300 Hear Curry, Rebut His Opponents' Charge

John J. Curry '19 bluntly responded Monday to charges that he is to old to continue as Cambridge's city manager.

"I am neither feeble nor feeble-minded," the 67-year old suspended dismissal opened.

Only about 200 people attended the hearing. Although this number was large enough to force a change from the City council chambers to the more spacious auditorium at Rindge Tech, it was far below what supports of Curry had predicted.

At one point during last month's heated Council debate, Edward A. Crane '35, a staunch Curry backer, predicted that "you won't be able to get an auditorium big enough to hold the people that want to come and will come." He then mentioned a figure of 2000 but, Monday night, more than three-quarters of Rindge's 1500 seats were empty.

The hearing ended after two hours, the legal limit of any public hearing at one sitting, and will reconvene this evening at 5.30 p.m. in the Council Chambers. Mayor Daniel J. Hayen Jr. announced last night that he had called another special meeting for 3:30 p.m. today to speed the hearing up.

He charged that the Curry supporters on the Council, and particularly Crane, were deliberately stalling. "They're using every parliamentary maneuver possible to delay...so the only thing we can do is move on the other side to speed things up." He has scheduled five meetings for Thursday, the start of each one separated by three hours, and said he was prepared to do the same thing on Friday and Saturday.

Monday evening Curry spoke only a short time, answering the first two of five reasons advanced by the Council's majority for dismissing him. He rejected the first of these, his age, declaring that he had not been late or absent to his job once -- except when out of the City -- during nearly 14 years. "And I refer to a seven-day week," he added.

The Second reason -- that "more aggressive leadership" in needed to handle new projects for the City -- he similarly rejected. He said he had been intimately involved with the planned NASA elec- tronics laboratory in Kendall Square, and that he was adequately prepared to meet other items mentioned by the Council: the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, the Wellington-Harrington urban renewal project in East Cambridge, and the proposed Inner Belt highway.

Appears Under Protest

Before Curry spoke, his lawyer, Francis J. Roche, declared that the suspended manager was appearing under protest. Roche argued that the removal proceeding, taken under the City's charter, was preempted by another law which protects veterans in governmental service from arbitrary dismissal. "Curry served in World War I, and does not waive...his legal right as a war veteran," Roche said. He demanded a hearing under this procedure, which, he said, would make it more difficult for the Council to dismiss Curry.

Roche often disputed Mayor Hayes' rulings of procedure. "I'm amazed at you Why don't you go to school?" he said to Hayes at one point. The continual outbursts delighted the crowd, which alternately clapped and booed. But the continual argument only provoked Mayor Hayes.

"Mr Roche, I'm running this hearing. From this time on, you will just present your questions. I don't want to hear any speeches."

Hayes' counterattack was met with loud clapping and shouts of "Yea.