National Archives Leftovers

Photo by T.C. Andersen

I have now written 150 blogs in the 3+ years of Constancely Hoping and over 25 percent of them have had to do with my 35 years at the National Archives in Washington DC. With close to 1,000 views, the blog entitled A President’s Casket (November 21, 2021), has been my most popular. (Leading me to wonder why In the Room Where it Happened (October 20, 2021) never did as well. It was one of my first blogs and I hope you’ll check it out.) https://www.constancelyhoping.com/post/in-the-room-where-it-happened

Inevitably there are a lot of stories that have wound up on the cutting room floor. Either they are too brief, teeter on the edge of appropriateness, or involve living colleagues. This “Leftovers” blog picks up some of those stories, dusts them off, and disguises the identity of the heroes of my tales. But alas, they are all heroes.

Rotting Archives

Take for example the long-time head of Preservation Policy and Services at the Archives who I accompanied to Capitol Hill for a hearing on the agency budget one cold winters day. Our hero was a singular expert in the field of document preservation, his credentials solid and his advice widely requested. Physically he was from central casting; short, studious, prematurely gray, square featured, round horn-rimmed specs. Sadly, his widely known expertise resulted in him jumping the Mother Ship and going to the Library of Congress mid-career.

Our journey that day was a familiar one. We were always in a battle for resources to preserve our paper and parchment documents. In the old days microfilm was used to take the research pressure off the most popular records and series. We were still decades away from digitization as a preservation and distribution strategy, so with over five billion paper records to preserve, it was a hopeless race against time. It was that race that became the topic of our impromptu discussion that day.

Seated in the back of the Archives staff car, we were flipping through our prepared remarks for the hearing when my witness turned to me and said the words I will never forget.

“You know John, no matter what we do it’s all gonna eventually rot.”

My expert had just said something outload that not only stopped my heart but would blow a hole through our budget request as big as the bronze doors on our building.

As I was trying to catch my breath, he went on.

“It’s just nature’s way. Like the leaves that drop from the trees each Fall. If they didn’t deteriorate, the whole world would fill up with leaves.”

He then turned to me and with a wink said, “Don’t worry, that can just be our little secret.”

To be a good preservationist, you must first be a good scientist. But to be a good congressional appropriator, you don’t need all the facts, just the right facts.

Fun Tours

I worked for five Archivists of the United States and three Acting Archivists during my 35-year tenure. Of all of them, one Acting Archivist stands out as having the best sense of humor.

The late Dr. Frank G. Burke was a post WWII Navy veteran, started both his professional and academic careers in Alaska, received his master’s and PhD in history at the University of Chicago and toiled in the vineyard of the Library of Congress before coming to the Archives. He headed public programs and later led the National Historical Records Commission before taking over as Acting Archivist when Bob Warner resigned.

Frank had a droll sense of humor delivered with a thick Queens, NY accent. He would say “see ya tamarra for a hot dawg and a cup a cauwfee."

He once told me, “John, you are going to have to give a lot of tours in this job and there are two kinds, fun tours and not-so-fun tours. The fun ones are for people who know that the Plymouth Compact was not just a car made by Chrysler.”

If you don’t know why that’s funny, then you would be on a not-so-fun tour.

Burke was once giving a speech to a group of Archives interns, and he intrigued them with the story of our Polar Archives. They are a collection of records associated with Arctic and Antarctic exploration and research.

Frank told the interns that our very own Herman Friis (true name) had been working over the last year on a pact with the Soviet Union to share some records in a consolidated exhibit that might turn out to be a permanent subset of our collection.

Frank said, “We are trying to come up with a name for the collection and since the Soviet polar archivist is Dr. Ivan Urhazof, (fictional name) it has been suggested that we call it the Friis-Urhazof Polar Archives.”

Delivered with a straight face, it took the interns a moment to realize the joke at which point they laughed their “azzes-off.”

That was pure Frank Burke. I miss him.

The Fine Art of Cutting in Line

Frank was right about the amount of our lives devoted to taking people on tours of the Archives. If you wanted people to understand what we did, the show-and-tell of great American documents was the core of the curriculum.

And of all those American documents, there was one that everyone understood at some level and wanted to see. The Declaration of Independence. Encased in an inert gas, protected by bulletproof glass, and displayed just feet away from its blast-proof nighttime vault, the Declaration was the star of the show.

Americans flock to the Rotunda of the Archives year around and stand in line to see this iconic piece of parchment. Often, they not only stand in line, but long lines. In my tenure, those summertime lines started outside in the heat and eventually came inside to snake back and forth a-la Disney World…

So, you have been waiting with your ice-cream-stained, whining progeny for two hours and as you finally approach the document, a guy in a suit (me) inserts another guy in a suit (Congressman X) in front of you in line. “Kaboom”

Like most things in life, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. The right way involves assuming the lowly, groveling posture of a pilgrim to Assis. Then you ask the next person in line their name, and the names of their spouse and children. You introduce yourself to each one with an outstretched hand and then present the Congressman or Senator (who you pray snaps into campaign mode.) You then turn and proceed to the document and in a voice loud enough for your guest AND the family(ies) you have jumped in front of to hear, you give a brief story of the famous Charter of Freedom that they wouldn’t have otherwise heard. If my guest was packing a photographer along for the visit, I’d ask the displaced visitors whether they’d like a photo with the Member of Congress. Everyone went away happy.

That is, when it worked.

On one occasion when trying to navigate in front of a family from Nevada, dad got right up in my grille as I was introducing myself and said in a voice loud enough for the Founding Fathers to hear, “I know damned well what you are doing. You are chatting us up to cut in line.”

To avoid bloodshed, I apologized, and my guest and I stepped back, gave the family the rail position and stood behind them to view the document. I still gave my instructional remarks directing some attention to the kids of Nevada dad as to how the next document they would see (U.S. Constitution) established the rules to allow new states like theirs to join the Union.

But the best line cut in history was one I saw performed by The Reverend Jessie Jackson.

During my tenure, the National Archives offered very limited display time for the Emancipation Proclamation which is written on paper and not the more durable parchment media. Displayed too frequently in its earlier life, it is terribly and irretrievably faded.

The Proclamation would either be displayed for a limited number of days just after the January 1 anniversary of its signing in 1863, or around the Juneteenth anniversary.

In 1987 the Archives had public programming to commemorate the New Year’s display and invited both the famed civil rights leader Reverend Jessie Jackson and the African American historian and distinguished Duke University professor, John Hope Franklin. Senator Paul Sarbanes of Maryland quietly slipped into the theater, and I asked him to join us after the presentation to see the document in the Archives rotunda.

As we came down the stairs to the rotunda we were mobbed by press and cameramen, and it occurred to me that this dance into the very long line of waiting pilgrims was going to be tricky. I actually had nothing to fear. What I had not considered was that I had a practiced showman with me.

As we walked parallel to the line of waiting visitors, Reverend Jackson approached an African American family about 30 feet from the head of the line. My other guests and I paused as Jackson asked the father whether he could take his daughter up to see the document. The star-struck father immediately recognized Jackson and placed his adorable little girl in the awaiting arms of the good pastor. As Jackson carried the smiling angel forward, the cameras began a cacophony of shutter clicks and Dr. Franklin, Senator Sarbanes, and I just followed the parade. When we reached the encasement holding the Proclamation, John Hope Franklin stepped forward and gave a brief seminar on the Lincoln's iconic document. It was magic and I’ll never forget the day Reverend Jackson carried that little girl forward and parted the sea.

Jackie’s Suit

I walked into the Archivist’s office one Spring morning and joined a group of colleagues preparing to head to Capitol Hill for a hearing on the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act. We had been the repository of the records of the Warren Commission and had a small team of archivists who knew more about these assassination records than anyone on the planet. They were smart and capable colleagues and again, are the true heroes of my tale.

One such archivist who would be our lead witness walked into the room wearing a pink wool suit. We were going to talk about the Kennedy assassination, and she was wearing a pink wool suit.

For those too young to remember November 22, 1963, one of the iconic images of that day was First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy wearing the blood-stained pink wool suit on Air Force One as Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office. She was also photographed in the same outfit as the casket carrying the body of President Kennedy was deplaned at Andrews Air Force Base that night.

The National Archives became the default repository for both record and non-record material associated with the assassination, and we had taken custody of that famous blood-stained pink suit. It was boxed and preserved in a vault in the building.

As we were all trying to catch our breath that morning, my mind raced for an ice breaking rejoinder. Humor was always my default device.

While I totally understood that for someone not used to testifying before Congress, one’s mind can be focused on what they are going to say, and not the unintended symbolism of what they are going to wear. For this intelligent, capable Irish catholic lass, the pink suit you might wear to Easter Mass seemed appropriately formal for the occasion. But, Holy Mother of God, the irony.

I was recently reminded that to no one in particular, I said, “Well, that cleaned up nicely.”

Laughter, gasps, apologies and we were on our way.

The postscript is that the testimony went quite well, no comments about the suit made it onto the public record, and only one staffer approached me about it right after the hearing.

“The suit?” he asked.

“I know”, I answered. With a smile and a shrug I walked away.