Throughout the month of May, Special Collections is displaying an exhibit on five decades of student activism at Virginia Tech. The exhibit highlights several campaigns and demonstrations from 1968 through today, including impromptu vigils for Martin Luther King Jr. and Trayvon Martin, the student occupation of Williams Hall in the wake of the Kent State shootings, anti-war marches and pro-military responses, demonstrations against racism and sexual violence, calls for the protection of natural resources in Appalachia, protests against exploitative labor conditions, LGBTQ pride rallies, and campaigns to highlight ADA violations across campus. These materials come from the University Archives and manuscript collections of Virginia Tech alumni.
Alongside these materials, weve chosen to highlight the work of a single student organization at Virginia Tech. The Appalachian Student Organizing Committee (or Appalachian Student Committee) operated as an official student organization of Virginia Tech in the early 1970s. The Committee aimed to raise awareness of Appalachian issues and provide support for other grassroots groups in the region. Under the leadership of student organizers David Tice and Allan Cox, the group worked throughout the region to address issues such as land use, energy policy, poverty, access to health care, labor rights, systemic racism in Appalachia, and the Vietnam War.
In May 1971, several chapter members traveled to Washington, D.C. to participate in a national civil disobedience campaign which resulted in the arrest of more than 12,000 people. The Special Collections exhibit includes memos and training materials distributed on campus to student affiliates. Additionally, visitors to Special Collections can review information about the Community Free Clinic of Blacksburg (1971-1972). This initiative was part of a national movement to establish locally responsive and accessible health care throughout the country.
To see these materials in person, visit Special Collections in Newman Library anytime during the month of May.
“Taking some good advice, ‘if a woman is going to perform a man’s task, she must be more capable than a man doing the same task.’ I gave it all and have continued to do so ever since.” Anonymous, from Candid Reflections: Letters from Women in Architecture 1972 & 2004
Eleanore Pettersen in her studio.
Alberta Pfeiffer.
Women matter. They are present and visible, and their voices are central to the way that our communities are shaped. The story of women in the field of architecture can read in a multiplicity of ways, the two most dominant narratives of 20th century practice being ones of exclusion or of triumph. Bemoaning the very real barriers to entry and the loss of talent to attrition based on social pressures is one way to understand architectural practice in the 20th century. We can also flip that narrative and observe the many ways that women overcame, inserting themselves into the conversation, demanding attention and respect, and finding methods to work within existing structures while dismantling them from the inside.
We can understand the diverse ways that women moved through the architectural world while also noticing the trends that emergetypes of work that seem prevalent in their respective careers, stories about being denied interviews, or assumptions that they would be “good with colors” or best-suited to interior design work. These anecdotal recollections, when viewed en masse, begin to tell a story about the barriers to entry and limitations often encountered in a male dominated field. Beyond that, however, we see positive patterns and systems emerge when women began to form organizations to support one another professionally, to cultivate a more active presence in the broader field, and to vocally address inequities through surveys, task forces, and sometimes by outright forcing their way into the old boys clubs of the largest professional organizations.
Spanning the bulk of the 20th century (in a field often defined by the idea of a single, star practitioner) the women, projects, and historical trends presented in the online interactive exhibition Together | We: Troubling the Field in 20th Century Architecture suggest a unity both tangible and intangible between women who held some part in changing the field. Their approaches were varied, but together with their presence, techniques, and persistence they troubled the field and changed our built environment.
The exhibition includes materials from the International Archive of Women in Architecture, held by the Special Collections Department at Virginia Tech. Many of the featured drawings, photographs, and manuscript materials have been digitized as part of a Council on Library Resources (CLIR) Digitizing Hidden Collections grant.
Virginia Tech is proud to be the alma mater to many pioneers in aerospace engineering, perhaps none as famous as Christopher Columbus Kraft, Jr. The VT Stories team recorded an oral history interview with Kraft in April 2017, and Special Collections now has the full interview and transcript available online. The VT Stories summary of the interview is available here.
Chris Kraft being interviewed by VT Stories project director Ren Harman at his home in Houston
Chris Kraft graduated from Tech in 1944 with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. The university was operating on a 12-month schedule because of WWII, therefore Kraft graduated after only three years. Despite only this truncated time at Virginia Tech, Kraft rose through the ranks to become president of the Corps of Cadets, which he counts as teaching him important leadership skills. Kraft also recounts his classes with Professor Rasche, contracting Scarlet Fever, and dance weekends from his memories at Virginia Tech in his interview.
After graduating at age 20, he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor organization to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Kraft worked at Langley Research Center as a flight test engineer for 13 years, until the space race began.
Kraft works at his console inside the Flight Control area of the Mercury Control Center, from Wikimedia Commons
In 1958, he became one of the original members of the NASA Space Task Group, which was established to manage Project Mercury, the nation’s first project to put a man in space. During Project Mercury, Kraft developed many of the basic mission and flight control techniques used in manned space flight, which culminated in the creation of the Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center (originally the Manned Spacecraft Center) in Houston, from which all of NASA’s manned space flights have been conducted. He also served as Flight Director for all the Mercury missions and many of the Gemini missions. Kraft was named deputy director of the Manned Spacecraft Center in 1970, and later director in 1972. He retired from NASA in 1982 and and subsequently served as a consultant for various corporations. In 2001, Kraft’s autobiography, Flight: My Life in Mission Controlwas published.
Special Collections also has Kraft’s papers, which he donated in 1986. The collection consists of approximately 28 cu. ft. of manuscripts, particularly NACA and NASA reports and documents, meeting notes and agendas, research materials, and the manuscript for 2001 Kraft’s autobiography. You can view the finding aid for this collection here.
For nine and a half years, I’ve been working at Special Collections and have been doing instruction just about since I started. After being an observer for one class and anticipating my own first class to follow shortly, I asked myself a basic question that I remember quite well. “What do I want to communicate about Special Collections to a group of students, most of whom have never visited an archival repository before or worked with original primary sources?” Yes, yes, the rules are different here. Explain why. That can lead nicely into a general description of the kinds of materials found here. Sure. No appointment or invitation is necessary. We’re a friendly bunch, after all. Talk about primary sources. What’s a finding aid? All of these came to mind, along with various other important details, all to be ordered in a clear, comprehensive, and understandable way. Describe the materials kept here and how to find them. Talk about collecting areas. All good. All necessary, but, taken together, insufficient.
We also want to give students the experience of interacting with primary sources: to see them up close, to hold them (carefully), to get a sense of how they might be useful in research, to judge the challenges they may present, or to be startled by the surprises they may hold.
Display of materials for class exercise
So, we assemble an exercise in which all members of the class get to choose from a selection of largely unidentified items from various collections and spend a few brief moments with the material they’ve chosen. Most likely, it’ll be from a manuscript collection, that is, it’ll be some kind of unpublished primary source. After those few moments, they’ll be asked to talk a bit about the item(s) they’ve picked. The hope is that with as many students as possible talking briefly about the materials they’ve chosen, everyone in the class will leave the session with a better idea about the kinds of materials held at Special Collections.
That may be the low bar of an adequate objective, but it’s not all we really want to encourage. What we really want is to present an opportunity to create a connection between student and primary sources, broadly considered, through an initial, singular experience.
World War II rationing program materials [inset: OPA Red Point]
Sometimes that experience depends on pure happenstance. A student beginning work on rationing on the homefront during World War II drew a folder that contained rationing materials that belonged to a nearby Giles Co. family and included a small box of Office of Price Administration (OPA) Red Point ration tokens. These tokens, used for change when buying meats and fats with ration stamps, were first issued in 1944. She was thrilled to see these for the first time, to have the actual materials in front of her.
V-Mail from Lt. James Monteith, 27 May 1944
Another coincidence involved a member of the Corps of Cadets who happened to choose a folder containing a single sheet of paper marked “Reply by V . . .-Mail” at the bottom and “Lt. J.W. Monteith” written in at the top as the sender. The date on the letter is May 27, 1944. I swear that I did not give this particular folder to this fellow, whose eyes lit up and jaw dropped with the recognition that he was holding a letter written about ten days before Monteith, a cadet at Tech in the late 1930s, took part in the assault on Omaha beach during the Normandy invasion. Lt. Monteith was killed that June 6th day and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. Like many (all?) cadets to this day, the cadet in the class knew Monteith’s entire story. I’m guessing, this was not what he expected from a class session at the library!
Honestly, situations like this happen quite often. Both of these incidents happened within the last couple of weeks. Ideally, we’d like students to experience these kinds of connections. Sometimes a connection may occur on the basis of an interest; sometimes it may be more emotional, or anywhere on a scale between the two. In that connection is an initial understanding of the potential power of primary sources. This is what we hope to communicate, especially to students who have not previously had the opportunity to work with these kinds of materials, for example, letters, diaries, journals, correspondence of all kinds, family papers, even legal and business records.
Some instances do depend on luck, as is the case with the two examples above. The right person choosing the right document, though even having one classmate describe a document meaningful to another can have the same effect. Who knows which student will be stirred by the first commercial announcement for the new Lime Jell-o (1930, for all of you who care) or by a police blotter from the Bowery district of New York in 1861. I am still absolutely wowed by a 27 July 1969, post-Apollo 11 letter from Charles Lindbergh to astronaut Michael Collins!
Then, there are some documents that, hopefully, have a wider impact.
Take a look at this document. Don’t even read it. Just look at it. (Click on each image to get a closer look.)
Letter from Elizabeth Carver to Edgar Knapp, 28 January 1863, page 1
Letter from Elizabeth Carver to Edgar Knapp, 28 January 1863, pages 2-3
What do you see? It’s a letter, yes. Is it just me, or isn’t it beautiful to look at? The handwriting is gorgeous. Even if you’re not used to reading cursive writing, it’s clear and easy to read. The paper is accented with a red rule on the top of the first page and blue one down the side of that page. Maybe you couldn’t help but notice the date, January 28, 1863; the location, Philadelphia; or the formal salutation, “Dear Sir.” Now read that first line:
I have just received through your kindness the painfull intelligence of my son’s death.
The beauty of the letter as an object and the foreign quality of the language in that first sentence anticipate the power of its meaning, which comes that much more powerfully precisely because of those two prior elements. The son of Isaac and Elizabeth Carver (she wrote the letter) has died. He’s not named and the circumstances of his death are not specified, though the date and place provide likely clues to both. Charles Carver, 19 years old in 1860 and, in 1862, a private in G Company, 121st Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry, was wounded at Fredericksburg and died some five weeks later. Like so many documents, this letter raises more questions than it answers and invites the reader to discover its stories while delivering an emotional blow that all can understand.
Bill of Sale for a slave named Elijah, 12 years old, 27 September 1796
Written some sixty-six years earlier is another document I often use in the classroom.
Here the writing is more difficult, as is the language. The date may be the first thing to jump out at a reader, in part because it comes before a line break and, thus, stands out a bit more: 27 September 1796. Here, part of the power lies, first, not in the document’s uniqueness, but in its ubiquity, for its day. In 18th-century America and the first half of the 19th, this kind of document was exceedingly common.
Know all men by these presents that I John Edwards of Rockbridge County with my security John Dunlap & William Johnson of Greenbrier County am held and firmly bound unto Joseph Dickson in the just sum of one hundred ten pounds current money of Virginia to be paid to sd [said] Dickson by sd Edwards or security in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands & seals this 27th day of September 1796.
The language will sound strange to folks not used to it, but it is, likely, recognizable as legal language. John Edwards is paying Joseph Dickson £110 for something. Of course, the something, in this case, someone, becomes clear in the second paragraph, “a Negro boy named Elijah.”
The ubiquity of this kind of document, a bill of sale for a slave, in the Virginia of 1796 is tied fast to the fate of a specific individual, in this case, the young Elijah. Both characteristics of the document are contained in this single sheet that represents the sale of one human being to another. A note on the reverse of the document tells us that Elijah is 12 years old and weighs 77 pounds. I suggest, if you let yourself realize it, there is great power in this document, precisely both in the commonness of its form and in the specificity of its effect.
In these materials are the potential power of primary source documents that we, as archivists, wish to communicate and share. Of course, these documents are each just one out of a larger collection of materials. Also, recognizing the power of primary sources is just the beginning, not an end in itself. But for students who haven’t had the opportunity to work with materials like these, it’s an important element of starting out. It’s the introduction with a bang, the “wow” that we hope to make possible! Any document is just a piece of a story, a part of a thread of a research question or an element that fills out one’s own interest.
A First-Year Experience History class working on transcriptions of the Joseph F. Ware letters
Story is, I think, part of what drove Trudy Harrington Becker’s First-Year Experience History class (HIST1004) in it’s effort to transcribe the letters of Joseph F. Ware this past fall. With nearly 50 students tasked to work with 100-year-old letters written in a cursive script that was often not easy to read, I was first amazed and then very impressed by the determination, excitement, and downright fervor they brought to the assignment. My first thought was to have folks work in small groups, each with a single letter. No, no, every student would get a letter to work on! There are, after all, more than 100 letters in the collection. As two colleagues and I hustled around from table to table, helping folks who were stuck on this word or that phrase, it was clear that everyone was ENGAGED! Folks who finished their first letters were asking for more! A second session with the class turned into a third.
At first, the desire to simply read and make sense of an initial letter seemed to provide more than enough motivation. The students knew only a few general facts about Ware. He had been Commandant to the VPI Corp of Cadets from 1911 to 1914 before resuming his Regular Army commission prior to American involvement in World War I. They began with his wartime letters from France written to his wife, Susie, in Blacksburg. Then, there were the letters home from training sites and other posts prior to his departure for France, along with a few post-war letters. Fifty students in a room all transcribing letters that each tell part of a story led to what became an irresistible incentive to know the full story, to know what happened. There were long separations between husband and wife, wartime wounds, and a young son, among other facts to consider. Students were no longer talking as much to their classmates about this or that word, but asking, “What happened in Paris?” or “Did Ware return to Blacksburg?” The outlines of the story needed to be filled in.
If Ware’s letters provided the impetus to learn of his larger story, they also supplied the gateway to a range of inquiries into broader historical themes taken up by the class. At the end of their semester, these students presented the results of their work in a series of digital posters in an exhibit open to the public. Drawn from Ware’s own texts, they highlight, for example, not only Ware’s personal story and the toll the war took on him and his family, but also, for example, the American conduct of the war and the nation’s attitudes toward the war and its leaders.
Exhibit by members of Trudy Harrington Becker’s HIST1004 FYE class, 12 December 2017, Multipurpose Room, Newman Library
One of several digital posters by members of HIST1004 on the Letters of Joseph F. Ware, on exhibit, 12 December 2018
One of several digital posters by members of HIST1004 on the Letters of Joseph F. Ware, on exhibit, 12 December 2018
Exhibit by members of Trudy Harrington Becker’s HIST1004 FYE class, 12 December 2017, Multipurpose Room, Newman Library
One of several digital posters by members of HIST1004 on the Letters of Joseph F. Ware, on exhibit, 12 December 2018
Here, then, is an example of the power of primary sources to fire the imagination and propel further inquiry. At its heart, this is what we want to instill in students. This is the experience we want to provide. The project of any archival repository is not to just preserve history, but to preserve its materiality in order to provide it to following generations for further use. Though obvious to any archivist or historian, this simple point is not necessarily clear to a student—or anyone—who has not yet experienced the archives or had any reason to consider the question.
Of course, students aren’t the only folks who get to recognize the excitement of discovering the possibilities embedded in an archival collection. To bring this long post to a close, I’ll mention one last story, mostly because it shows how the activities of the “Special Collections classroom” and exposure to the power and value of primary sources can truly be preparation for future scholarly endeavor.
Back in May 2014, we received an email from a scholar who wanted to do work at Special Collections with a focus on “Confederate prisoners of war and their intellectual engagement while in prison.” He said it was “part of a larger project on intellectual life in the Confederacy and post-Reconstruction South.” (I didn’t know it at the time, but he was already about to publish a book titled, Intellectual Manhood: University, Self, and Society in the Antebellum South (published by UNC Press, 2015.) On a list of 14 collections he wanted to see, the Nelson Family Papers were dead last.
Prison Pens: Gender, Memory, and Imprisonment in the Writings of Mollie Scollay and Wash Nelson, 18631866 Edited by Timothy J. Williams and Evan A. Kutzler, University of Georgia Press, 2018
A few days ago, we received a copy of Prison Pens
Gender, Memory, and Imprisonment in the Writings of Mollie Scollay and Wash Nelson, 18631866, edited by Timothy J. Williams and Evan A. Kutzler. Tim Williams came here in 2014 with a broad research agenda and found a collection that spurred his interest, I dare say his passion. A correspondence of fifty-five letters, untranscribed, written between “Wash” Nelson and Mollie Scollay from 1863 to 1865 were a part of the Nelson Family collection. Once the collection had been identified, Tim and his co-editor did, essentially, what the students in HIST1004 did, though at the level of professional scholarship. They transcribed the letters. They sought the story of the correspondents and presented research into the themes in which, as context, they wished to place both the writers and the letters themselves. Then . . . with the help of the University of Georgia Press . . . they did take an extra step. They published the book.
The “Wash” Nelson and Mollie Scollay correspondence can be read in the new book by Williams and Kutzler. Digital copies of the letters and the rest of the Nelson Family Papers can be viewed on Special Collections Online. These materials are now broadly available to inform, encourage, and stimulate new research.
The originals remain housed in Special Collections with all the other primary source materials—preserved, available, and powerful.
Cato Lee: Pioneer of the Lee-aphon Clan by Gigi Lee-aphon tells the fascinating stories of Cato Lee, one of the early Chinese students at Virginia Tech, and the members of his family. Written by Cato Lees daughter, Gigi, the ninth of his ten children, the book gives insights into the challenges faced by family members as they confronted Chinese, American, and Thai cultures. The author uses family stories to give the reader a better understanding of the life of Cato Lee. The book was published by Lotus Seed Press in 2017.
Cover of Cato Lee Pioneer of the Lee-aphon Clan with image of Cato Lee and his bride Kim ReiwBack cover of Cato Lee Pioneer includes image of the author, Gigi Lee-aphon
Cato Lee, who graduated in 1927 in Mechanical Engineering, was one of the first six Chinese students at Virginia Tech. The University Archives’ site, “First International Students at Virginia Tech,” lists the first and early international students by year and country: http://spec.lib.vt.edu/archives/diversity/InternationalVPI/
Born Lee Kee Tow in Bangkok, Thailand in 1904, Cato Lee was the son of Lee Tek Khoeia, a Chinese immigrant and merchant from Canton, and Noei Lamson, the youngest child of one of the most prominent families in Thailand. Because his father was a playboy, Cato was raised in unusual circumstances in Canton, China from the time he was four. When he was fourteen, his father enrolled him in an English/Chinese school in Hong Kong. He became a British subject while he was in Hong Kong, a status that his father already had. The British passport made it easier for him to travel to the United States.
When Cato was 17, his close friend from Hong Kong, Tien-Liang Jeu talked him into going to study in the United States. Tien-Liang already had visited the United States and enrolled at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. The two young men made the arduous journey by ship from Hong Kong to Vancouver and then traveled by train across the United States to New York City. Since he did not have much money, Cato waited on tables at a small restaurant before he enrolled in school. Because he was younger than Tien-Lang Jeu, who entered Virginia Tech (then called Virginia Polytechnic Institute or V.P.I.) in 1921, Cato first attended and graduated from Fork Union Military Academy a military high school for cadets in Fork Union, Virginia.
Tien-Liang Jeu’s page in the 1924 Bugle (p. 61)
Tien-Liang, whose nickname at V.P.I. was Ting Ling, earned a degree in electrical engineering. According to his Bugle page, his highest ambition is to turn the wild and destructive forces of the mighty Yangtse and Yellow Rivers into power that will illuminate all China. (1924 Bugle, p. 61)
Cato Lee’s Senior Page in the 1927 Bugle, p. 183.
Cato Lee entered V.P.I. in 1923 and earned a degree in mechanical engineering in 1927. He played on the varsity track and tennis teams and belonged to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Lee Literary Society. His Bugle page (1927, p. 183) includes a quote from Kipling:
But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho they have come from the ends of the earth.
The commentary on his Bugle page indicates that Lee was not only a student but also taught his fellow cadets by “showing us that the gentleman of the East is not different from the gentleman of the West.”
Image of V.P.I. members of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. 1927 Bugle, p. 352.Detail from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers group photo showing Cato Lee.
Virginia Tech was very important to Cato Lee. Gigi Lee-aphon wrote in an email that she learned to say the word bugle at a very young age, not knowing it was an English word. Her fathers cadet uniform, sword, and sash were neatly hung on a stand in a corner of his bedroom for many years. I could admire it, she said, but better not touch it.
The image on the books cover shows Cato Lee and his bride, Kim Reiw, the daughter of a Chinese businessman. They only met because he stopped off in Thailand to visit his Thai mother on his way back to China. The couple married soon after they met and lived in Bangkok. Kim Reiw is wearing the wedding dress her parents ordered from Hong Kong. The book describes the couple’s glamorous wedding at one of the royal palaces in Bangkok where they both wore traditional Thai garments. They were known as the Romeo and Juliet of Thailand.
Like all archives, Special Collections at Virginia Tech holds a rich store of fascinating stories. One of these is the John Henning Woods Papers, a collection of six diaries and memoirs by a Confederate conscript who created an underground Unionist society in a Confederate regiment during the Civil War. A Southerner by birth and education who was opposed to slavery and secession, Woods was conscripted into the 36th Alabama Infantry Regiment of the army in 1862. While in the army, he was caught, tried, and charged for an attempt to organize a mutiny. His resulting execution was delayed until Jefferson Davis finally pardoned him and he was assigned to build trenches around Atlanta. Woods finally escaped and made it to the Union lines in late August of 1864, enlisting as a clerk in the 93rd New York Infantry in September of 1864. His story is fascinating and can be found in full here; however, it is not the main focus of this blog post. Outside of providing new insights into the Civil War and the experience of Unionists of the Confederate South, Woods collections of memoirs and diaries also provide a first-hand look into the behind-the-scenes processing practices and obstacles that arise in making archival collections accessible to researchers.
Youve likely seen, and perhaps even used, a digital collection of archival material. Such collections can be quite expansive, containing a transcript, a scan of the archival material itself, and maybe even some contextual information, such as footnotes or suggested readings. Ultimately, the goal of making and publicizing digital collections is increased accessibility so that you can view it while in your pajamas from your living room at two in the morning. This was the goal for the John Henning Woods Papers; their unique value as a source written by a Unionist Southerner who hated slavery made it a prime collection for digitization. Thankfully, the process of scanning was done by the digitization department, decreasing the amount of work I personally had to do. However, like with all digitization projects, there were a number of issues that arose throughout this process. Woods papers became the prime example of the difficulty of this process, raising the usual, but also some new and unusual, obstacles to digitization.
The usual first step in digitizing a collection is to create a transcription so that
This example demonstrates the method of writing via cross-hatching that was used to save paper, ink, and postage.
researchers dont have to attempt to read old handwriting. Even the neatest handwriting still contains issues such as slanting lines, uncrossed ts or undotted is, crossed out words, or words that are crammed into spaces that are too small the potential reasons for illegibility are endless. Some of the more unique letters, particularly from the Civil War era when paper was expensive and even scarce, contain examples of cross-hatching as seen here, where sentences were written on top of and perpendicular to more text. While daunting at first, reading cross-hatched lettering is simply a matter of focusing your eyes and
This page from Woods’ journal shows where he rewrote a section of text over top of a previous draft.
perhaps tilting your head. Some sections of John Henning Woods journals put such relatively decipherable space-saving methods to shame, however. Unlike cross-hatching where the 90 degree turn of the paper allows for distinction between the sentences, Woods simply wrote over top of his own writing, which you see to the left. To make it worse, the two transcriptions are almost identical with a few key differences that make transcription necessary yet almost impossible. Ultimately, transcription had to be done with a magnifying lamp that exaggerated the slight difference between the two inks Woods used. You can see this digitized page and (eventually) the corresponding transcriptions here.
Outside of writing over top of himself, two of Woods handwritten journals also hadanother quirk: in some places, he switched over to another alphabet altogether.
This largest section of Pitman found in any of Woods’ journals has been a serious translation challenge.
These instances of strange lettering were written in Pitman Shorthand, an antiquated version of shorthand that used shapes to denote sounds with which to spell words phonetically. While resources do still exist that provide basic information on how to write and read Pitman, the writing systems rules contain a wide range of exceptions and shortcuts that are far more difficult to learn. Woods shorthand contains its own quirks, as well, as he used his own shortened symbols to represent common words, making it impossible to translate some sections with certainty.
Despite the difficulty, these sections are particularly important to translate because of what they contain. Success in translating the majority of Pitman within the journals has shown that Woods used the writing system largely to write about sensitive subjects. In his daily journal from 1861, Woods used Pitman to write about his success in stopping a duel, an act that would have frowned upon in the honor-based culture of the Old South. Another section of shorthand in his journal describes his former love for the local preachers daughter that faded after she fell from grace. While certainly unique, these notes that Woods attempted to hide are invaluable because they provide clear insight into Woods character, as well as his view of the world around him.
Woods’ formatting doesn’t always translate into neat code. See Woods’ original on the right, the code input on the top left, and resulting transcript on the bottom left.
Following the process of transcription, the collection and its accompanying transcriptions and translations had to be put online, which is our current project. Along with scanning individual diary pages and providing accompanying transcriptions, accessibility requires footnotes to contextualize the people, events, or terms used in the journals. These footnotes and matching transcriptions then needed to be translated into HTML code to be used by Omeka, our online exhibit software. While this was a fairly easy process, my determination to keep Woods formatting made some of the pages difficult, an example of which can be seen above, where the HTML code can be seen in the top left, resulting text in the bottom left, and corresponding page scan to the right.
Regardless of all the difficulties of this process, however, I will miss working on this collection once it is successfully turned into an online exhibit. While I have plenty that I could work on once I say goodbye to John Henning Woods, I feel at this point that I know him. After all, I have spent a year reading his writing, deciphering his handwriting, and translating his deepest secrets out of shorthand. Its hard to forget that I was most likely the first person to read those sections since he wrote them 150 years ago. As a part of researching this collection, Ive also found the location of his grave and researched to see whether he has any living relatives; unfortunately, the closest I could find was a grandniece who recently passed in 2017. Because of my familiarity with this collection, I know his deepest wish was to be known for the sacrifices he made for his country. It may be a little late, but I do hope that this post and the online exhibit we create can make a little headway towards that goal. I know I at least will be visiting his grave even if just to say thank you.
Once the online exhibit has been completed, it will be available here. Until then, come to Special Collections to see the John Henning Woods Papers, Ms2017-030.
As archivists we look at objects all the time, putting them into protective folders, filing them into map cases and boxes, labeling them to provide context and preserve their order. We repair, we structure, we help people gain access, and we promote their existence at every turn. We take the often ordinary and treat it like a priceless itemand usually believe that to be true because of the significance documents and drawings, especially en masse, can hold in building greater understanding.
As long as you have a writing utensil at all times, the world will provide a canvas. Sketches on napkins from the Susana Torre Architectural Collection.
As long as you have a writing utensil at all times, the world will provide a canvas. Sketches on napkins from the Susana Torre Architectural Collection.
As long as you have a writing utensil at all times, the world will provide a canvas. Sketches on napkins from the Susana Torre Architectural Collection.
We also put items safely away to protect them from all kinds of harmair, light, insects, dirt, fingers. We worry about the fragility, though often those documents had a rougher life before they came into our care. Architectural plans that survived tough jobsite conditions, napkins that served as a quick drawing slatethings that in general had a life out in the world all come to mind.
As a profession we have always been working to balance care and access, to promote use and find ways to share materials that transcend geographical locations or more mundane barriers such as reading room hours. We digitize in order to share, and we look for ways to improve our efficiency, quality, and process so that we can share more. With that goal in mind, we have been testing a new camera this week to make shooting large format drawings faster and easier. The beauty of technical details aside, it allows for great image quality at incredible speed and it has allowed us to quickly work through a large volume of oversized work from the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA).
To that end, we are getting things out of the map cases and into the light.
The first thing I did when I started my very first desk shift in Special Collections was grab a mid-1980s copy of The Bugle from the shelf by the door, where you can find almost every copy that was ever published.
My mission — like that of many other visitors to this same shelf — was to find pictures of my parents, who met at Virginia Tech. My mom, then Vicki Higginbotham the engineering, baton-twirling majorette, worked at a Hallmark store in the University Mall with my dads sister, Dori Williams, who kept insisting that Vicki simply had tomeet her younger brother, who was on the basketball team. Vicki Higginbotham and Philip Williams had their first date on December 26, 1983, a fact that my brother and I are always reminded of during the car ride back from our annual Christmas visit with our grandparents (oh, its the nth anniversary of our first date!). We pretend that its gross that they remember this and systematically mention it every year, but its not. Theyre lucky to still be so in love after all this time, and my brother and I are even luckier to be a part of it.
1986 yearbook photo of Mom.
I found my parents’ pictures in the yearbooks, as expected, but I got a special thrillfromthe action shots of my dad on the basketball court. He played during the yearsfrom 1983 to 1987, when Dell Curry was the talk of the town, the players shorts woulddismally fail our modern-day public-school index-card tests, and all-white Converse All-Stars were still considered acceptable and safe sports footwear. At six-foot-six, Dad, in most of these shots, looks like he barely had to jump to get his hands above the rim for a rebound; in fact, a 1985 yearbook writer asserted that he, as a sophomore, demonstrated the teams best fundamental rebounding technique. In many of the pictures, any given number of his fingers are taped together; perpetually broken or jammed. We have a couple of these photos at home, on the fridge and framed in my brothers childhood bedroom.
1987 yearbook photo of Dad, the only senior on that year’s squad.
Most of my work here in Special Collections over the past two-and-a-half years has involved projects on either side of the timeline around the 1980s. Ive spent a good deal of time transcribing and digitizing letters from the Civil War, World War I, and the years in between. I also spent some months working on an exhibit for the anniversary of the April 16th, 2007 tragedy. A Womens History Month exhibit in the library inspired me to contribute information on the lives and work of female science fiction writers from the late 1800s to the 1940s and 1950s. Somehow, most of my archives work has neatly danced around my parents time at Virginia Tech, and I never really got into the era of big hair and Benatar in Blacksburg through my projects.
That is, until I started re-labelling the University Archives room.
Working in an archive pays off for me personally because I know that all of the preservation and conservation work being done here will pay off in the long run. For example, we have boxes upon boxes of wartime letters that are still in good shape after a century and a half and, not only that, we allow anyone to come in and hold, read, and examine them with their own two hands. If you think about it, its a lot of the same stuff youd find in a museum without the DO NOT TOUCH signs. The people who work here make this happen through a meticulous system of steps and protocol that impose order on the collections and allow us to provide this experience for patrons. Some of these steps are more tedious and less thrilling than others, but all of them are equally important in keeping our system up and running. One of my current assignments is to assist in the reorganization of the record groups (RGs) in the University Archives, which requires moving a lot of boxes around which requires that every box is labelled accurately and legibly. Most of the boxes are labelled, but the labels are either decades old, written in pencil, or both. My job is to check the contents of each box and replace each label with a more up-to-date and legible label so the boxes can be rearranged. As it turned out, this routine process turned up one of my favorite discoveries in all my time at Special Collections.
In the sports section of the University Archives, I found a box labelled simply Basketball Programs. My first thought was huh, Dad did that. I opened the box to check what the date range on the programs was so that I could create a more descriptive label and, lo and behold, the programs were from 1984 through 1986.
As I had been going through these boxes, Id been taking the time to examine the contents partly out of necessity and partly out of curiosity. This time, Id easily located the date range that I needed to include on the label, but I took the box and sat down in the middle of the aisle on the footstool Id been using so I could look through the programs. Dad in his #34 jersey was on the cover of two of them — one by himself, taking a jump shot, and the other with Dell Curry, the Cassell Coliseum-banner legend whose son Steph we now see in every other commercial on ESPN.
Dad on the left, Dell Curry on the right (both mid-leap).
The programs not only brought back my memories of attending games and matching the players below on the floor with their stats which I held in my head, it also brought back the entertaining and often hilarious stories that Dad always told about his basketball days. My most recent memory of this comes from a morning during Thanksgiving weekend, when I sat with my family and some of our close friends around my grandfathers table, trying desperately not to choke on our breakfast from laughter as my dad told the story of the time he accidentally dislocated Dells shoulder, the remainder of practice was cancelled, and it was as if the whole world of sports had abruptly ended. Id see the the names on the roster and recall the stories Id heard that went with each name — big moments in big games, hijinks that went on in the after-hours at away games, and the individual quirks and camaraderie among and between teammates. I picked up these programs and proceeded to walk around the entirety of Special Collections, stopping into offices and tugging on sleeves of coworkers to show them what Id found.
This was a very specific and personal instance of discovery in Special Collections for me, but I know that this has happened at least once for each of us working here, and even for patrons who come in out of curiosity and walk out with a new research project in mind. I showed the programs to one of our full-time archivists, and she revealed that a bookseller who had arrived that morning happened to have a copy of her mothers book in his collection. Even when Im working in unfamiliar collections, I find that Im surprised by the connections I can make based on my own experiences and the relationships that I form with people who are long gone. Thats the joy of working in Special Collections: even the most rudimentary tasks have the potential to lead to the greatest discoveries.
In the arts, one may find peace and contentment, for we may use our ability to transform our inner energy in a satisfying manner.
Melita Rodeck, AIA
Melita Rodeck, Consolata Missions Seminary, 1959.
Architect Melita Rodeck established the Regina Institute of Sacred Art in the late 1950sshortly after forming her own architectural firmwith the purpose of bringing together design professions to help establish a set of standards for the quality of sacred art. A large part of the organizational mission involved educat[ing] parishioners about the psychological need and emotional impact of good design. The institute also helped parishes to realize the significance of these ideas by participating in their efforts to redesign and redecorate religious spaces. (IAWA newsletter, no. 8, Fall 1996)
Melita Rodeck’s proposed sanctuary design for the Holy Comforter Church includes clean lines and minimal forms for the space and the furnishings that are both beautiful and functional.
Perhaps more significantly, one can look at Rodecks work with religious architectural spaces within the context of a much longer history dealing with what sacred art, architecture, and design should be expected to accomplish. Of particular relevance is the history of Catholic artistic engagement, with its strong implications that a sense of sacred beauty was essential to the message of eternal life and divine bliss. (Saward, John. “The Poverty of the Church and the Beauty of the Liturgy.” The Institute for Sacred Architecture 31 (Spring 2017).) This same notion is supported in the work of the Second Vatican Council, which dealt at length with religious art in the 1963 Sacrosanctum Concilium. Among the many doctrinal concepts outlined in this document were notions such as of their nature the arts are directed toward expressing in some way the infinite beauty of God in works made by human hands. The document further directed that such arts should seek for noble beauty rather than sumptuous display. (“Chapter VII: Sacred Art and Sacred Furnishings.” In Sacrosanctum Concilium. Second Vatican Council, 1963.)
Melita Rodeck, Church Interior, Conceptual sketch
The Sacrosanctum Concilium further specifies that art can and should be reflective of the times and acknowledges that all manners of artistic styles have been embraced throughout the history of the Catholic church. This bears heavily on Rodecks approach to architectural design in these spaces, which is extensively modernist in its execution and carefully uses light, form, color, and scale to shape the experience within the space.
This reflects a modernist sensibility of human-space interactions, moving away from a dependence on highly narrative interpretations of religious interiors in favor of evoking emotional responses to elements of the built environment. This approach also reflects a concern with religious harmony, and a tendency to encourage slightly decentralized expressions of devotion through the acts of meditation and contemplation, which are not necessarily rooted in any particular religious tradition. This is the emotional impact of good design that Rodeck spoke aboutit has the power to elicit a palpable and immersive connection, to invite parishioners to examine their own relationships with the mysterious, the sacred, the divine, and the spiritual.
In The Role of Religious Art Over 50 Years: An Assessment, James Hadley concludesthat “the power of religious arts of the past 50 years has been their capacity to invite us to gaze more intently into the fragment, the incomplete reality we feel has seized us, and there begin to perceive the possibility of human psycho-spiritual and physical wholeness restored in the divine. (Hadley, James. Faith & Form: The Interfaith Journal on Religion, Art, and Architecture 50, no. 3 (September 1, 2017).) This sentiment is certainly reflected in Rodecks approach to creating spaces that are beautiful and minimal, that in their simplicity encourage meditation, connection, and reflection, and that arecapable of stirring profoundly complex experiences.
Melita Rodeck, Various architectural and design projects for religious institutions
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Melita Rodeck, Proposed Modernization of Chapel, Claretian House of Studies, 1967
Robert L. Hughes from Asheville, North Carolina recently gave the University Archives a drum majors mace that was among the things his father, Ralph Edwards Hughes, kept from his time at Virginia Tech (then commonly called Virginia Polytechnic Institute or V.P.I.). Ralph Hughes, an Electrical Engineering major, was from Ore Bank (now Arvonia), Virginia. Robert Hughes explained that the mace actually belonged to his fathers roommate and close, lifetime friend, Sherman Edmond Seelinger, who was a cheer leader. Both Hughes and Seelinger, an Animal Husbandry major, graduated in 1921.
Sherman Edward Seelinger, Class of 1921, with Megaphone
The mace appears to be made of wood, with a hand-turned top and four Chicago maroon and burnt orange ribbons wrapped around the shaft making diamond-shaped pattern . It is about three feet long and was probably handmade.
Cartoon from Seelinger’s 1921 Bugle Page
The cartoon on Seelingers senior Bugle page indicates how important being a cheer leader was to him. Known for his pep, he took a very active part in the promotion of school spirit and in the advancement of athletics and other college activities. He was a member of the Athletic Council and Monogram Club, and he served as manager of the baseball team. According to the 1921 Bugle, Manager Seelinger has arranged one of the best schedules ever attempted by any Tech team, and we wish to congratulate him upon his efforts. W. L. Monk Younger coached the baseball team and was assistant coach for the football team.
Sherman Seelinger, 1921
Seelinger had a reputation for being the best dancer in the school. He served as Leader of the Cotillion Club. The opening figure on both nights of the Cotillion Clubs 1921 Easter set of dances was led by Cadet Seelinger dancing with Miss Geneva Edmundson of Radford. The dances were held at the Field House, which was decorated with a large green and yellow interwoven canopy suspended over the center of the floor, from which was strung alternating green and yellow streamers reaching out to the pillars at the sides of the hall. The All Star Six, of Altoona, Pennsylvania provided the music.
Source: Harry Downing Temple, The Bugles Echo, vol. 4, pp. 2506-2507.
![World War II rationing program materials [inset: OPA Red Point]](https://i0.wp.com/scuablog.lib.vt.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/rationingandredpoint.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1)
Like all archives, Special Collections at Virginia Tech holds a rich store of fascinating stories. One of these is the 
