A restorer was already busy trying to save the Ben Shahn mural in the Bronx Central Post Office in New York City when the article in which it was featured, Edward Laning’s “Memoirs of a WPA Painter,” appeared in our October, 1970, issue. According to the General Services Administration, the restoration was more complex than was anticipated because of the “strange reaction of the plaster on the tempera, aided by the accumulation of 30 years of dirt.” In addition, Karel Yasko, special assistant to the commissioner, Public Buildings Service, G.S.A., had this welcome news to report :
Our next salvation is directed at the Edward Laning murals on Ellis Island. This is a direct result of your story. I had been informed previously that they had deteriorated beyond recall but when your photograph indicated that at least one was seemingly intact, we felt compelled to try to save it.…
Mr. Yasko also reports that an inventory has been started to locate all works of art that were commissioned by the federal government and are still in its possession, especially those done between 1933 and 1943. Perhaps a full-scale restoration policy will result.
SIC TRANSIT
Considering the toil, time, and hardship it took to build the Panama Canal (see page 64), it seems almost flippant to report that a three-foot-long model cruiser named AnconII last year became the smallest vessel ever to pass through the Canal. The boat, built from a kit by Major Kenneth Thomas of the U.S. Air Force, made the journey from the Atlantic side to the Pacific in eight and a half hours. AnconII carried two and a half gallons of fuel for her nine-tenths-of-a-horsepower engine. She could reach nine knots when fully loaded, twelve knots as she became lighter. The boat was guided by a radio transmitter and was lifted from one level to another through the locks by being tied to a control boat, aboard which was a Canal pilot. Major Thomas paid seventy-two cents for the fifty-mile transit, the minimum rate for a ship in ballast.
AUTHOR PENS HISTORIC HEADS
Gerald Carson, a frequent contributor to this magazine (see “Sweet Extract of Hokum” on page 18 of this issue), dropped us a note after perusing the headlines about newsworthy occurrences that appeared in our February issue (“Through History With the Times”). Herewith his remarks:
To amuse myself while suffering a winter cold, I tried your AMERICAN HERITAGE headline game; of course, it is really the New York Times headline game too, but I very much enjoyed.your collection of world events as that august and restrained newspaper might have covered them if it had existed far back in history. I enclose four candidates:
CLEOPATRA MAPS BARGE WEDDING
NAB GUY FAWKES IN CELLAR PLOT
YALE MAN HANGS FOR ROLE AS SPY
ROME TO FEATURE BREAD, CIRCUSES
NEW NAME, SAME PERSON
For the first time, the signature that appears on greenbacks has been changed while the Treasurer of the United States is still in office. New paper currency is now signed Dorothy Andrews Kabis instead of Dorothy Andrews Elston, a result of the Treasurer’s marriage last September to W. L. Kabis.
A SCHOOLED INDIAN
Our article on the Carlisle Indian School (“The Great White Father’s Little Red Indian School,” December, 1970) questioned the wisdom and results of trying to “civilize” the red man. One graduate who apparently remained close to the old ways, at least outwardly, was the gentleman pictured below. His photograph was supplied by Robert A. Murdock, executive director of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, in Richmond. Mr. Murdock reports that the picture was taken by his wife’s great uncle, Jack Harrah of Montana, in 1934. The inscription on the back says: “Flathead Chief—‘Sam Resurection.’ Has fine home but lives in tepee back of house. 90 years old. Personal friend & guide for Teddy Roosevelt in all his hunting trips in U.S. Graduate of Carlyle College.”
As Mr. Murdock observed, “If accurate the inscription…reveals the inability of Carlisle to completely transform all of its students.”
For another look at the American Indian, in the years immediately after the high point of his resistance to white incursions, see pages 40-41 of this issue.
