Only in Baltimore, perhaps, could an 87-year-old man still be known as “Young Tommy.” But when your dad was a longtime mayor (1947-1959) and congressman (1939-1947), not to mention a dominant force in city politics for decades and the man many credit with bringing major-league baseball back to Baltimore, and when he shares your first name ... well, Young Tommy understands.

“It's unbelievable, isn't it?” Thomas D'Alesandro says with a chuckle. “But I really enjoy it, to tell you the truth.” Big Tommy, as his dad was known, “was something special — anybody who knew him, knew that he was something special.”

But Thomas J. D'Alesandro III has left a mark on Baltimore all his own. Joining the City Council in 1962, he became its president a year later. He ran for mayor in 1967, and won overwhelmingly. With the civil rights movement at its peak, D'Alesandro appointed the first African-American member of the Board of Estimates (George Russell, who later became city solicitor), hired the first African-American to run the city schools and named the first African-American fire commissioner.

It looked as if he could win a couple more terms as mayor. But following four years, which included the April 1968 riots that left six people dead,, D'Alesandro shocked the city by choosing not to seek re-election. (He's always said that it wasn't the riots that caused him to reconsider elective office, but rather the realization that he needed to earn more money to support his family.) Except for a brief flirtation with running for governor in 1970, D'Alesandro was done with putting himself before the voters.

“I never had any inclination toward rethinking that process,” he says simply. He stuck with his law practice, concentrating on worker's compensation and personal-injury law, until retiring in 1994.

Besides, it's not like the D'Alesandros moved totally out of the political arena. Little sister Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi has been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from San Francisco since 1987, served as speaker of the House from 2007 to 2011 and has been the House minority leader since 2011.

And she's just a young 76.

Former Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro III, 87, photographed Oct. 11, 2016, in front of Baltimore City Hall. Baltimore Sun photo by Amy Davis.