Courting retirement, at last

After nearly six decades, the state's longest-serving elected official is calling it a career. Edward J. Sullivan, clerk of courts for Middlesex County since the Eisenhower administration, told the Globe yesterday he will not seek reelection to a ninth six-year term this fall.

Sullivan, who turns 85 tomorrow, is a member of one of the great local political dynasties. Before his election as clerk in 1958, he served five terms on the Cambridge City Council, one of four Sullivans to hold a seat over 70 consecutive years on that body.

His nephew, Michael A. Sullivan, current holder of what is known as ''the Sullivan seat" on the council, plans to announce his candidacy next month to succeed his uncle in the $88,000-a-year clerk's post.

In his second-floor office in the East Cambridge courthouse named for him by the Legislature in 2001, Eddie Sullivan said it's time to move on.

''The citizens of Cambridge and Middlesex have been very generous to me, and I felt that at my age, I should step aside," he said. ''I made the decision that I should be spending more time with my wife," Jacqueline.

The walls of his office are adorned with memorabilia that recall a bygone era, an ever-present reminder that Sullivan is a throwback, one of the last of a breed who flourished when all politics was not only local, as illustrious Cambridge pol and Sullivan friend Thomas P. ''Tip" O'Neill Jr. once said, but also very colorful and retail. There are several photos of President Kennedy with Eddie and his brother, Walter, a Cambridge councilor for 34 years. In another, Eddie is shoulder-to-shoulder with President Lyndon B. Johnson at a 1964 campaign rally. A young Francis X. Bellotti, then lieutenant governor and sporting a crewcut, is next to them.

One precious memento is a palm card from the first City Council campaign by the Sullivans' father, also Michael, in 1936, featuring a photo of his nine children. ''Our Daddy Will Be a Good Councillor," it says.

There are pictures of Sullivan with sports and entertainment celebrities, judges, and several lord mayors of Dublin, one of whom helped obtain an Irish passport on short notice for a relative, according to Sullivan. He is also pictured alongside governors, including Edward J. King. Old-school Eddie Sullivan was not a Michael Dukakis kind of guy.

Many today view politicians with suspicion or disdain, but Sullivan still considers politics a noble calling, a chance to help people. His only regret is that the public's attitudes have changed.

''Many people think it's a crime to do a favor," he said. ''In my opinion, if no one's getting hurt, what's wrong with doing someone a favor if you can help them out?

''If they need assistance one way or another, why not help them? That's been our success," he said of the family's political credo.

In retirement, Sullivan said, he hopes to finish a memoir that he's been dabbling at for years. The working title is ''The Legacy of Mickey the Dude," the nickname of his father. A box of personal papers that could supply grist for the book sits in a corner of his office.

He said he may also play a little golf with his wife (''I haven't beaten her yet") when they spend time at their vacation home of the past 20 years in Highland Beach, Fla. Their primary residence is a condominium in a high-rise a few blocks from the courthouse.

''In 34 years of marriage, we've never had a cross word," Sullivan said. They have no children, but they have a huge extended family that includes Eddie's 32 nieces and nephews.

Health was not a factor in his decision, Sullivan said. He's healthy and still boasts that his shop is both the busiest and most efficient of the 14 counties. The clerk oversees a staff of 46 employees, who manage more than 10,000 civil and criminal cases each year at the superior courts in Cambridge and Lowell.

Sullivan's courts were the first in the state to computerize and implement the one-day or one-trial jury system, which reduced the number of days jurors serve and increased the demographic diversity of the jury pool.

He has always tried to keep pace with change. When he ran for reelection in 2000, Sullivan did something that was unimaginable when he broke into politics during the ''Last Hurrah" era: His campaign established a Web site, eddieclerkofcourts.com.

Still dapper in a navy blue suit with American flag lapel pin, his eyes twinkle, and he laughs loudly at the endless stories he loves to tell.

A common subject -- and one he loves to needle -- is Harvard University, which sits near his boyhood home on Surrey Street. In one of his yarns, he recalls that while holding the largely ceremonial post of Cambridge mayor in the mid-1950s, he broke protocol by sending a surrogate to Harvard's commencement ceremony.

There was a practical reason for the snub, however. The Harvard exercises conflicted with the public school graduations he wanted to attend. Sullivan recounted explaining the reason to an aide. ''There's no . . . votes up in the Harvard Yard for me," he said. ''I'm going where the future voters are."

''Thirty years later, I spoke to a group at Harvard and told them the story," Sullivan said. ''I said I guess I made the right decision because they're still voting for me."

Not any more.