Winds of Influence
We promote those in our own circle, whatever its radius. Fame sometimes begins quietly, locally, in lodge, school, neighborhood, town; sometimes quickly and widely in the media. For actor Edwin Booth it began when he first stepped on the stage. It was advanced dramatically by his fellow artists in a full-page spread in the New York Herald Tribune on July 18, 1920. The story was written by Randolph Somerville, of the Department of Dramatic Arts, Washington Square College, NYU.
Actress Julia Marlow, placing her signature first on the statement urging the candidacy of Booth, said, “If the Hall of Fame wants to be a famous institution let it inscribe the name of Edwin Booth on one of its bronze tablets; it can add nothing to his fame.” The signers included many of the great names of the acting world: Henry Miller, George M. Cohan, Walter Hampden, George Arliss, Fay Bainter, Lee Shubert and Sam Harris. It went without saying that the very name of his more famous brother, actor John Wilkes Booth, could do nothing but add to Edwin’s fame . . . a plot, and it worked.
— In the 1960 election of Thoreau, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, was also on the ballot, yet lost out with a substantial 44 votes. His backers, under the direction of Miss Desiree Franklin, an elderly southern lady of spirit and determination tried again in 1965 to convince the nation that Davis was not only famous, which he was, but also great, which he was. Doubts lingered over the question whether the attempt to split a nation in two was a “mighty deed,” and of benefit to mankind. The feeling was, right or wrong, that the election of Lincoln sixty years earlier, and of Generals Lee and Jackson of one side, and Grant and Sherman on the other did not not necessarily call call for a quid pro quo on behalf of the leader of a separatist movement.
The North-South dialogue over the Civil War, still continues here and there, if one is to judge by recent attempts, not to get Davis into the Hall, but Robert E. Lee out. The presumed reason was not bitterness, but stories in the press about removing the sculptures to other locations, or reports about the rundown condition of the Heights.
— Sometimes promotion was soft pedaled. The Hall of Fame electors needed little persuasion, few letters of endorsement to decide in 1965 that Orville Wright should join his brother Wilbur, who had entered first because he had been born first, and had died first. The Wrights got a two-for-one unveiling in 1967. Two bothers who ran a bicycle shop gave the world a moment to remember one day at Kitty Hawk when they proved that a machine heavier than air could fly, even though it had already been proved in a published article by a great mathematician, Simon Newcomb (H.o.F., ’35), that it could not be done, except perhaps (in his own recorded words) “by a great number of small birds. A sufficient number of humming birds, if we could combine their forces, would carry an aerial excursion party of human beings through the air.” Stories persist that the intimidating Newcomb, professor of mathematics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins, was Conan Doyle’s model for the devious Professor Moriarty.
— By sheer weight of military brass, Sylvanus Thayer, Dartmouth College graduate and West Point graduate (in one year), was declared worthy of a place in Valhalla, which the Hall of Fame is sometimes erroneously called. An excellent engineer and organizer, Thayer became an expert in fortifications and harbors, and after the War of 1812 was appointed superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The “Point” at that time, was something of a mess, and could scarcely be called an institution of higher education.
By the time Thayer had finished, about 16 years later, West Point was a first-rate training college for Army officers. For this single accomplishment, he has been called “Father of the Military Academy.” Though he had not been present at either the conception or birth of the Academy, he did raise it under his watchful eye and fully deserves the title “Foster Father.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had become a national deity and had blessed Thayer’s candidacy by writing on his behalf, gave the ceremonial address by broadcast from Gettysburg; and in the presence of General of the Army Omar Bradley, Colonel Thayer joined the parade into the Hall to the music of the West Point band, and the singing of the cadets. The inscription on the tablets is appropriate for the coat of arms: “Duty Country Honor.”
— Promotion by timely knocking on the door. It was highly unlikely that the backers of Jane Addams, polestar of social reformers, founder of the well-known Hull House in a Chicago slum, and leader for world peace, would ever want to share an installation ceremony with an officer of the United States Army — or for that matter, he with her. But by 1965 we had long since passed over her opposition to World War I and forgotten her public quarrel with Agnes Repplier, a believer in that war. The nation that forgets easily forgives easily. Addams’s winning of the Novel Peace Prize had invited another look.
She was elected with Thayer, Wright and Holmes, Jr., and had her own ceremony a few years later. If a vote were taken on the best correlation between what one says and what one does, Jane Addams might be near the top for the inscription on her tablet: “What else has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamaties of nature and all the tragic failures of mankind if not faith in new possibilities and courage to advocate them.”
Cracks, however, were beginning to appear in both budget and Colonnade. The budget was $20,000 and no endowment for it. Half a century back, an NYU dean had written: “No one is in a position to say whether the beams can continue to carry the load . . . It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the adverse publicity by even a small localized collapse.” And in 1970, it wouldn’t be too long before a similar urgency would be expressed about preventing seven decades of dedicated human endeavor from starting a long roll down to the Harlem River.
The Winds Of Influence: Well Seeded Clouds