In my four years here in the archives, I’ve stumbled across a lot of interesting things in our files that aren’t digitized. I’ve compiled entire lists of things I’d like to go back and find (with notes to locations that no longer exist, alas), but I just never have. This mostly includes fun names like Professors Grumbling, Boring, and Gross, Dr. Homer H. Hamner, Miss Sandy Seylar; a cursive typewriter, a story about President Todd falling on his face, and a mysterious handful of marriage certificates in a General Correspondence folder.
However, I was recently given a good handful of items to scan from a combination of the President’s records, Ephemera, and the (unsorted) press release boxes from the UPS News Bureau, where I finally got an opportunity to have actual scans of these materials instead of just notes. Here we have an example of the original “correction tape” on a press release about the Black Arts Festival in 1969, a handwritten list of “types of parties,” from 1969 which includes “fondeau,” crab feed, funny money-Monte Carlo (which is just a casino themed), a champagne buffet, and a handful of others; and a handwritten letter from a Mrs. Huff that accompanied a $3.00 donation to the Now Mr. Lincoln fund.
The Archives & Special Collections is open on Mondays and Wednesdays from 12:00-3:00 p.m. or by appointment if you want to come see what you can find for yourself!
By Morgan Ford