Dorcena Forry leads festivities at St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast

State Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry shares a light moment with New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft as Gov. Charlie Baker and Mayor Martin Walsh look on. (Photo: Mayor’s Office photo by Don Harney)

The black-and-white photos outside the Convention Center ballroom highlighted prominent politicians from years past: former Senate President William Bulger, former Mayor Kevin White, former Gov. William Weld.

But at the head table and in the audience, the annual Saint Patrick’s Day Breakfast reflected the more chromatically-diverse reality of present-day Boston, with 1st Suffolk District Senator Linda Dorcena Forry hosting the affair for the second year since she claimed the honor, reserved for the holder of that seat since the 1970s.

Along with notable city and state politicians at the head table, including Gov. Charlie Baker, Senate President Stan Rosenberg and House Speaker Robert DeLeo, were Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins, city councilors Ayanna Pressley, Tito Jackson and Charles Yancey, and state representatives Russell Holmes and Jeffrey Sanchez.

For many years, former state Sen. Royal Bolling Sr. was the sole black elected officials to attend the annual event, recalls former state Rep. Marie St. Fleur, who began attending the breakfast after her election in 1999.

“This is an opportunity for everyone to celebrate a culture that was part of Boston’s formation, just as black culture has been,” she said.

“The fact that we call can come together and enjoy each other’s food and music bodes well for the future of Boston. You didn’t used to see this.”

Inclusion, bad jokes

Also in attendance was Samuel Hurtado, a community organizer with South Boston en Accion, an organization that represents the neighborhood’s Latino community of about 3,000.

“This is the first time we’ve been invited,” he said. “We’ve been in South Boston for many years, but we’ve never been invited.”

Others at the event included Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera, Lawrence state Rep. Marcos Devers and Cambridge City Councilor Dennis Benzan.

As has been the custom in previous years, many of the politicians’ jokes fell flat. Dorcena Forry and Baker elicited laughs with a pre-recorded skit that featured them waiting for a bus in South Boston, only to be picked up by outgoing MBTA General Manager Beverly Scott, who warned Baker to fasten his safety belt.

Baker got a few laughs with his announcement that his administration has “deployed the National Guard in a search-and-rescue mission for a missing fisherman in New Bedford,” a reference to his famously unsubstantiated campaign trail anecdote about a fisherman whose sons had forgone college scholarships to help make ends meet.

Baker ended on another tack, invoking the memories of neighborhood residents who fought and died in the American Revolutionary War and in Vietnam. St. Patrick’s Day falls on the same date as Evacuation Day, when Gen. George Washington’s forces erected cannons in present-day South Boston to force the British to end their siege of Boston.

“Today is all about bad jokes,” he said. “And there have been plenty of them. It’s also about honoring those who have sacrificed for their country.”