Newsletter of
The Maryland State Archives
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Newsletter of The Maryland State Archives |
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| Vol. 19 No. 7 |
mdsa.net |
July 15, 2005 |
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| Hall of Records Building Officially
Rededicated in Honor of Edward C. Papenfuse by Mimi Calver June 27 was a huge day for the Archives and for Ed Papenfuse and his family. At 12 noon, a ceremony was held in the public search room to unveil the bronze plaque officially naming the Hall of Records Building as the Edward C. Papenfuse State Archives Building. Chief Judge Robert M. Bell, Chair of the Hall of Records Commission was master of ceremonies for the event which featured Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., former Governor Harry L. Hughes, Delegate Ted Sophocleus, former Senator Jack Lapides, and Ed's long-time friend and colleague, Mercer Neale. The invocation was delivered by Rev. George A. Stansbury. The color guard was provided by the St. Maries City Militia, led by Tom Galloway. At then end of the ceremony, the bronze plaque for the lobby of the building was unveiled by Ed's grandchildren Clarissa and Everett. The plaque also features the Calvert medal. Guests and staff then enjoyed a buffet lunch, accompanied by music from the Knabe piano on the mezzanine. Among the guests were family and friends of Ed and Sallie Papenfuse's, many of whom had come from out of town especially for the ceremony.
Thank you Governor Ehrlich and all of you for such kind remarks. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the accounts of my deeds are greatly exaggerated. I promised Sallie that I would keep my comments brief. She suggested that I might just say thank you and sit down, but you all know me too well. I can't pass up such an opportunity to say a bit more, but I do promise to be reasonably short--for me. For several years now, when asked, I have been giving talks on What's in A Name and Why we Should Remember. Today, as I am deeply honored and somewhat embarrassed by my name being sandblasted into this building, and on a plaque that Clara and Everett, we think, are going to help me unveil, permit me a few moments to reflect on what I would like remembered about this building and the collective memory that it shelters. Archives are all about memory and accountability.
Much of the credit for what you see here today goes to people like our architect, Bruce Rich, who listened to what we said we needed, and to my former deputy, Chris Allan, who put his heart and soul into seeing that we got what we asked for. Indeed his diligence and care led to our bringing both the building and shelving in considerably under budget with very few change orders, something I suspect cannot be claimed for most other capital projects. Today, 20 years later, I still wonder at what we all were able to accomplish and take pride in how much the staff has contributed to making this the best state archives in America. It is well known that I am susceptible to hyperbole, but in praising the staff for what they have accomplished here, I do not believe I am overstating the case. By bringing the Archives on line and making the treasures this building holds more accessible every day through the internet, while carefully caring for the paper in our charge, paper which we are still accumulating at a prodigious rate, we are setting high standards of memory retention and accountability. Without a good, reliable and accountable memory of the past, democracy suffers and may well dissolve into tyranny. Through eloquence and pertinent quotations David McCullough makes this abundantly clear in his new book, 1776, although I wish he had said something about the Maryland troops at the Battle of Long Island where they earned the name for us of the "Old Line State." Thanks to Ann Jensen and the Sands family, we even have letters of a Maryland sergeant who was killed in the battle that McCullough finds the most critical of Washington's career, one in which Maryland and Delaware troops held the line and prevented a total disaster for the American cause. It is easy for me to get excited about the treasures we have here and our efforts to make them better known. My good friend Mercer Neale, over many a Saturday morning coffee, encouraged us, and then worked with us, to launch our Documents for the Classroom series, which Nancy Bramucci has so ably helped transform into lesson plans that meet the changing curriculum needs of teachers of American history in Maryland. Garrett Power, Larry Gibson, and I continue to mine the vast collection of court records in our care which contain so much of our history that remains relevant to today's world. One of my proudest memories is being able to work with Judge Harry Cole on the Marshall Monument, and of the cases we used to document Marshall's Maryland career, including his success in getting Donald Gaines Murray admitted to the University of Maryland Law School. Without the inspiration of Lois Green Carr, the dean of American economic historians, and the continuing work of Emily Squires, Jen Hafner, Chris Haley and their staff, we would not be able to sustain our research and outreach programs. Emily has overseen a multitude of tasks at the Archives, not the least of which has been the history of the Governor's Mansion, the summer internship program, and the garnering of a $700,000 grant to create a web-based resource for the study of the underground railroad in Maryland. It is critical that our memories be reliable and accountable. Since the late 1940s we have persistently documented the structure, organization and principal personnel of state government through the Maryland Manual which Diane Evartt has so ably edited for so many years and which now exists in two essential forms: dynamically on the web, and periodically in print and CD. The next print edition, for those of you who are constantly asking, will issue next January thanks to the governor including it in our budget for FY 2007. Pat Melville, who has worked for the Archives longer than I have, has been the conscience of appraisal and description. Without her meticulous work, and the efforts of Dr. Radoff, Gust Skordas, and Phebe Jacobsen, we would be without our general guide and the basis for managing our extensive paper and electronic archives. The singular advances in electronic archives, housed mostly in the basement of this building, would not be possible nor be as accountable and reliable if were not for the faith Judge Bell has in us and his commitment to economy and efficiency in the availability, care, and preservation of court records. With extraordinary support from the Judiciary, Tim Baker, Kevin Swanson, Wei Yang, and the IT team are producing the finest electronic archives in the country, possibly anywhere. There I go again, but I don't believe this is an exaggeration either. By building space to house the treasures of the state, both paper and electronic, we make it possible to help the citizens of Maryland better understand their past and provide an informational base for decisions affecting our future. Recently, when Governor Mandel's commission looked to the reform of state government, they were able to build on similar studies of the past that his own gubernatorial papers here contained. Soon we look forward to reading Governor Hughes's memoirs which, in part, are based upon his papers here. Memory is not only the written records on paper. Photographs are a core component of our special collections which Mame Warren launched for us and left greatly enlarged, now in the care of Rob Schoeberlein and his staff. Mimi Calver, who oversees Special Collections and Conservation, and Elaine Rice Bachmann, supported by Elizabeth Schaaf, are the shepherds of our art collection which is worth millions of dollars. They and their staff have interpreted the collection through a number of fine exhibitions in the Annapolis complex and have overseen the loan of works to internationally known museums further advancing appreciation of Maryland at home and abroad. Mimi with Kathy Beard (who is the glue that keeps my public life together), Lynne MacAdam (who also manages our web site), Richard Richardson (our director of personnel and archivist in charge of our highly regarded Reference Department), and my deputy, Tim Baker, led the rest of the staff in planning today's festivities. They deserve our enthusiastic applause for their efforts. This building is about memory and accountability. With my name on it, that is how I would like it to be remembered. It is a charge of enormous responsibility which calls for both public and private support. We have a new friends group headed by Chris Allan and David Troy, which is assiduously seeking private funding to support our educational and outreach programs, as well as acquisitions of documents and records such as manuscripts and photographs which otherwise the state could not afford. Private support has always been a key component of our ability to preserve and make records accessible. Russ Morrison and Owen Henderson gave us one of the finest collections of maps of Maryland anywhere, worth now several millions of dollars, and Henry Rosenberg made it possible for us to produce the Maryland State Archives Atlas of Historical Maps of Maryland that Joe Coale and I did which features the Huntingfield Collection of maps. I am most grateful to the current Board of Public Works composed of Governor Ehrlich, Treasurer Kopp, and Comptroller Schaefer; to all the past governors who have been so supportive (Sallie reminds me that I have served 7 over the course of my tenure), but especially to Governor Mandel who agreed to my appointment so many years ago. I am also grateful to Governor Hughes who once asked me what it would take to convince me to give up a lucrative offer from the Smithsonian, and when I answered an independent agency and a new building, made good on his offer, and to Governor and Mrs. Ehrlich who have, in difficult budgetary times, found ways to be persistently supportive of the Archives’ program, including, Governor, a budget department that has permitted us to pursue our entrepreneurial venture into electronic archives with good advice and timely approvals. Hopefully, they and the legislature will lend as much support to our recent request for an "Entrepreneurial and Educational Reserve" fee for service, but whatever the final decision, the sentiments expressed about Governor Ehrlich and his administration by George Russell Friday night on stage at the Johnny Mathis concert fully echo my own. In conclusion, I would like to say a word about family which, after all, is where all memory begins and to which we forever return. Not enough can be said about those to whom I owe so much. Grandma Wilson, Aunt Sara, Mom, Dad, Nancy, Lew, Chelsea, Sallie, David, Jon, Eric, Cathy, and now Clarissa and Everett. Sallie has tolerated me for 40 years in close proximity, longer than anyone else. She rarely calls me at work and takes pains to remind me that one time I called two other Sally's back before I returned her call to me. She is the key to all that is of value in my life and a partner in the most important of my memories. This honor is hers as much as it is mine. It is perhaps my experiences with my father and his decline into Alzheimer's that has made me most sensitive to the need to maintain permanently the public's memory here at the Archives. Dad came to the opening of the building twenty years ago, but found the crowd in the search room too large for comfort. He retired to my office where he spoke of the pride he had in what I was doing. Not long after, his decline into a memoryless existence was precipitous. We cannot permit our public memory to suffer Alzheimer's. We have too much at stake. Someday there will be a cure for the personal kind. We have the responsibility for preventing the public kind by continuing to enlarge our support for the care, preservation, and availability of the memories that are, and will be contained within the walls of the Maryland State Archives. Thank you for the singular honor for naming the building after me, but in doing so, please remember that the tribute is meant for the continuing care of the contents and the expert staff that are its heart and soul. That is what is in the name that now graces this building, and that is why we should remember it. Thank you.
Speaker's Bureau Presentation On Monday, August 8, 2005 at 10:00am in the public search room of
the
Edward C. Papenfuse State Archives Building, the Maryland Humanities Council and the Maryland State
Archives
will co-sponsor a Speaker's Bureau Presentation by Dr. Jerrold
Casway entitled, "The Baltimore Orioles and the Emerald Age of
Baseball." Dr. Casway
is a Professor of History and the Chairman of the Social Sciences
Division
of the Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland.
He holds a Ph.D. in Modern European and English History from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Dr. Casway argues that baseball owes more to Irish Americans than to
any
other ethnic community. During the national pastime’s formative
decades in the late nineteenth-century, no group dominated any era of
baseball like the sons of Irish famine immigrants. They changed how the
sport was played,
and their mastery and numbers represented an Emerald Age of Baseball. This presentation will be made in conjunction with the Archives'
annual summer internship program and is free and open to the public.
For security
reasons and out of respect for our speaker, guests in attendance will
need
to arrive no later than fifteen minutes prior to the start of the
program in order to be properly registered and signed into the
building. Please note, the public search room will be closed and no
research will be allowed either before or after the speaker. The
Speaker's Bureau is a division of the Maryland
Humanities Council, the state affiliate of the national Endowment for
the
Humanities. For more information about the Council's activities and
offerings,
please see the organization's website.
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