Presidential Libraries: Halls of History

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

One summer's day in 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain sat below an oak tree in Hyde Park, New York. The Queen held, rather gingerly, something she'd never seen before - a hot dog.

"I'm enjoying the picnic, Mr. President, she said, "but how does one eat this?"

"Well, your Majesty," replied Mr. Roosevelt, "you put one end in your mouth and you start chewing and pushing till it's all gone."

Such a fascinating glance at the past is just one of the memories awaiting the visitor at the halls of history scattered through America - the Presidential libraries.

Our legacy was not always so conveniently displayed. Before Franklin D. Roosevelt, the handling of the memoirs of previous presidents was a haphazard procedure. Widows and heirs had cleared out countless documents unaware of any historical significance. Jackson had lost his material in a fire, and Adams had given his to the Massachusetts Historical Society. There was no system.

The Library of Congress was spending millions a year trying to locate and collect the private papers of previous presidents. Reasoning that there had to be a better way, Roosevelt acted like a typical politician: he formed a committee. It acted, suggesting that a president should obtain private financing and build his own library.

Roosevelt made his decision. He raised the money to put up the building and his mother donated the land. When he dedicated his library he declared that "a Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future."

Other libraries followed, some at birthplaces, others at University campuses. Any location suits Roosevelt's original purpose in founding a library, namely preserving the records of an administration to make them available for researchers, scholars and the public. There is no better library for the people to start with than that of the president who, despite his wheel chair, stood up so for the little fellow. Roosevelt's style commands respect. Historians have said the office of the presidency is a monster that was controlled by only three men, Washington, Lincoln, and FDR.; almost managed by Jefferson, Jackson and Truman. All other presidents were overwhelmed by it.

However, federal intrusion into a citizen's life surely started during the New Deal. Roosevelt's presidential papers reveal this and the growing role of government. There are 110,000 photographs of FDR. as president. Unbelievably this is the same number of pictures taken of former President Nixon during his eight days in China. All presidential documents up to the era of Hoover are still less than the 8 million pages from Roosevelt's twelve years as president. Yet Ford's 28 months in office produced 35 million pages.

Said Dr. Donald B. Schewe, former assistant director of the Roosevelt library: "A scholar can study all Lincoln wrote, but nobody can read 35 million pages. It would take more than a lifetime. Therefore it may be that no one person will ever be able to give a complete objective report on any president from now on." This is particularly why one should visit the Roosevelt Library. In this languid elegant countryside along the Hudson it is just possible to catch that glimpse of Roosevelt's America, a kaleidoscope of depression and enthusiasm, war and victory, disability and triumph.

The Roosevelt Library contains, for example, the 1936 Ford convertible equipped with hand controls driven by the president on his contented visits to Hyde Park. Here also can be found FDR. 's notes on the 1935 Social Security Bill, the message to Congress on 8 December 1941 calling for war, and a letter from Albert Einstein apprising the president of the potentials of the atomic bomb. Here too is the library office from which Roosevelt broadcast his last fireside chat.

FDR. was a great collector: Presidential book accumulations the greatest since Jefferson, and stamp collections as large as any private ones in the world. His assemblage of ship models and naval prints showed another side to the man who spent his life in a wheelchair he loved the sea.

Joseph Alsop, once gave this picture of his distant cousin: "In truth, he loved the light and loathed the darkness, and in hard and testing times he was also inspired... by a simple, rather old-fashioned, but very deep and unshakable Christian faith."

Another unshakable Christian was Harry S. Truman. His working Bible at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, is well thumbed and well marked, in Truman's own hand.

"He was a man of the Good Word as well as a man of strong language," said Dr. Benedict K. Zobrist, then the director of this library situated on a sloping park six blocks north of the Truman home.

Zobrist believed that, with the more objective view now taken of the Truman years, so political scientists today are ranking the Truman performance as "near great." He sensed also that the American public, has had an increased awareness and higher regard for this former president. No longer was he perceived merely as the man who dropped an atomic bomb, beat Dewey and fired MacArthur. Now the American people sees an openness, an honesty and a directness in the way he made decisions that may have been missing for two decades.

His peppery feistiness was well known but less clearly understood was the degree of competence he brought to the White House. This was no bumpkin flung into the nation's highest position, although he was the last self-educated man we've had in the Presidency. He was widely read with a command of history and a detailed knowledge of affairs that astounded those close to him. Neither was he a hick politician. He came to Washington with wide responsible administrative experience as a county judge. Nor was he just Captain Harry of the Artillery. After his active service in Europe in World War I he rose through the Reserves to the rank of full colonel.

Of Truman's tumultuous time in office nothing was more turbulent than his first few months. Fate forced the former vice president to handle the funeral of the president, the decision on the atomic bomb, the surrender of Japan, the conference at Potsdam and the formation of the United Nations. The home front was no easier with labor unrest, wild inflation, and domestic chaos. It all required urgent thought. Truman seemed to reduce complex considerations to basics. After his atomic bomb ruling, historians record that he made the decision, he went home and he slept.

"The Truman period is important historically," said Zobrist, "because today was shaped by his post war decisions. We are still facing those important issues first addressed by Harry Truman -- the problem of foreign aid, the question of Free Europe, the matter of Russia, the role of NATO."

The library shows both sides of controversy and even gives grants to research scholars who are personally critical of Truman. Here, in the library of a man who once dismissed historians as "eggheads," are the pen used for the surrender of Japan; the table on which the United Nations was charted; and the sign "The Buck Stops Here, revealing that the side facing Truman read "I'm from Missouri."

Here are such diverse exhibits as his Colt handguns from World War I and the pianos he played at Pennsylvania Avenue, one instrument autographed by Jose Iturbi. Here are the 1941 Chrysler coupe he drove for five years and mementos of his Whistlestop 1948 campaign against Dewey including a framed copy of that famous Chicago Tribune edition miscalling Dewey the winner.

Here too is the Thomas Hart Benton huge mural "Independence and the Opening of the West," a painting demonstrating the indomitable spirit that drove the Missouri pioneers into the wilderness and a county judge into the White House.

John F. Kennedy, the youngest man ever elected president, was speaking to the people: "Harry Truman once said," he cried, "there are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of other people, the hundred and fifty or sixty million is the responsibility of the President of the United States. And I propose to fulfill it."

Time will tell whether Kennedy met that fulfillment. He did however face his challenges with that courage he so valued in others. The Kennedy Library sits facing the sea astride Columbia Point, just three minutes off the interstate highway in Boston. A starkly beautiful black and white building it is approached across the University of Massachusetts campus. All stainless steel, sparkling glass and glistening concrete it covers a presidency whose ending is forever etched in the conscience of every American old enough to remember the chill of November 1963.Kennedy's term of 1000 days, perhaps the least effectual of any presidency, was nevertheless a time when the White House had grace, style and wit; and a time when, after his light was snuffed out and a nation mourned and a son saluted, there came briefly to America a sense of majesty.

Kennedy was unique. He was the first president born in the 20th century. In appealing to the youth of his country for support it was as if he was making demands of himself "...a new generation -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage."

The library reveals that heritage but it attempts also to show young persons how government works. Said Dan H. Fenn, Jr. then the director, "In helping visitors understand the American system of politics, we hope that people, especially young people, will become more active in government." Fenn noticed an enormous degree of ignorance and a high level of cynicism amongst the public towards politics. The library therefore strives to show the process of politics and to encourage young persons to become active in government.

It takes groups of school children into prior presidential problems. Fenn said, "Children. You are the president. Decide. Because presidents can't abstain." The library arranges evening forums on local public issues like racism in Boston, or the quality of life in its city. It holds summer workshops, contemporary teleconferences, and community programs like Chinese music, Polish concerts and Boston Ballet.

Kennedy would have liked that. He was indeed a patron of the arts. After all, did not Robert Frost himself read "The Gift Outright" at the Inauguration, and Pablo Casals, who last played the cello at the White House for Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, come out of retirement in 1961 to perform for the President at a formal dinner?"

In displaying the presidency, Fenn tried to be scrupulously fair. "We are not keepers of a flame here," he said, "We are custodians of materials on which the public must make its own decisions.

Other exhibits vary from a silver cigar humidor gifted by Nikita Khrushchev to a patchwork quilt of the first 23 presidents stitched by Virginia Hawkins of Oklahoma City. Kennedy's scrimshaw collection sits across from Jackie's old news camera; the tattered flag of PT 109 is displayed near his presidential rocking chair; the beginnings of the Kennedy family are shown close to the very scratchpad notes scribbled by the president before he went to Dallas. The JFK Library like other presidential libraries, encourages persons to relive events that touched them, as well as their president, forever to alter the future.

Visitors can't help but look around the Kennedy Library and ask What if...?They hear the moaning of the wind, the roar of the sea and, on tape, the faltering moving voice of Edward Kennedy eulogizing two dead brothers.

What if...? JFK himself was asked what he might do after his Presidency. He said that he would find himself at the end of the period that might be called the awkward age -too old to begin a new career and too young to write his memoirs. Jimmy Carter perhaps gave us the final memory of our youngest president. Kennedy, he said, loved laughter and loved politics and when the two came together he loved that most of all.

When love is mentioned in a presidency we more likely to think of Ronald Reagan than Richard Nixon. Their libraries are within a three hours’ drive of each other in Southern California The Reagan Library features his cowboy hat and his chest X-Ray that reveals the bullet in his thorax whereas the Nixon library takes pains to show Nixon’s impressive impact on world politics