In honor of President's Day...

In honor of President's Day and in honor of our favorite Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate, I thought I'd post photos taken in May 2010 of our first peek at the Jack Kemp Collection in the Library of Congress. I'm sorry I hadn't posted them earlier, but after seeing the Kemp audio-visual materials housed at the LOC Culpeper facility (see previous post), it reminded me of what an extraordinary experience it was to see the newly-arrived Kemp boxes at the Madison facility.  [Note: click on photos to enlarge, and click on X in upper right to return to blog.]

A little background:  The main building of the Library of Congress is the Jefferson building, followed by the Adams building. Across Independence Avenue is the Madison building, which was built in 1976.  It was appropriately named after James Madison, since he was the first sponsor of the initial idea of a "library for Congress." In 1783, when he was a member of the Continental Congress, he wrote up a list of books that he felt would be of interest and helpful to legislators. Seventeen years later, the Library of Congress was born.

The Madison building houses the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.  It's impossible to convey the breathtaking magnitude of what is housed in that building:

Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence

Madison's notes on the Federal Convention

George Washington's first inaugural address

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Walt Whitman's notes on "O Captain!  My Captain!"

Alexander Graham Bell's first drawing of the telephone

The papers of Sigmund Freud

The papers of Orville and Wilbur Wright

The papers of 23 Presidents

...and the papers of Jack Kemp.  Yes.  Takes your breath away, right?  Right????

Here's a sample of what we saw there as we walked the aisles behind the scenes.

Emily and Paul next to the papers of
former Chief Justice Earl Warren

The papers of anthropologist Margaret Mead

Johnny and Rob looking at something important
(I can't see what it is...)

The papers of designers Charles and Ray Eames

The papers of Senator Daniel Moynihan

Papers of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
and Congresswoman Patsy Mink

Papers of Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
and Leonard Garment, Special Counsel to Richard Nixon

Papers of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson

And last, but certainly not least, the papers of
Abraham Lincoln

So now, without further ado, here are the Kemp Collection boxes, pre-curation.   When I mentioned to Rob that I thought that Jack possibly had more boxes than the Wright brothers, he said that Jack's collection definitely had more footballs than the Wright collection.  Amen!

Paul, Jenny, Jimmy, Rob, and Curator Connie

Johnny and Curator Connie

Johnny and Connie, part 2

Connie shows Jimmy and Jenny a photo of
Jack and the "Iron Lady" herself, Margaret Thatcher

Jimmy holds a letter to Jack by Reagan

Nancy, Connie, Rob, Johnny, and Paul

Johnny, Rob, Paul, and Jimmy look at a photo montage

(Okay... I want one of these)

Jimmy and Em

Jimmy, Em, Jenny, and Rob

Nancy, Jimmy, Rob

Nancy, Jimmy, Rob part 2

Emily, Paul, Jenny

Em and Jenny

Johnny headin' home...

Jenny, Anne, Em, and Rob

I'll end here with a small glimpse of the glorious interior of the Jefferson building of the Library of Congress.   An inspiring reminder of the value of our heritage as a country, and what a joy it is to know that the Jack Kemp papers will forever be a part of that heritage. We are blessed. Our country is blessed.

 Happy President's Day!

Kemp audio/visual archives at Library of Congress, Culpeper, VA

I didn't learn until recently that the Jack Kemp Collection at the Library of Congress is only partially housed in the Madison building in downtown DC.  The audio/visual components are housed at the Library's "National Audio-Visual Conservation Center" (NAVCC) about an hour and a half away, in Culpeper, Virginia.

The facility began in 1969 as a high-security storage facility for the Federal Reserve.  It was essentially a bunker made of concrete one foot thick, with lead-lined shutters that could shield the windows in event of a nuclear attack.  It stored several billion dollars worth of U.S. currency, which could be used to restore the U.S. economy east of the Mississippi in a nuclear emergency.  (No mention of the economy west of the Mississippi.  Hmmm....)  It also contained the seven computers that made up the hub for all electric funds transfers at that time.

In 1988, all the money was removed.  And in 1997, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation bought the facility on behalf of the Library of Congress.  A state-of-the-art 415,000 square foot facility was built on top of the bunkers, and, thus, in 2007, NAVCC was born.

Since I had tagged along on one of Rob's business trips, and since part of that trip involved the NAVCC facility, we were given a tour of the Kemp archive material stored there.  [You can click on any image to enlarge it.  It will take you to another pop-up window, which you can close by clicking on the X in the upper right of that window.]

Above is just part of the many many miles of underground storage.  The boxes on the left are from the "Prelinger Collection," over 60,000 "ephemeral" films (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films) donated to the Library of Congress.

Below are the photos of the Kemp collection.  They're stored in their original file boxes on ordinary metal shelves.

(On the left is Rob's partner, Dan Rosen,
who was mentioned in a previous post on Thomasville.)

Dan Rosen and our NAVCC guide, Rob

Kemp archives

Jimmy going through Kemp boxes

Rob and Jimmy looking through Kemp boxes

Jimmy found this video cassette with a "T. P. Kemp" label.
No idea what it is.... 

The PBS archives nearby.  Jimmy wants to see if  they contain
the interviews on Firing Line with Buckley and Jack.

Right now, funds are not available for Jack's audio/visual material to be curated and preserved. But it was a privilege to be able to see them in their new home, and know that they'll eventually be made available to all who would like to view them.  The facility stores over six million items, ranging from original Edison wax cylinder recordings to silent movies to NBC radio broadcast discs from 1935 to 1970.  The Kemp collection is in interesting company indeed.