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The Magical, Mysterious World of Archives

Archives are where forgotten lives, hidden histories, and unfinished stories wait to be rediscovered.

I have been thinking about archives lately. (Don’t laugh.) A few things sparked my interest. When I wanted to find the papers of Helen Gahagan Douglas—the late California congresswoman whom Richard Nixon called “the Pink Lady” in their infamous 1950 Senate race—I was puzzled. The next thing I knew I was flying to Oklahoma to the Carl Albert Library on the college campus. There was a lone woman working, and I asked her why Helen’s papers ended up there. She explained that House Speaker Albert walked by Douglas’s office while she was cleaning out her materials. He offered his library as a safe storage place. I spent a full day photocopying—all of which helped the play I cowrote about that election.

I recently covered the Rancho Mirage Writers Festival in Palm Springs, which featured virtually every important historian of these times (Jon Meacham, Rick Atkinson, Ken Burns, H.W. Brands, Douglas Brinkley, Erik Larson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, etc.). And there was not a discussion during which the challenges of their research—archives, documents—did not come up. Even an author who was discussing her new book about New York’s legendary Plaza Hotel said it was extremely difficult since the hotel has no archives. Todd Purdum discussed his new book on Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, the couple who pretty much changed television history. For that one, he was aided by their daughter, Lucie Arnaz, who had done most of the personal archiving.

New York........

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