Whew! It is finally done! Far outstripping our last “large collection” (the Willard Wichers papers), the Guy A. Vander Jagt Congressional Papers opened to the public on November 16.
The
opening of these papers was the culmination of seven years of work on a collection
with local, regional, and national significance. The former Congressman rubbed
elbows with many well-known figures and was influential in a wide variety of
circles. Not only will he be remembered for this, but his papers will be sought
out by students and scholars interested in the American political scene from
the mid 1960s to the beginning of the Clinton years.
There are many people to thank in such a project, going back to Hope students David Evenhuis and Ryan Kreider who spent the summer of 1993 working to complete our first inventory of the collection. Back then it was a daunting mass of material that arrived mostly by semi-truck and came in at over 725 boxes (and over 1,000 linear feet)! It clearly was not going to be an easy project. Former Collections Archivist Jenifer Holman led our early efforts to gain an understanding of what this collection included.
All too often large and significant collections like this are left to languish for decades. We were committed not to allow that to happen. We knew our first task was to do a rough inventory to give us a good idea of what we had and where to start. The next step was to find the funds to make this project happen.
Congressman
Vander Jagt’s former chief of staff, the late James Sparling, helped us
in this regard. Numerous friends of Mr. Vander Jagt contributed to the effort
to process these papers in 1996 and 1997. This set the stage for us to hire
our first graduate student summer intern, Helen Baer, in the summer of 1998.
Two additional interns, Christina Schmidt and Sallie Garrett in 1999 and 2000
respectively, followed.
Each of these trained archivists (two from the University of Texas and one from the University of Michigan) did an excellent job. Before the second intern had completed her work, we had committed to opening the papers in November, 2000. Little did we know that the race to the finish in the last two months would be such a challenge. Writing the detailed collection register (inventory), finishing the last 17 boxes, and numerous “clean-up” activities to make it ready for the public, challenged us. Hats off to Collections Archivist Geoffrey Reynolds and our secretary Lori Trethewey for their intense work during the last months running up to the opening.
We also benefited from the diligent help of our student staff, Allyson Boggess, Alicia Irvine, Gregoor Passchier and Abby Platt, and Joint Archives volunteers Russ Norden, Bill Van Dyke, and Lee Witteveen.