Crane says he takes the library struggle so personally because of his relationship with Kennedy. He dwells on the time when Kennedy told him at an October 1963 reception in Washington, "I will see more of you later in January when I can tell you about the world, and you can tell me about Cambridge and Dublin."

He then points to the picture of John on the wall and tells the story about his encounters with Kennedy when Crane worked in the Freshman Union, then a library. "John used to spent his nights in there reading. He once borrowed my notes for Government 3--about government in Ireland. And I looked at those notes after he gave them back to me--and he annotated a part of the notes--the part that said that Ireland was governed by a benevolent dictatorship tempered by assassination. He circled that statement, and wrote 'good-good' next to it," Crane recalls.

If he were a councilor now, Crane says, there would be a library and a museum constructed already, insead of just tentative plans for half the project. "We'd appoint a blue ribbon committee to get the facts--bring in the heavyweights. People like Archie Cox, unbiased people, a few other Cantabs," Crane says.

But Crane acknowledges that he is through with that fight now, and he prefers to think of the better days, when things got done through coalition and cooperation. And he feels that he does not see anybody on the scene right now who can repeat that coalition or gain that cooperation.

The problem, Crane thinks, may be in the form of government. "Under Proportional Representation, incumbents become more aware of their number one supporters. As long as they can keep them happy, they an afford to be independent of their colleagues," he says. Thus you get a Saundra Graham accountable only to her Riverside-Cambridgeport constituency and a David Wylie, responsible for the views of West Cambridge rather than all of the city.

"In government class at Harvard they told us that you have to have a government that governs," Crane says. But he adds there isn't one now, just minority representation.

Crane is a realist and he sees Cambridge's biggest problem as the inability of either side to really "get that five," the magic number that would provide it with a council majority on all issues.

As for Crane's role in the history books of Cambridge--he doesn't mind going down as a boss. "In school we were always told that a leader is an old-time boss with a college education," he says. "Anyway," he laughs, "my name was on the ballot every two years for 30 years and if they didn't want me they could have always gotten rid of me."