Installation Ceremonies
As the years passed, the chief activity of the Hall of Fame, in addition to elections, was the ceremonials for unveiling either bronze tablets of the elected or their finished sculptures.
The ceremonies usually followed the pattern that was set on Dedication Day: processions, speeches, music, unveiling. The fewer the number of new members being admitted, the shorter, simpler and more focused the program. The logistics were difficult and the service of installation sometimes heavy going, even confusing, in direct proportion to the number installed. In the Boston Evening Transcript, Katharine Lee Bates, Wellesley professor, poet and author of America the Beautiful, led the reader through on exhausting ceremony, the third unveiling of tablets, held on May 21, 1921. She called the piece, “The Yankee Valhalla.”
First a morning business meeting of the electors. Then New York University gave a luncheon on the uptown campus, at Stevenson Hall, for electors, unveilers and other guests. Chancellor Elmer Brown introduced toastmaster Finley Shepard, husband of Helen Gould. After luncheon, speakers Mabel Thorpe Boardman of the American Red Cross, pathologist William Henry Welch, diplomat-author Maurice Francis Egan, all of whom, “dimly discerned through cigar smoke, enlivened an hour innocent even of grape juice.” About three o’clock, they all “trooped over to the auditorium of the Gould Memorial Library, already crowded with bewildered members of the twenty-six groups invited to take part in the unveiling of the twenty-six tablets. Some of the groups numbered as many as 20-30 persons.”
Somehow, in spite of apparent confusion, they were lined up properly, and by 3:30 began their march through the Colonnade (a little more than ten feet wide), where the band had finally met them.
As the procession necessarily moved through he colonnade in a long and narrow line, it was impossible to observe anything except the doings of one’s own group, but since all groups had been given brief stereotyped addresses to read, the account read before one tablet was essentially the account read before all. The unveiling of each tablet was preceded by a blast of trumpets.
Behind the representatives of the participating societies streamed “. . . delegates of military organizations, university professors, student. But of these we were no more aware than we were of our own far away leaders up front.” In short, few groups saw
more than one unveiling. They heard trumpets and indistinct voices. In such manner were the greats of the day declared immortal.
The installation ceremonies for one or two persons were marked by simplicity, dignity and much less crowding.