Of all the praise pouring his way yesterday from every corner of official Baltimore, Dominic "Mimi" DiPietro -- a legendary East Baltimore city councilman who died Friday night at 89 -- probably would find none of it as satisfying as a simple recollection from Deritha Grove.
"Mimi? He's been to my house," the 51-year-old Highlandtown woman said yesterday a block from the Claremont Street house the councilman lived in for nearly 85 years. "I had a problem. He got it fixed."
Fixing people's problems is what Mr. DiPietro did in his 25-year career representing the city's 1st District, but on Friday night, he succumbed to a problem that even he couldn't fix.
His wife of 28 years, the former Frances Elizabeth Promutico, brought him to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center about seven weeks ago as Alzheimer's disease and liver cancer began to take their toll, she said yesterday.
He died in a coma about 11 p.m., hours after she and Mr. DiPietro's longtime priest -- Father Luigi "Lou" Esposito, pastor of Our Lady of Pompei Roman Catholic Church -- prayed over him.
"My husband should be remembered as one of the old-time men, a man who devoted his life for the people," Mrs. DiPietro said. "He didn't care what race you were, and it didn't matter what time it was. Whatever was needed, he did it."
Mr. DiPietro, sometimes referred to as the "unofficial mayor of Highlandtown," was one of the more colorful City Council members who practiced politics in a proven way: A public servant's response to the voters' needs is the name of the game.
Running for re-election in 1983, the ordinarily voluble candidate summed up his political success in 69 words, an accomplishment some academicians can barely squeeze into a textbook.
"I know how to do my job," Mr. DiPietro said. "I do it honestly, sincerely and I help everybody who needs help.
"Yes, I got a big mouth," he added. "If you got it coming to you, I'll give it to you. But I'll help you. That's one thing. I'll represent you, and I'll try to help you. And I think this is the kind of elected official that I like to see elected."
The voters of the district delivered him to City Hall in 1966 and kept returning him until 1991, when a changing political wind swept him and other old-time ward politicians out of office.
Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke -- whose administration is anything but old-time -- said yesterday that Mr. DiPietro "was a true American original. I think they threw away the mold after they made Mimi. He loved his constituents, and that was reflected in everything he did."
A troubled child, an unemployed father, a woman who needed transportation to an eye clinic, or ugly weeds growing between the cracks of the sidewalk on Eastern Avenue were the details of Mr. DiPietro's typical day. A visitor to his City Hall office once remarked that the telephone never stopped ringing.
"You could make a book [about the calls from constituents], and you'd have the greatest book in the world," he observed on one occasion.
At that time, he was working at his City Hall office on a steamy July afternoon in 1989, even though he was supposed to be on vacation. "I'm 84 years old," he said, "and I'm as healthy as a [expletive] mule. . . . It's my life."
Mr. DiPietro did take an occasional break from his job. For more than 30 years, he and some of his buddies would take two weeks and travel to World Series games.
"Almost everywhere we went, we ran into friends who knew Mimi," said Bud Paolino, a longtime friend who owns Enrico's Sports Bar and Cafe, the successor to DiPietro haunt Bud Paolino's Crab House.
Gov. William Donald Schaefer, one of four mayors under whom Mr. DiPietro served, called him "the end of an era. Mimi could say things to people that from anyone else would sound offensive, and they loved him for it. He was my good and loyal friend, and it really saddens me to see the passing of a truly unique and great man."
Mr. DiPietro -- an elementary school dropout who found new and creative ways to put the English language to work -- was a constant source of amusement to his colleagues and the public.
In one campaign he was discussing his war chest, which had exceeded $41,000, far more than any other councilmanic candidate. He explained to reporters: "I'm the most populist one. That's why you see that." Then he added: "I'm going to spend every damn nickel of it."
"He was the kind of guy who could make you laugh, the kind of guy who didn't think too much before he spoke," said Nicholas D'Adamo, a 36-year-old 1st District councilman who said he learned the art of making the city bureaucracy sing from Mr. DiPietro.
"To get anything done in this city, you need a three-way conference call. Get the department head on one line, you on the other, and the person you're helping on the third. When all the parties are on the phone, you do what he did: You yell and scream, and then the job gets done."
One of seven children, Mr. DiPietro was brought to the United States by his parents from Italy when he was 6 months old. After the family's arrival, his father tried farming in New York state for a few years but then moved to Baltimore in 1911 to establish a bakery at 3812 Claremont St., Mimi's home address for the rest of his life.
The DiPietros came from the Abruzzi area of Italy, northwest of Rome, which is also the ancestral turf of the late Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr., mayor of Baltimore from 1947 to 1959, and his son, Thomas J. D'Alesandro III, who was mayor from 1967 to 1971.
The younger Mr. D'Alesandro is one of those who has said Mr. DiPietro was the kind of city councilman who specialized in responding to his constituents' requests for help, rather than concentrating on the broader issues of city government, such as finance or urban renewal.
"He is a servicing councilman," Mr. D'Alesandro said in a 1989 interview. "He is cut from that mold."
The former mayor further described him as a person "very easy to talk to" and a man who always spoke his mind. "There's no hidden agenda with him. Whatever he has on his mind, he will tell you."
Mr. DiPietro (pronounced "DiPeetro" by most Baltimoreans) was always the first to tell you how hard he worked. "He would always say to people that he was a councilman that worked everyday and answered his own phone," Mr. D'Adamo said. "How many councilmen do you know who do that now?"
Mr. DiPietro left school in the sixth grade and, claiming to be 16 when he was 14, went to work for the Bethlehem Steel Corp., absorbed politics at the precinct level and exhibited a gift for languages -- speaking English and Italian fluently and being able to make himself understood in Greek, German and Polish among the ethnically diverse, neat rowhouses of the city's 1st District.
At the height of his career, Mr. DiPietro was able to rise in the council after an election and make the following statement:
"I didn't mean to lead the ticket in Baltimore City. I got more votes than all you boys and girls in the City Council. I knew I was popular, but I didn't know I was that popular."
He had received 23,221 votes, more than any other council candidate in any district.
And his ability to bring out the votes for national candidates was equally impressive. In the 1980 presidential election, for example, Republican Ronald Reagan defeated the incumbent president, Democrat Jimmy Carter, in a landslide, but each of the 85 precincts in the 1st District went for Mr. Carter.
Even after voters threw him out of office in 1991, Mr. DiPietro was still practicing good old-fashioned Democratic politics. In a part-time job at the city Board of Elections in the year after his defeat, Mr. DiPietro was responsible for registering new voters. "Whenever somebody would come to register as a Republican, he would try to change their minds," Mrs. DiPietro said.
In addition to his wife, Mr. DiPietro is survived by two brothers, Joseph DiPietro and Samuel "Sammy" DiPietro; and a sister, Lena Jansen.
Friends may call today and tomorrow from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Joseph N. Zannino Jr. Funeral Home, 263 S. Conkling St.
Maria Zannino, who knew Mr. DiPietro for 35 years, said she expects the funeral home to be packed with mourners. "He was here with every funeral we had to pay respects to his people," she said.
Father Esposito will preside at a Mass of Christian burial at 9 a.m. Tuesday at Our Lady of Pompei Church at Conkling and Claremont streets. Mr. DiPietro will be buried at the Sacred Heart Jesus Cemetery in Dundalk.