In Washington, it's easy to fall under the illusion that the grand shrines of our nation's government and history have been there pretty much since Day One.
But this landscape does change, and once in a while we're reminded of how these splendid structures and institutions were conceived and built. For instance, an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art depicts its construction during the late 1930s. And as the Gallery's neighbor across Constitution Avenue, another magnificent edifice arose in the early part of that eventful decade.
The National Archives Building is best known today as the place where the country's foundational documents - the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights - are displayed, as they have been with suitable pomp since 1952. It also is the headquarters of the National Archives & Records Administration, the agency that maintains the ultimate chronicle of our government's actions.
A face familiar to some in the Triangle recently took the agency's helm. David S. Ferriero was confirmed by the Senate as the tenth person to hold the title of Archivist of the United States. He had been director of research libraries for the New York Public Library, and before that, from 1996 to 2004, university librarian at Duke. His wife, Gail Zimmermann, has remained in North Carolina as associate general manager at UNC-TV.
Ferriero, a 63-year Massachusetts native who served as a Navy corpsman with the Marines in Vietnam, takes over the Archives at a time when issues of preservation and access to public information have been complicated enormously by the advances of the digital age. The tension between adequate security and ready access is another abiding issue for his agency, which also operates the network of presidential libraries.
But it's probably fair to say that Ferriero's challenges are modest compared with those that faced a predecessor who not only had North Carolina ties but also had deep Tar Heel roots.
If you're familiar with the name of Robert Digges Wimberly Connor, it might be because you're from his home city of Wilson and you often happen by his historical marker downtown. The marker recognizes the site of R.D.W. Connor's birth and salutes him as "First Archivist of the U.S., 1934-41. Secretary of the N.C. Historical Commission, historian, author, and teacher." So it was Connor who had the formidable task of getting the National Archives up and running.
All the while, the man who chose Connor for the post, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, must have been virtually breathing down his neck. Bringing order and safety to the storage of the nation's vast collection of official records was a top Roosevelt priority, and he pushed through legislation creating the agency that Connor would head.
In language that has been a part of the Connor legacy ever since he went to Washington in 1934, Time magazine described him as a "shy, heavyset, golfing, poker-playing pedagog." He may have been any or all of those things, but what's certain is that he was a major player at the crossroads of North Carolina academics and politics.
Connor's father was a well-known politician who became speaker of the state House. After Connor graduated from UNC in 1899, he went into teaching until Gov. Charles B. Aycock tapped him to serve on the state Historical Commission. He became the commission's first paid secretary and oversaw the formation of what is today the state Division of Archives and History.
After 14 years with the commission, he accepted a Kenan professorship at UNC in history and government (historian H.G. Jones has profiled Connor in the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, from which these details are drawn). On campus he was a popular figure, known for his well-crafted lectures and his wit. But when the national archivist post opened up, the American Historical Association lobbied FDR to choose him, and in July of 1934, he accepted the president's offer.
There would be no surprise if Connor's older contemporary and fellow native Wilsonian, The N&O's Josephus Daniels, helped vet the Connor nomination, given Daniels' close ties to FDR.
Connor found the national filing cabinet, such as it was, in woeful shape. He famously described the bug infestations, papers jammed onto "dust-covered shelves mingled higgledy-piggledy with empty whiskey bottles, pieces of soap, rags, and other trash," and the room where the most prominent object was "the skull of a dead cat protruding from under a pile of valuable records."
But from that chaos, Connor fashioned a records storehouse that could do justice to this country's history and the principle that our leaders must not be permitted to cover the tracks of their actions and decisions.
Archivists ever since have been responsible for fighting that good fight. As David Ferriero told his new staff earlier this month, "We are all stewards of the work begun by Robert Connor."
As that work goes forward, there on Constitution Avenue and at the Archives' other sites, Americans are empowered by knowledge of their shared past.
