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Roy Webb wrote:

> Whew!  Just back from one of those intense archival experiences I
> know we've all had; but this one affected me so that I want to write
> it out for people who can understand it.
>
> So there I was last week, minding my own business as always,
> when a guy who works on our web pages comes up.  He's got a
> printout from one of our pages--a well-known 1980s Utah political
> figure--and says he's been contacted by someone about the page,
> who doesn't like the photograph we have on the page to represent
> the collection.  I look, and there are only two photos in the whole
> collection; you can't post what you don't have, right?  So he has an
> email address; I write to the gentleman and say just that, politely,
> and that if he has more photos--since the last name is the same--
> we would love to have them, and would he happen to have any
> papers?  He writes back and says yes, he does have more photos,
> but his wife (for such is the relationship) of over a half century is
> now in the thrall of Alzheimers, and that furthermore just last fall he
> threw away almost 40 boxes of materials from her political career.
>
> Now for an aside: I well remember when this first came up, for it
> was when I had just been in the library a year or two; this woman
> had run for congress, twice, and had lost, twice.  She was a liberal
> Democrat, back when such existed in Utah, and this was in the
> middle of the Reagan backlash against liberal Democrats.  So I
> remember my then-boss seeking this woman's papers, but for
> some reason, nothing ever came of it.  The gentleman gave me the
> impression that we had let this slide; my colleagues who were
> involved in the transaction said that the donors put them off every
> time.  However it happened, this archive is lost forever.  It sure
> made me get out my list of donors and start calling them up.
>
> Anyway, so today then I go over to his house; right off campus, a
> nice ten minute walk.  He comes to the door trailing a little oxygen
> tube; very gracious and nice, and says we couldn't meet in the
> morning because of his cardiac therapy.  That's fine, this is fine
> with me, I say.  So we talk a bit and he says he's thought about it
> and wants me to just take everything; he doesn't want to decide on
> what to take, just take it all.  Then he takes me to the dining room,
> where in a side board are some photographs and files.  When he
> opens the drawer, there's a simple sheet of paper with a note
> written on it in ink in a big bold hand; the wife's handwriting.  It
> says (and I can quote this because it doesn't reveal any identity):
> "Closer contact with national politics has made me / less sure I am
> right / more forgiving / and less ambitious."  It was written like that
> too, almost like a haiku or something.  When he saw that on the
> top of the pile in the drawer, he recoiled like flames had come out
> of the drawer, and clutched his chest.  It only got worse; as we
> went through the photos in the drawer of his wife when she was
> vibrant, in charge, alive, at each one he would grimace and say in a
> strangled voice "Wait a minute, wait a minute," with his eyes
> closed tightly and his face turned away, again like the sight of her
> evoked what she must be now, alive but dead; and it was very
> intense!  I finally just took them out of his hands and said "Look,
> sir, I don't want to cause you this kind of pain; I can either come
> back later or we can do this another time..."  He thrust the folders
> and photos at me and said "Yes, take them, I don't want to see
> them..."
>
> All the while I'm thinking I'm sure glad I just got recertified in first
> aid and CPR last week, cause I'm going to be using it on him in a
> minute; seriously, I was rehearsing what I was going to say to the
> 911 dispatcher and how I was going to check his airway before I
> began rescue breathing and on and on!
>
> Well anyway, we left the fateful drawer and went around the house
> to look at a few other files he still had, and even though the
> intensity was less the pain was still there.  I made an appointment
> to come back in a day or two and clean him out, which is what he
> wanted me to do (unfortunately I had walked, and there was too
> much to carry off in my arms); but I walked back to the library
> shaken and sweaty, like I'd just had a workout.  I know we joke
> about being ambulance chasers in this business, but this was so
> personal and so intense!  I love what I do but experiences like this
> one really set you back.  Again I can only say: Whew!
>
> Archivally yours,
>
> Roy Webb, C.A.
> Multimedia Archivist
> Special Collections
> J. Willard Marriott Library
> 295 South 1500 East
> University of Utah
> Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
> (801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
> rwebb@library.utah.edu
>
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> Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>