Silhouette

"My father, a Cambridge policeman all his life, once asked me, 'Why leave Cambridge when anything anyone could possibly ever want is right here?" Mayor Edward A. Crane '35, magna cum laude and senior Phi Beta Kappa, has followed this advice ever since. "I'm a native Cantabridgian, always will be. I was born on Center Street in 1914 and when I married, I finally moved--to the other end of the street."

Crane, titular head of the city, chairman of the city council and school committee, attended local public schools and colleges. As soon as he completed Harvard Law School, he went into local politics. He has been there ever since, except for 40 months with the Army Intelligence while he gathered material from former prisoners of war for use in war crimes trials. "The extent of my overseas service was a boat trip from Boston to New York."

When Crane served as alderman in 1939, he faced an inefficient self-seeking government which operated under the Plan B system of a weak 15-man council and a strong mayor. During this time, popular indignation against the city hall gang swelled and when the mayor went to jail, voters demanded reform. The result was a Cambridge Civic Association which instituted extensive municipal changes, including a new system of administration for Massachusetts--Plan E, a weak 9-man council, mayor, and city manager. The Cambridge Civic Association refused to back any of the old Council members, except Crane. "I guess they felt that I had tried to fight for stable government," he explains. From then on, the C.C.A. has consistently backed Crane. He was elected mayor for the first time in 1949.

Crane is a huge, impressive man. "I'm 5 feet, 17 inches tall--that's what I tell anyone who asks how tall I am. When I was in the Army, a Texan requested that I prove that his commander's 6 feet 4 inches was nothing. On the way over to the officer's quarters, he confidentially inquired of me my exact height. I replied, '5 feet, 17 inches.' The Texan looked shocked, then smiled, 'Oh, come now, you're taller than that.'"

Throughout the interview, Crane talked slowly, punctuating each idea with a long pause, and exhausting one topic completely before going to a new one. He likes music, and follows the theatre assiduously. But his main interest is politics. His election campaigns are conducted in keeping with his personal dignity and respectability. Before the last election, he sent personal letters to all the registered voters in the city, beginning with the usual biographical details, qualifications for office, and ending with this unusual political statement: "Again I have disregarded some traditional and annoying tactics--no billboards, no wall posters, no sound trucks, and no pass-out cards at the polls."

The mayor's example of successful, noiseless campaigning might lend confidence to prospective politicians. But Crane continues, "I'm surprised that more people do not run for political office. Many well-qualified men do not enter politics because they have not recognized this public life as a career. In most cases today, the man, through his own selfish desires, seeks the office; seldom does the office seek the well-qualified man."

"I've always had an extraordinary interest in politics. The main trouble with politics is that people in all strata of life have used public officials as their errand boys and office clerks. Another trouble lies in the huge income that a man must have to attain public office." The only way a candidate can get around this, he contends, is to get the backing of some potent, good-government group like the C.C.A.

Even as an undergraduate, Crane was interested in the problems of municipal government. His senior thesis dealt with the need for a new system of government in Cambridge. "You might call this my life project. Now I can watch my hopes, my ideas, my desires actually work."

He has no ambitions or plans for the future. "You can't plan politics. You can let only fate control your future. But whatever I do, I'll always remember the saying of a professor of mine: 'To hold public office is a noble ambition and should be nobly expressed.'"