Remember sharing a pot of coffee with your coworkers? Deputy Chief of Staff Dick Cheney wrote this memo to Staff Secretary Jim Connor in October 1975, wanting to know why the bill for Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld’s office
had been over $100 the previous month. Connor’s handwritten note succinctly sums up why it was so high:
“They are drinking too much coffee and have too many people drinking it!”
The White House Mess records showed that the bill covered 200 pots of coffee, meaning that the nine staff members and their guests had consumed about 50 pots per week in September.
Image: Memorandum from Dick Cheney to Jim Connor Regarding the Coffee Bill for White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld’s Office, 10/20/1975 (National Archives Identifier 16637889)
For the next two weeks, the FDR Library will be celebrating tennis history in honor of the President’s first cousins, Ellen and Grace Roosevelt, pictured here (Ellen, left, and Grace, right).
Ellen won the 1890 singles title and shared the doubles championship that year with her sister Grace. Ellen paired with Clarence Hobart in 1893 to take the mixed doubles title. Hobart found romance with another mixed doubles partner and won the championship with his wife Augusta Schultz in 1905.
Ellen and her sister Grace were fierce competitors, belying the notion that early women’s tennis was merely a genteel past-time for elegant ladies. They actively competed in championships both at tennis clubs in the Hudson Valley (where they resided not far from Springwood, FDR’s birthplace and home) and in tennis centers like Newport and Narragansett, Rhode Island (photo: at play in Narragansett, Rhode Island).
Photos of Ellen and Grace donated by their family after Ellen’s death in 1954 document the early history of the game in the United States. These images include Ellen and Grace in formal portraits as well as in match play. Some images may have been taken by Ellen or Grace or by their father John Aspinwall Roosevelt, FDR’s uncle.
Many have never been seen by a wide audience and may be the only photos of early US championship tennis.
The men’s match shown in this photograph is one of several in our collection documenting the 1887 men’s championships between Richard D. Sears and Henry Slocum on August 30, 1887 at the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island. These may be the only extant photographs of the match in play. Sears defeated Slocum in straight sets (6-1, 6-3, 6-2). Sears won the first seven US National Championships, all contested on grass, in Newport.
We are sad to mark the passing of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens earlier this week at age 99. He was the third longest serving justice at the time of his retirement in June 2010, just under 35 years after President Ford appointed him to the Supreme Court.
Born in Chicago, Stevens graduated from the University of Chicago in 1941. He served in the Navy during World War II as an intelligence officer in the Pacific Theater. After the war he attended Northwestern University School of Law and graduated first in his class. Stevens then served as a law clerk to
Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge before entering private practice. He worked for law firms in the Chicago area, including one he helped form, for many years, dealing mostly with litigation and antitrust law. Additionally, he taught law classes part time and gained experience serving as counsel on Federal committees.
Stevens became a United States Circuit Judge for the
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in October 1970. He served in that capacity until November 1975 when President Ford nominated him to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice William O. Douglass. “Judge Stevens is held in the highest esteem
by his colleagues in the legal profession and the Judiciary
and has had an outstanding career in the practice and
the teaching of law as well as on the Federal Bench,” President Ford said in his nomination remarks. “I
am confident that he will bring both professional and
personal qualities of the highest order to the Supreme Court.”
The Senate quickly confirmed Stevens with a vote of 98-0 and he took his seat on the bench on December 19, 1975. Although he was registered as a Republican when he was appointed, over time he became viewed as part of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court. President Ford never regretted nominating Stevens. “He has served his nation well, at all times carrying out his judicial duties with dignity, intellect, and without partisan political concerns. Justice Stevens has made me, and our fellow citizens, proud of my three decade old decision to appoint him to the Supreme Court,” President Ford wrote in a letter honoring Justice Stevens in 2005. Stevens received a copy of the letter, which he reportedly displayed in his Supreme Court chambers.
Images:
President Gerald Ford, Chief Justice Warren Burger, and John Paul Stevens at the U.S. Supreme Court Building for the Swearing-in of Stevens as an Associate Justice, 12/19/1975 (National Archives Identifier 6926435)
Letter from President Gerald R. Ford to Dean William Michael Treanor regarding Justice John Paul Stevens, 30 Years on the Supreme Court, 9/21/2005, from the Ford Post Presidential Office Files, Box A544, folder “Correspondence File, 2005 [To-Tu]”
Letter from Justice John Paul Stevens to President Gerald R. Ford, 10/11/2005, from the Gerald and Betty Ford Special Materials, Box A10, folder “Stevens, John Paul”
With the signing of the United States Constitution
on September 17, 1787, the founding fathers approved
for the people of this Nation an effective plan of self-government,
which has, with its subsequent amendments
–
including the Bill of Rights
– preserved the principles
of the Declaration of Independence. It is the responsibility
of the citizens of the United States to uphold,
support and defend those ideals.
Constitution Day and Citizenship Day commemorates the signing of the Constitution, and encourages people to learn more about their rights and responsibilities as citizens of the United States.
The Constitution is on permanent display year round at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, DC. Read the full transcription of it on the National Archives website. Explore additional resources for learning and teaching about the Constitution from the National Archives Education Updates blog.
“Philadelphia is a good city in which to write American history.“
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
Happy Constitution Day! Today’s the day when we celebrate the signing of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia on
September 17, 1787!
The Constitution acted like a colossal merger, uniting a
group of states with different interests, laws, and cultures. Under
America’s first national government, the Articles of Confederation, the
states acted together only for specific purposes. The Constitution
united its citizens as members of a whole, vesting the power of the
union in the people. Without it, the American Experiment might have
ended as quickly as it had begun.
The National Archives is home to the Constitution, as well as the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. Today is a great day to brush up on your Charters of Freedom history, or to learn something new about America’s founding documents. Head over to Archives.gov for Constitution Day!
Today, July 18, marks the international celebration and 100th birthday of Nelson Mandela. This day of service was created in 2009 by the United States along with 192 United Nations member states to commemorate the life and legacy of the former president of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
In 2011, First Lady Michelle Obama met Nelson Mandela at his home during an official visit to South Africa and later shared her experience with a group of attendees at the Young African Women’s Leaders Forum in Soweto, South Africa.
Previously unseen home movie footage of FDR’s adapted walk
Franklin D. Roosevelt was paralyzed by polio at the age of 39. He devised a method of “walking” where he used a cane and the arm of a companion for balance. During his Presidency, the press was told not to film his disability. The FDR Presidential Library recently received footage of the 1935 White House Easter Egg Roll from a family in Nevada. Historian Geoffrey C. Ward believes it’s “the most vivid glimpse we’ve yet had” of FDR’s adapted walk. Find out the story behind the rare film.
The
Pare Lorentz Film Center at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and
Museum has launched a new animated video
on Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Dust Bowl created by Roosevelt
great-granddaughter and visual storyteller Perrin Ireland and narrated by CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker. The
project was funded by a grant from the New York Community Trust.
“FDR and the Dust Bowl” combines powerful animated visuals
with stirring narrative to stimulate viewer engagement with important aspects
of the Roosevelt story. This is the second video released as part of the Pare
Lorentz Film Center’s “Animate the Roosevelts” project. The first video –
focusing on Japanese American Interment – was released in 2017.
Today in history – FDR Approves the National Archives Act
On June 19, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed “An Act to establish a National Archives of the United States Government, and for other purposes.” Read more
Photo: An image of the construction of the National Archives Building is from June 1934, the month that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the National Archives Act.
On this day, June 18, 1979, President Jimmy Carter and
General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT II strategic arms limitation treaty
between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in Vienna.
The
SALT II Treaty established clear rules and limits on nuclear weapons.
Although SALT II did not end the arms race, the treaty and its protocol:
Limited the number of strategic nuclear delivery systems (bombers and missile launchers) after January 1, 1981.
Restricted the number of warheads that could be put on each ICBM and SLBM.
Banned the deployment of mobile ICBMs or the flight testing of ICBMs from mobile launchers.
Limited the range of land or sea-based cruise missiles, and
Banned the testing or deployment of Air to Surface Ballistic Missiles.
Though
the Treaty had been signed, it still had to be ratified by a 2/3
majority in the Senate. On June 22, the SALT II Treaty was submitted by
the President to the Senate for debate. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee approved ratification of the Treaty, but the USSR invaded
Afghanistan before it could be voted on by the full Senate.
In
January 1980, President Carter asked the Senate to delay ratification
until the US responded to the invasion. Although the treaty was never
ratified, both sides agreed to honor its terms until it would have
expired December 31, 1985.
Images: Carter
and Brezhnev at the Vienna Summit. 6/15/79; Signing the SALT II Treaty on 6/18/79.
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