrible,” quips Lawrence. “It’s get up, go by the Hot & Crusty, go by the Post Office, come down here and be subject to any type of whatever that comes out of here.”