When it comes to worker’s comp, Tentindo is a real professional

When a Patriots or Red Sox player gets hurt badly, the Patriots and Red Sox organizations send the players to Revere native and noted attorney, Vincent Tentindo.

While it’s not quite that simple, Tentindo has carved out a niche as one of the foremost authorities on the legalities of worker’s compensation cases, having written several scholarly articles on the matter and having a client list that includes several corporations as well as the Patriots and Red Sox.

While most would not think of professional athletes getting Worker’s Compensation for their on-the-job injuries, they actually do. Sometimes, those dealings can get quite complicated, and Tentindo has become an expert at smoothing out such matters for professional sports teams.

“You see with pro athletes a lot of issues when they’re injured playing a game,” said Tentindo. “What are their prospects when they can’t play?…I started this with the Red Sox and was defending some of their clients. From there, I wrote a few articles and became well known in the field. Then I became the representative of the Patriots too.”

For Tentindo, his niche in the field of law has been a home run…or maybe a touchdown pass.

“I think I’m best suited for this,” he said. “I always enjoyed the challenge of defending a case more so than bringing a case. Workers Comp is a no-fault system so it’s more challenging to defend it and establish the legal rights of the employer or the insurer.”

Tentindo is the managing partner of his growing Charlestown law firm – Tentindo, Kendall, Canniff & Keefe – which recently moved from the Navy Yard to the Hood Business Park on Rutherford Avenue. He started the firm in 2000 with six attorneys, and now boasts 22 attorneys and a large support staff hard at work in their ever-expanding office.

“We keep people here a long time and I think that’s because we treat them with respect,” he said. “As far as clients go, we’re litigators, but we manage their case to help keep costs down and to educate them.”

In addition to the noted sports teams above, Tentindo’s firm also represents large companies such as UPS, Home Depot, AIG, US Air, and even the City of Revere.

His journey in life, though, began far from Charlestown’s new, glamorous business parks, though not too far from that neighborhood’s history.

Tentindo grew up on Victoria Street with his two sisters and his parents, George and Rita – who still live there. As a kid, Tentindo lived very close to the Chelsea Creek and the Slade’s Mill and became very interested in the city’s historic Battle of Chelsea Creek – which has so many tie-ins to Charlestown’s Battle of Bunker Hill.

“Victoria Street is close to the whole Chelsea Creek area and growing up I was made aware of an event that occurred there – the Battle of Chelsea Creek – and it interested me a great deal,” said Tentindo.

Tentindo attended the McKinley Elementary School and the Garfield Middle, graduating from Revere High School in 1971.

He said his father – who was an electrician – and his mother always stressed education to their kids – which was evidenced in the fact that Tentindo became a lawyer, and his two sisters both attended Harvard University.

“The emphasis was always on education, that if you got a good education you could do just about anything,” said Tentindo.

Following high school, Tentindo set out to get that education and landed at Boston College (BC) – where he cemented his desire to become an attorney.

“No one in my family was a lawyer and I didn’t have much experience with the law,” he said. “It developed at BC. You see the need people have for lawyers. I know there are a lot of lawyer jokes, but people respect lawyers. Lawyers know what to do when there’s a problem. If people come to see them, they feel you could help them. To know what to do when someone comes to you with a problem – I always thought that was a tremendous aspect of being an attorney.”

Getting into law school, as it so happens, was something that went back to the Battle of Chelsea Creek and included his future wife, Marylyn (Jones) Tentindo – also a Revere native. While in their senior years at BC, the two Revere sweethearts combined their efforts to write an honors thesis on the battle.

It being the bicentennial year (1975), they were able to get access for the first time ever to British ship logs that had been under wraps for centuries. Using that information and other information from Revere historians like the late Peter McCauley, they produced what has become the foremost history on the battle so far.

“Many of the British ship logs were available for the first time ever at the Massachusetts Historical Society that year and we were able to get access to them for our thesis,” he said. “I think partly because of that [history] book, I received a scholarship to Suffolk University Law School.”

The rest, really, is history for Tentindo.

After law school, he worked for many years as a senior partner at Parker, Coulter, Daley and White in Boston – where he cut his teeth for the first time on Worker’s Comp law. He also spent five years at Peabody & Arnold before starting his own successful firm.

Nowadays, he lives in Marblehead with his wife of 32 years, Marylyn, and their three boys, Michael, Mark and Will. However, he still finds himself in Revere more often than not.

“I’m there all the time,” he said. “I was just there the other day to see my parents. We go to the restaurants there and to Kelly’s on the Beach. I still have a lot of friends there…I enjoyed growing up in Revere.”

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