Word: curleyism
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...Curley found himself elected Governor. The four years that followed were as riotous as any in State House history. He controlled patronage on a grander scale than ever, and had unlimited opportunities to harass his friends from Harvard. To replace the noted Commissioner of Education, Payson Smith, Curley appointed a woolly-minded old crony who had once taught in a country school. The man promptly enraged even Ward 17 by changing his name from Reardon to the more distinguished Reardan...
...also during that term that Harvard held its Tercentenary Commencement. There was no choice but to invite the Governor; and he put on a very fine show. Consistent in minute detail to the precedent of the colonial governors (which had not been observed since Harvard's Centennial), Curley heralded his arrival with a massed band, an escort of fully-armed lancers, the National Guard, trumpet sounds, bugle calls, the beating of drums, the shooting of guns, and the cheers of a mixed collection of Boston Irish such as Harvard Yard had never imagined. He reminded the assembly that the last...
...speech did not lack for repercussions. Presaged by phone calls and threatening letters, a time bomb appeared one morning on Curley's doorstep. Investigation revealed it to be the work of Harvard students: a box of peppermints wrapped in a copy of the Boston Herald, to be ignited the ringing of an alarm clock...
...other events of these years were less spectacular. Curley is said to have turned up at Lowell House High Table one evening. When asked for his impressions of House life, he replied, "They wanted to know how a city government works and I told them." He paid a visit too, in 1939, to Government 1 as a guest lecturer. When asked how to achieve success in politics, Curley replied, "Become a Republican; and then they won't criticize you for doing what I've done." Professor Cherington recalls that, "He improved the quality of the course immensely." It was during...
Although the war years saw Curley in Washington and curtailed his active relationship with the University, his term in Danbury Prison lit the spark once again. Curley came back reporting that his closest friend had been a Harvard graduate, and that he had, indeed, become acquainted there with representatives of all the Ivy League campuses...