Jean McGuire will never walk alone in Franklin Park again after she was attacked there by a knife-wielding stranger nearly a week ago.
“I’ve never, in 91 years, not felt safe walking in the streets of Boston, day or night,” said McGuire in a conference room at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “Never. And now I will never go up there to the park alone again.”
The 91-year-old civil rights leader made the remarks at a press event Tuesday, reflecting on how her home city has changed, as she was preparing to be released from the hospital following treatment of her multiple injuries.
McGuire — a Boston-born educator who cofounded METCO, the nation’s largest voluntary school desegregation program, and was elected as the first Black woman on the Boston School Committee in 1981 — underwent surgery and has been recovering at the hospital since she was stabbed in the park while walking her dog last Tuesday night.
Though she still has recovery ahead, her family said, seeing her make it through this at her age and get to go home is a “blessing.”
Her attacker has not yet been identified or located.
“We want to ask our community to stand up for Jean. If you know anything, if you saw anything, even if you don’t think it matters, please call the Crime Stoppers line,” said McGuire’s nephew Ronald Mitchell. “Our community needs to stay safe, and it’s important that we stand up for our community, we stand up for Jean.”
McGuire’s family also announced the “Jean McGuire Educational and Health Fund,” created through the Boston Foundation to “honor her legacy of supporting and improving the lives of young people in Greater Boston.”
“This issue of putting money into weaponry instead of into homes, and roads, and healthcare, and dental care, and good food, grass and trees, you know, animals — things that make you happy — it’s a misuse of our wealth and our power,” said McGuire. “I’d like it to see it go for the good instead of — for life, not death. It’s always got to be for life. It’s got to be for the future. Because you don’t know what tomorrow brings.”
McGuire and her family profusely thanked the hospital and everyone who’d provided support after the incident.
The family is particularly “extremely, extremely grateful,” nephew Mark Williams said, for the two young individuals who saw McGuire on their way back from the Boston Lights at Franklin Park Zoo and called for help.
“Both of them truly saved her life,” said Williams.
“You’re angels without wings, I’ll tell you that,” McGuire answered to a question about what she would say to the rescuers. “Their parents should be so proud that they cared enough to get help for somebody laying on the street bleeding.”
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