prejudice. After graduating from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Jamaica Plain in 1960. Menino enrolled in three night classes at Boston College before abandoning his college education. Menino had decided that college was not for him much to his father's dismay. Carl Menino once recalled his son's reasons for opting out of higher education: "Truman didn't go to college," the younger Menino would tell his father (President Harry S. Truman was Menino's favorite president and was his personal hero). Menino eventually received an associate degree in Business Management in 1963 at the now-defunct Mount Ida College, which was then known as Chamberlayne Junior College. During his tenure as a Boston city councilor in 1984, Menino enrolled as an undergrad at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in community planning in January 1988. Early career Prior to running for office, Menino worked as a housing relocation specialist for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, was a research assistant for the state legislative committee on housing and urban development, and served as an aide to state senator Joseph F. Timilty. Menino met at the age of nineteen Joseph F. Timilty, who became a political mentor to him, in 1961. Menino began working in sales at Metropolitan Life Insurance in 1963. He left the insurance industry in 1968 after Timilty got him an entry-level position at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Menino worked on Timilty's 1971 and 1975 mayoral campaigns. In retribution for Menino working on Timilty's effort to unseat him, Mayor Kevin White fired Menino from the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Menino again worked on Timilty's campaign in the 1979 Boston mayoral election. City Council career Menino was elected Boston city councilor for the newly created District 5 in November 1983, capturing 75 percent of the vote against Richard E. Kenney. Timilty would later claim that District 5's boundaries had been effectively designed with the goal of designing a district that would be guaranteed to elect his protégé Menino to the Boston City Council. The 1983 Boston mayoral election coincided with the City Council election, and Menino endorsed Raymond Flynn over Mel King there. Menino represented District 5 for nine years. In 1984, he was named chairman of the council's Planning and Development Committee. Menino ran unopposed for re-election in November 1985. In 1986, then mayor Raymond Flynn offered Menino the position of Parks and Recreation Commissioner. In response