The Son of the Dude

"The Sullivans are here to stay," quoth Cambridge's new mayor, Edward J. Judging by last November's election results and his father's prolification--four sons and four daughters--who would argue? The elder Sullivan, "Mickey the Dude" to friend and foe alike, got himself elected to the City Council with enormous majorities and kept himself there until his death in 1949 by suing the Lampoon, threatening to change the name of Harvard Square, and decrying "the Godless communism raging within the ivy-covered walls." Eddie still rallies the voters under the "tow-away-student-cars" banner occasionally, but is quite happy to leave the Square nominally intact.

For Eddie is first and foremost a politician. He doesn't hate the University, "and neither did my father. But the students make good reading for the voters. So, now and then I make a few speeches. Nothing to get excited about. Why, many's the student who's called me from jail in the middle of the night and whom I got out. And my father, don't forget, endowed a scholarship to send deserving boys through Harvard. No, what I'm out for is the vote. If the students help me get it, I'm willing.

It seems that attacks on the University have gotten votes--lots of them. Both Sullivan and his father Michael A. consistently got high totals at each council election, and Eddie outdistanced his nearest rival by almost two to one in last year's campaign. But compared to his father, the present mayor is a mild man. The Dude once pushed a bill through the City council renaming Harvard Square 'Washington Square' before that august body knew what had happened; it subsequently rescinded the measure.

But old Mickey was not to be stopped that easily. In 1938, he sued the Lampoon for libel and threatened to tear down their Hearst-bequeathed edifice and install Benny Jacobson in its stead. He's a helluva lot funnier than the Lampoon anyway," he said. Along more "serious" lines, the Dude introduced a bill into the council to strike the words "Lenin" and "Leningrad" from all Cambridge library books. Eddic proudly tells anyone who will listen how his father predicted the "notorious spread of Marxism in the University."

Sullivan is proud of his heritage--"the Sullivans have been in Cambridge since the early 19th Century--but also of his own rise to power and glory. The fourth of the Dude's eight children, Edward J., attended St. Paul's Parochial Primary School and Rindge Technical High School before a four-year hitch with the Seabees in the Pacific. Later he drove trucks for his father's firm, the M.A. Sullivan Trucking Company, of which he is now general manager. He first ran for office in November 1949, at the age of 28, following his father's death the preceding February. Last year makes his third election to the council. "I'm the first union man ever to be mayor of this city," Eddic happily noted, "and I'm going to run this city so they'll cry for more." He is also the youngest mayor in Cambridge history.

The new burgermeister isn't too happy with the work of his predecessors. "I'm going to do more than's been done around here in the last ten years," he vowed, but would not commit himself as to exactly what he is going to do. On the whole, Sullivan thinks the University and the City "get along pretty well," but he'd be happier if the College would ban students' cars. Eddie isn't too happy about expansion either. "Pretty soon there won't be any taxable property left in this city if Harvard keeps buying it up. If they want to expand, let them expand up."

His success, he avows, is not due entirely to Harvard. "It's more that I'm a full-time servant to the public. I look out for the little fellows' rights. And they vote for me." The mayor explained that when a retired old widow calls him and want to know where her social security check is, he sends his red Mercury station wagon after her, drives her down to the appropriate bureau, and straightens the matter out. Then he drives her back home. "You know, after that she'll vote for me."

The Cambridge Civic Association, which opposed him for mayor, is strictly a businessman's outfit. Eddic feels it doesn't "care a hoot" for the little fellow who elects Sullivan. "They're like the local Republican party and I'm a Democrat." After being mayor less than a week, Sullivan announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Governor's Council. He's lost only one election in his life: running for County Clerk of Courts on the Democratic ticket in 1952, he was defeated in the GOP landslide. "But it took Ike to beat me," he beamed.

The mayor is not tall, but well built, and his congenial smile reminds some of his constituents of England's King George VI. Single, but willing, he attends "the fights" regularly. He thinks Radcliffe girls "stack up well" with the local product.

Sullivan lives at 15 Surrey Street, in the shadow of Dunster House.