The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 19

i 10, Also Inside Deaths 22 Comics 24 MetroRegion news, Layoffs threatened Gov. Weld will reportedly lay off hundreds of state workers to balance the new budget Page 20 THE BOSTON GLOBE FRIDAY, JULY 16, 1993 6 A ratepayer's nightmare9 CityScenes State auditor accuses MWRA of wasting $13m on harbor cleanup By Peter J. Howe GLOBE STAFF KEVIN CULLEN recommendation for better monitoring of its machinery and equipment the authority offered a point-by-point rebuttal of each of his charges. And Joseph Favaloro, executive director of the MWRA Advisory Board, a fiscal watchdog for the agency's 2.5 million customers, said DeNucci's report is actually "good news. Hopefully it will put to bed these reports that there is rampant mismanagement and out-of-control spending.

That is not happening." MWRA records show that DeN lessly bought $6.8 million worth of other crushed rock. Calling the $5 billion harbor cleanup "a contractor's dream and a ratepayer's nightmare," DeNucci urged the authority to improve its management of construction contracts, of purchasing and of safeguarding authority property against theft Four previous DeNucci audits have exposed another $19 million in alleged MWRA misspending, making a total of $32 million. While accepting one DeNucci ucci's audit found questionable $1 of every $125 the agency spent between July 1987 and last October. The MWRA executive director, Douglas B. MacDonald, praised DeNucci for offering "a careful and thorough review" and said the agency "welcomes Auditor DeNucci as an ally in safeguarding the investment of public funds." In his single biggest criticism, DeNucci said the failure of a tunnel drilling rig forced the authority to MWRA, Page 26 The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority wasted $13 million on the Boston Harbor cleanup through poor planning and mismanagement, state Auditor Joseph DeN-ucci charged yesterday.

Among other lapses, DeNucci asserted, the authority had to spend $4.7 million to have contractors haul off surplus crushed rock generated by tunnel excavation after it need i CiJ. "a i it, Tf .1 LJ sfcX jl his spirits have not. "You look at him," his grandmother was saying, "and you'd never know he's sick. He's such a good baby. He never complains.

I know I sound like his grandmother, but Two days before Kyle was diagnosed, invitations to his first birthday party were sent out. The party was abruptly canceled. Now, however, his grandmother says it was only postponed. "We are going to have a second birthday," Peg Venezia says, nodding her head almost imperceptibly. "You can count on that." A late-blooming lust for art Frank Wilkinson bears a passing resemblance to Van Gogh.

"Yeah," he says, dragging on a cigarette, "but I've still got both ears." Frank Wilkinson is the court painter of the Pine Street Inn. Wilkinson, 39, who has lived and worked at the Inn for the past decade, is mostly a self-taught artist. Inspiration is a funny thing. It struck Wilkinson one day three years ago. "The TV was on," he explains, "and it just caught my eye.

It was Bob Ross, who does this painting show on Channel 2. 1 got hooked. I said, 'I can do that' Wilkinson saved up $300 and bought art supplies. He studied books. He took lessons.

He strolled the Museum of Fine Arts, looking for ideas. And he painted incessantly. Today, Wilkinson's work graces the Inn in the South End and the Bowditch school in Jamaica Plain, one of 11 transitional housing complexes run by the Inn, where he's lived since it opened in 1990. He's also sold some of his work. In the art world, Frank Wilkinson is decidedly nontradi-tional.

And he has had to put up with his share of snobs. "I met a very prominent portrait artist and somehow the subject of Bob Ross came up and she said, 'Oh, he's a prostitute because he makes everybody think they can paint' Frank Wilkinson said nothing. He merely bade the portrait artist and her comfortable world goodbye, went home and watched Bob Ross on the tube that night. Wilkinson has no delusions of grandeur. He knows he has so much more to learn.

He smiles when asked if he dreams of the day when someone says, "Do you have a Wilkinson?" "You know how I'd respond to that?" he says. "I'd say, 'Yeah, the razor blades are in the Neighborhoods rally for infant Dispensing maternal wisdom and lottery tickets with equal aplomb, Peg Venezia presides over Peg Al's on Main Street in Charlestown beneath a Marlboro sign that admonishes youthful smokers and proclaims "Welcome Townies." Like other mom n' pop stores, Peg Al's is a hub of neighborhood news. Lately, the news hasn't been good. Peg Venezia's 1 -year-old grandson, a blue-eyed towhead named Kyle Fitzpatrick, has leukemia. This could be a sad story.

But it's not It's a story about an extraordinary family and an extraordinary neighborhood. After the initial shock of the diagnosis eight weeks ago wore off, Kyle's family and their friends and neighbors have mobilized. Kyle needs a bone marrow transplant, but first a suitable donor must be found. Testing will be done Aug. 1 and 2 at MIT, where one of Peg's eight kids works.

Each test costs about $50, and the experts figure they need to do about 2,000 tests. That means $100,000 from a family that is far from rich. Fliers explaining Kyle's plight were printed up and plastered all over Charlestown and Somerville, another bastion of Peg's large family. The response has been overwhelming. There was a car wash last week.

Tonight, there's karaoke at St. Catherine's Hall. A beauty salon will hold a cut-a-thon Sunday. Local comedians will put on a show next Friday at the Knights of Columbus hall. A group of local young people are throwing a pa-jama party, reasoning if Kyle has to be stuck in his PJs, they can be, "You read the newspaper, you think there's nothing but terrible people out there," Peg Venezia was saying the other day.

"I'm telling you, everybody we've had contact with has tried to help. People have donated printing services, halls, time, money. It's been unbelievable." Unbelievable, however, also describes the toll on Kyle's family, financially and emotionally. They steel themselves knowing that even if a donor for Kyle is not found, test results will enter a national registry and could help others. Peg Venezia alternates between despair and determination as she stands behind the counter, punching up Megabucks tickets and ringing up quarts of milk.

Her daughter, Cindy, and Cindy's husband, Bobby, have maintained a vigil at their son's bedside this week at Mass. General. While Kyle's platelets have gone down, GLOBE STAFF PHOTO JONATHAN WIGGS NIGHT OF VIOLENCE Rescue workers tend to a youth last night at Magnolia and Quincy streets in Dorchester, where two people were hit by gunfire. It was one of several incidents that left six people hospitalized. Page 26.

Tm very sympathetic to these two men. MARGARET J. PERRY, Essex County assistant DA BU is set to buy 2d TV station JC upholds conviction, says needle exchange unjustified state law that prohibits the distribution of the hypodermic needles without a prescription. Lawyers for the two men, Harry W. Leno Jr.

of Ipswich and Robert E. Ingalls of Salem, who each received a one-year unsupervised probation sentence that was suspended, called the SJC decision deeply disappointing. "I think people, unfortunately, will die as a direct result of the ruling, and that's unacceptable," said Hundreds mourn woman who was shot in Quincy Guilty of rape, priest got church post in N.J. By Doris Sue Wong GLOBE STAFF In a major setback for AIDS activists, the Supreme Judicial Court rejected arguments yesterday that the spread of the deadly virus poses such a pressing problem that it justifies the illegal distribution of hypodermic needles. The unanimous ruling upheld the conviction of two North Shore men by a jury last year for breaking a DECEMBER 1991 FILE PHOTO VERDICT REVERSED Michael Williams' conviction has been overturned in the Kimberly Roe Harbour murder -case.

Page 65. 1 By Alice Dembner GLOBE STAFF Expanding its television holdings, Boston University announced yesterday it is purchasing a Cape Cod station, WCVX (Ch. 58), that has been off the air since June 1991. If approved by the Federal Communications Commission as expected, the purchase will make BU the only university nationwide to own two commercial television stations, according to Joseph A. Esser, associate editor of Broadcast and Cable Yearbook, a trade directory.

Four others own one station each. Last month, the university bought WQTV (Ch. 68) from the First Church of Christ, Scientist for $3.8 million. BU spokesman Christopher Donohue said the university had no plans to purchase additional stations. Neither university officials nor the current owner, Paul Flynn of Paxton, would disclose the purchase price of WCVX, but Flynn said the offer is less than he paid for the station in September 1992.

The FCC records that purchase price as $826,000, but Flynn said he spent a total of $1,050,000, including debt and third-party payments. A university source said the Cape Cod station had come to BU's attention while it was researching Channel 68. The source said BU considered it "another opportunity to BU, Page 2U Daniel Beck, Leno's lawyer. He said he thought most people involved in distributing clean needles to drug users "feel strongly enough about it that they are willing to go to jail." For Essex County Assistant District Attorney Margaret J. Perry, who successfully argued the appeal, the victory was bittersweet.

Noting that one close friend recently died of AIDS and another is HIV positive, she said, "I'm very sympathetic to NEEDLES, Page 26 cials' review of how they had handled past sexual abuse cases in the archdiocese, it was learned this week. The fact that top church officials in Boston approved the priest's assignment to ordinary parish ministry, including youth work, and that pastors of three of the four New Jersey parishes say they were never told of his criminal record, has outraged the prosecutor in the case. In putting the priest on five years of probation, Superior Judge Walter E. Steele had specifically PRIEST, Page 21 filled Sacred Heart Church in North Quincy yesterday for the funeral of the former North Quincy High School cheerleader they said had touched their lives in ways they would never forget. The Rev.

James F. Hawker told the mourners not to try to make sense of Dawn Brown's death, but instead to celebrate her life. "How do we make sense of this event?" he asked. "It's senseless. It's absurd.

It's tragic. Dawn's reality is not in the quantity of her years, but in the quality." Brown, 25, was shot once in the QUINCY, Page 26 By Maria R. Van Schuyver CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Marianne O'Neil spoke softly, her voice breaking between sobs. Tears streamed down her face as she read a poem written by her best friend, Dawn E. Brown.

The last stanza read: "True friends stay together. True friends are forever." It was O'Neil's way of saying goodbye to the poem's author and her best friend killed last Saturday night by a bullet police say was intended for Brown's younger sister, More than 300 faMly and friends By James L. Franklin GLOBE STAFF Less than a year after pleading guilty in 1984 to raping an altar boy in Arlington, Rev. Eugene M. O'Sul-livan was transferred by the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston to a diocese in New Jersey where he was allowed to vork with children.

-'After serving for seven years in four parishes in the Diocese of Metu-chen, N.J., Father O'Sullivan was recalled to Boston last July and ordered to refrain from all ministry, apparently result of church offi.