Transcripts

Interview 2 – April 28, 2005

Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted by phone, with the interviewee and interviewer in Green Valley, Arizona, and Washington, D.C., respectively.

JOHNSON:
This is Kathleen Johnson, interviewing Glen Rupp, a House Page from 1932 through 1936; this is the second interview with Mr. Rupp, it is April 28, 2005. We ended our discussion yesterday talking about the National Fraternity of Pages and the pin that you purchased, and I was hoping today that we could start off with a little more on your service as a Page in the Speaker’s Lobby. When you were in the Speaker’s Lobby, you had contact with a lot of Members. In general, how did they treat the Pages?
RUPP:
Oh, great. They treated us fine. Never had anybody that, I would say, wasn’t kind to us. They were super.
JOHNSON:
What Representatives do you remember the most? Is there anyone that stands out most in your mind?
RUPP:
I don’t think so. We paged all the Congressmen, in my case, on the Democratic side. Bob Doughton comes to mind; he was chairman of Ways and Means. Oh, I’ll have to tell you about him. I told him, So-and-so from a newspaper would like to see him. So he said, “Tell him to go to hell.” And I said, “Yes, sir,” and started to walk away, real fast. He said, “Wait, Glenn, wait, don’t tell him.” I said, “I’m only kidding, I wasn’t going to tell him that.” That was just one experience that I had there. But chairmen of Rules, and Ways and Means, and Appropriations, and a few like that, may have been people that we paged more than the run of the mill.
JOHNSON:
What about the women that were serving in Congress? Do you remember any of them?
RUPP:
Oh, I remember them all. Edith Nourse Rogers, Mary Norton, Isabella Greenway, and Ruth Bryan Owen were four of them.9 They were all Democratic, and they were all fine ladies. Real nice, I would say, and did a real great job.
JOHNSON:
Did you ever have occasion to speak with them or run any errands for them?
RUPP:
Oh, sure. I’d speak to them every day when they came in, and would page them, so on and so forth, and I can tell you a story, a little later on, something very unusual, that happened in the House. Edith Nourse Rogers became involved, if you want me to tell you that now.
JOHNSON:
Sure, you can tell me now.
RUPP:
Well, the Doorkeeper, Joe Sinnott, grabbed me one day.10 Somebody broke through the main door, coming from the Senate Chamber to the House; we called that “the main door.” And he got through past the doorkeepers. He had an envelope under his arm, and he was hollering, and heading down the aisle towards the Speaker’s Rostrum, and Joe Sinnott told me to get that guy out of there. And he was saying that he had a message from God that he was supposed to give to the Speaker. And I grabbed him around the waist and he fussed a little bit, but I kept him going and took him out to the lobby, and out the front door of the Capitol. [4:00] And Edith Nourse Rogers came off the floor and talked to him, and he was later admitted to St. Elizabeths mental institution.
JOHNSON:
Do you remember what year that was?
RUPP:
Oh, that would have been about ’35, ’36.
JOHNSON:
Okay.
RUPP:
Yeah, and then, there was another occasion of something happening on the floor like that. Do you want me to tell about that?
JOHNSON:
Sure.
RUPP:
When I was in the Speaker’s Lobby and the Members kept running…we had swinging doors there, they just flipped back and forth. And a couple of them fell down on the floor and I said, “What’s going on, what’s the matter? What’s going on inside?” And they said, well, there’s a man up in the gallery, above the Republican Page bench, and he’s waving a gun that’s cocked, and says he wants to come down to the floor and speak 20 minutes for the American people. And Congressman [Melvin] Maas, that’s M-A-A-S, of Minnesota, who’s an ex-Marine, he walked underneath the gallery, and said, “Toss the gun down, buddy, and come on down to speak.” In the meantime, the doorkeepers in the gallery saw what was going on, and they grabbed him, and they took him away to St. Elizabeths.11 And then there was another time, while I’m on the subject of the gallery. A lady was in the gallery pretty close to the Democratic bench, and she was nursing her baby in the gallery. And the Members were looking up there, and Joe Sinnott, I don’t know why I happened to be the guy around, available to him to send up to see her, and tell her to please stop nursing the baby because it was interrupting the Congressmen on the floor. So I told her in a nice way, and she quit, and that was the end of that one. Outside of Eddie Cantor being up in the gallery, that’s the only one I know that there’s something to tell about what happened in the gallery, outside of visitors like Mae West, and movie stars, and that sort of thing, that would come in, and we would know about it.
JOHNSON:
These events all took place while you were a Page in the Speaker’s Lobby?
RUPP:
Oh, yes, they were all in the mid-’30s.
JOHNSON:
Would you be able to describe what the Speaker’s Lobby looked like?
RUPP:
Oh, sure. Looking at the House Chamber from the side door, the one next to the lobby, it would be on the south side running parallel to the House Floor, and the [8:00] only thing that separates them besides the wall is the couple sets of swinging doors, where the Congressmen, either Democrats or Republicans, would go into the House Chamber, when they come for a vote, or when they come to the floor—that’s the nearest route for them to get on the floor. And then the lobby, right immediately, when you come from the south side, there was a weather map there that the weather department always sent a man down who would put the weather on the map so the Members could look at that when they came in, because it wouldn’t be on television, because that wasn’t even around. And then on down, further going towards the other end of the lobby—that would be on the north side, ran from north to south—there were leather davenports, and chairs, sitting there.12 And, the newspaper reporters would come down from the gallery in a drove sometimes and interview Congressmen when a real story broke and they wanted to have a lot of Congressmen paged off the floor. And then we would go in and get them. But then, to the left, that would be the furthest end of the House Chamber, or Speaker’s Lobby, facing the White House, going all the way west, were racks of the well-known newspapers of each state, and a Page would put those newspapers on the rack every day, so the Members could see them. And then there was a room in there, where reporters could talk to Congressmen that they’d paged off the floor.

JOHNSON:
So this was a place where Members would spend some time together?
RUPP:
That’s correct. And then I want to tell you about the cloakroom, too, on the opposite end of the chamber.
JOHNSON:
The Democratic Cloakroom?
RUPP:
Yes. And the Republican. Everything is duplicate: To the right of the Speaker’s Rostrum are the Democrats, and to the left would be the Republicans.
JOHNSON:
Did you spend a lot of time in the Democratic Cloakroom?
RUPP:
Well, quite a bit. To go to the cloakroom, you go off the floor of the House, and it runs parallel to the lobby, at the far east end of the chamber. And as you go in there’s two sets of doors. The furthest one toward the Republican side were doors where you, when you walk into the cloakroom, were leather davenports and chairs, wood-burning fireplaces, and that sort of thing. And then to the right, [12:00] or to the south end of the cloakroom was a concession stand that had candy bars and sandwiches and tobacco and all that sort of thing. And then in the corner, in the very corner of the cloakroom, was a round metal table with chairs so Congressmen or Pages could sit down and have a quick sandwich. At that time there was always a bowl of hard-boiled eggs in the pan, and you would take the eggs out, and crack the shell, take the shell off, there’d be salt and pepper shakers there, and put salt and pepper on the eggs, and take the whole egg in your hand, and eat it. And one time I was sitting there doing that when Speaker [William] Bankhead came in. He was coming over to get an egg, too. And I was going to get up. And he motioned to me to stay there, so we ate an egg together, and talked while we were doing that.
JOHNSON:
What did you talk about, do you remember?
RUPP:
Well, no.
JOHNSON:
Just casual talk?
RUPP:
Yeah. Nothing in particular. Because we’d see each other every day, anyway. And then, here’s the interesting part of that whole story. A black, or Afro-American man, a totally blind man, ran the stand. His name was J. J. Coates, C-O-A-T-E-S. And he had another man that helped him, an Afro-American man. And he told me one day that his family, either great-grandfather, or great-great-grandfather on down, all had that concession, since the Capitol was built. And we Pages, that’s the interesting part of the story, we Pages would charge candy bars for a nickel, and we’d charge Cokes. And then they had apples there, too, at that time, and I couldn’t believe the price, the high price, of five ¢ apiece—big red apples, and yellow apples. And then, as you go further, toward the right, further south in the lobby, is where the telephones were; there were about six telephone booths in there, and the Pages and doorkeepers that work in there answer the phone when it rings, and on the Democratic side they always said, “House Democratic,” and find out who’s calling and want to have a Member paged if he’s on the floor. It could be his own office, or it could be one of the governmental departments, or it could be the White House, or anywhere. And, when I went there, Bill Bray, B-R-A-Y was in charge of the phones, and a man by the name of C. C. Emerson was his assistant.13 [16:00] Well, Bray went with Jim Farley—I think I mentioned this to you the other day—to the Postmaster General’s office, as his head man to talk to the House or Senate, or whatever.
JOHNSON:
Were those two men that you just mentioned—Bray and Emerson—were they both Pages?
RUPP:
No, they were older men, and I don’t know what they really called those positions. They were men. I never heard, never did know, what they called them. And Gene Dingler, D-I-N-G-L-E-R, was another one. He was from the District of Columbia. And Emerson was made a Kentucky Colonel by one of the Members from Kentucky that liked him, and they became friendly. And after he was made a Kentucky Colonel, everybody called him “Colonel Emerson.” “Colonel,” that’s the name he had. And then, immediately to the right of the telephone area was the cloakroom, where the Congressmen would put their hats (everybody wore a hat or cap then) and their outer shoes, hats, coats, everything, they’d put it in with this man. And believe it or not, this man who was in there was there all the time I was in the House, five years that I know of, I’m sure he never knew any Congressman’s name. He might have known the Speakers, or somebody like that. They would just put the coat on the railing, when they’d come up there and he’d put it away. No name, no ticket, no nothing, and when the Member would come back for whatever he left with him, the man would pick it out and hand it to him.
JOHNSON:
That’s impressive.
RUPP:
I was pretty impressed. Because I could do that with names and people, like in the Speaker’s Lobby. I didn’t care if there were five or 10 reporters, or maybe 20; even, it wouldn’t be that many, but I didn’t care how many there were if we were busy, and I’d be the only one to take care of them, I’d have to remember the reporter’s name, his newspaper, and if he wanted to see one, two, three, four, or five Members, whoever I could find, I could do it. But I never wrote anything down. Does that sound unusual, or not?
JOHNSON:
That sounds pretty incredible. I think you have a fantastic memory.
RUPP:
Well, I did at that time, I don’t now.
JOHNSON:
I think you still do.
RUPP:
All right, I won’t argue with you. But then, next to that, to the cloakroom, was the law library. It’s a small library and we only had one person in it while I was there. And he was always there—name was Robins, R-O-B-I-N-S. And I guess, if a Congressman had a legal question that he thought could be answered in there, he would go in there. And then, immediately after the law library would be [20:00] another set of doors that would go out to the Speaker’s Lobby. Two of us from the lobby door would always come into the chamber, follow the Speaker in, and we’d get inside, and we’d stand against the door, the swinging doors, so nobody could get in—Congressman, or Senator, or nobody else. We never had any problem that way, but we were instructed never to let anybody come in until the Speaker struck the gavel on the wood piece on the Speaker’s Rostrum and told the Chaplain to offer prayer, and read the minutes of the last meeting, and so forth.
JOHNSON:
You mentioned reporters earlier. Did you have to run errands to the Press Gallery?
RUPP:
No, no, we never did that. Never once in five years did I go up there. But here’s something I didn’t tell you. People who are permitted to go on the floor of the House: of course, sitting Members, ex-Members of the House, sitting Senators, Cabinet members, and the Speaker’s secretary, and one reporter from the AP and UP and IP at the time I was there—United Press, International Press, and Associated [Press]. They had the privilege of, but they never went in on the floor. And the only Speaker’s secretary that I know went in there was Speaker Bankhead’s secretary. But Speaker [Joseph W.] Byrns and [Henry T.] Rainey, and [John] Garner, they always, I don’t know why, but they always talked to me, and I always went in to the Speaker’s desk for them, too. They’d stop at the Speaker’s door, didn’t enter the lobby. We had the most difficult place to be trained to work because you have to know every Congressman by name and by sight, and they came in there fast, sometimes, when they came for a roll call, and you had to stop anybody that comes in there that doesn’t belong in there. You stop them, physically, with your hands, if you need to.
JOHNSON:
Did you ever make a mistake and ask someone to stop when they were a Congressman?
RUPP:
Well, no, but I can tell you one that I stopped. He was a Member-elect, and one of the Senate office buildings is named after him—see if you can guess who it was.
JOHNSON:
Who would that be?
RUPP:
Everett Dirksen.
JOHNSON:
Oh—Dirksen, okay.
RUPP:
Yeah, he was breezing in there pretty fast, I held up my hand, I said, “Just hold it right there, now. Are you a Member-elect? If you are, you can come in; if not, you can’t.” He said, “I’m a Member-elect.” And that’s the only time I ever had to stop him. He was a so-called orator in the House—Everett Dirksen—and he was a [24:00] chain smoker, too. And on that door that I’m describing, I told you, or you read that, I guess, where Lyndon Johnson came over and worked for me on the Speaker’s Lobby door.
JOHNSON:
Right.
RUPP:
Right there.
JOHNSON:
And, with Lyndon Johnson, one of the articles that you had sent to me, it mentioned that you spent some time with him outside of the House of Representatives, as well.
RUPP:
Yeah, let me finish this. So, anyway, this was in ’34. I said, “I’m going to try to stay in Washington this year, and get a job if I can get one.” And of course, he was secretary to Congressman Dick Kleberg, and he ran that office like he was Dick Kleberg. So, he used it to great advantage. He said, “I’ll get you a job.” “Oh,” I said, “You’re kidding!” He said, “No, I’ll make a phone call right now.” So, we went into the law library and borrowed the phone from Robins, and he got on the phone and he talked to the assistant undersecretary of Agriculture, Julian Friant, and he was telling him about me, and he was building me up so big, I said, “Lyndon,” I said, “I don’t know who you’re talking about anymore. I’m leaving.” I went back to the door. And the next thing I knew, I had an invitation to go with the group deep-sea fishing out in the Chesapeake Bay. And Julian Friant and his assistant, and the district attorney for Washington, and the Federal Housing Administration personnel director was on there. There were about 12 or 15 of us. And there was one other Page and I that were on the fishing boat. And I thought, “So, when’s he going to say something about coming to work for him?” He didn’t say anything until the boat got back; he said, “Come on to my office tomorrow morning.” And he said, “I’ll take care of you.” And that’s all because of Lyndon Johnson. That’s how slick it worked. And those jobs were hard to get at that time.
JOHNSON:
I’m sure they were.
RUPP:
That was the Agriculture Adjustment Administration [AAA], declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
JOHNSON:
So you got to know Lyndon Johnson well because you also socialized together?
RUPP:
Oh, yeah, we double-dated. I asked my girlfriend once (she was always with me). I said to her one day, I said, “Tell me, what do you think of Lyndon?” And I almost fainted, dropped over, when she told me. Do you know what she said?
JOHNSON:
What?
RUPP:
“I think he’s a big hick.” {shared laughter} Well, I knew he was going to go places. He was always, you know, eager that way.
JOHNSON:
Were you able to meet up with him again after he was elected to Congress?
RUPP:
Well, I went back to Ohio and joined the paper company and was with them [28:00] about 50 years. But one time, my wife and I—that was right after we saw Ralph Roberts as Clerk, with my wife and younger son—went to the Senate.14 And while we were in the lobby of the Senate, we bumped into somebody that had known my wife when she was a little girl; he had been a former Senate Page, name was Bill Cheatham. And he was the assistant Sergeant at Arms. So, he grabbed hold of us, he said, “Listen, I’ll take you up to the Gallery.” So we went up to the gallery, and we sat together, and he said, “Are you going to see Lyndon Johnson?” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “I know you knew him well.” He was then, of course, Vice President and he wasn’t Majority Leader anymore. And he said, “I saw him at breakfast; he was at the breakfast for Carl Hayden,” the Senator for Arizona who had finished 50 years on Capitol Hill as a Congressman and a Senator. He started out as a sheriff in Arizona, and was then elected to Congress, and then from the House he went to the Senate. His total number of years were 50 in the House and Senate. So, he said, “He was at the breakfast, I saw him down there.” He said, “Boy, Johnson will want to see you if he knows you’re here. I’ll go down and tell him and point to where you are. He’ll either motion for you to come down, or…He didn’t say he’d come up to see me, but he said he definitely wanted to see me. So, he went down, and he finally came back. And he said, “Nobody seems to know where Lyndon is. He’s not around anywhere.” So, before we went back [to New Jersey], he [Bill Cheatham] called the Senator from New Jersey to come out to the lobby and see my wife and son. He was from the same town, Mountainside, New Jersey, at that time. And so, we got in the car and drove home and had the radio on, and it told about the fact that Kennedy had Johnson go to Germany to the Berlin Wall, and talk to those people. He was on the airplane, and that’s the reason we didn’t see him, I guess.
JOHNSON:
Well, that would make sense.
RUPP:
But he might not have wanted to see me, but I doubt it. I think he would have. Oh, can I tell you something off the record now, or wait until after the recording is over? It’s something aside from what we’re talking about.
JOHNSON:
If you think it’s important to your history, you could tell me now.
RUPP:
Well, it’s the Congressman where I got my patronage, I was with in Washington.
JOHNSON:
Congressman [Frank] Kniffin?
RUPP:
Frank Kniffin. And so, I went to see Frank at his office; he was a referee in the [32:00] bankruptcy court. He said, “Hey, what do you think? I just took a trip to Washington, and I have to tell you about it.” I said, “Okay, I’m ready to hear it.” He said, “I went to the Supreme Court,” in their new building, after they left the Capitol, and he always wore a bow tie, so he was distinguishable because of the tie, if nothing else. But he was sitting in the audience, and some man was up there arguing his case, and the Chief Justice, Fred Vinson, spotted Kniffin sitting down in the visiting room, and he called a Page and sent him over to pick up Kniffin and bring him back to his office. The two of them, he said, went back to his office, and he said Fred Vinson put his feet up on the desk, took out his pack of cigarettes, gave him one, and he lit up one, and they just talked over old times after visiting back and forth, about their families.
JOHNSON:
And you had mentioned Vinson yesterday in the baseball game you said that he had played in. Which was 1932, I think, was the one that you had mentioned.
RUPP:
You’re right. He was the one on second base. And I knew him, not as well I’d say as the Congressman but I doubt if he’d have done that for me, but if I’d been with the Congressman, I’d have been in with him to see him in the office. I would have been welcome. Let’s put it that way.
JOHNSON:
I wanted to get your impression, if you don’t mind, when you left Washington. That was in 1936, when you stopped being a Page?
RUPP:
No, I went to the Federal Housing Administrator’s office. And I was there five years.
JOHNSON:
From the time that you stopped working in D.C., and then you came back and you said you were on this visit, which was in the 1960s, what differences did you notice in the Capitol? What struck you as being different?
RUPP:
Everything was the same. I didn’t notice any difference.
JOHNSON:
Okay.
RUPP:
You want to know about what I did at the Federal Housing Administrator’s office?
JOHNSON:
We can talk about that in a little while. When you first started working as a Page, it was the Great Depression.
RUPP:
Oh, you wouldn’t believe how bad it was.
JOHNSON:
What was Washington, D.C. like at the time, during the Depression?
RUPP:
Well, everything looked all right and normal to me, but I knew that people didn't have very much money, they were just getting by, I’d say, at best. I didn’t see anything different about it than I saw later on.
JOHNSON:
And when you first started, the Republicans had a slight edge in the House. But in 1933, the Democrats took control, and FDR was elected.15
RUPP:
Well, I’d say, in the 72nd Congress, in the years of 1931 and ’32, [36:00] [Nicholas] Longwortha was Speaker, Republican from Ohio, I think in ’31. And they had just a slight majority in the House, of a few more Republicans than Democrats. But Speaker Longworth died, and a couple of Republicans died, so it tipped the scale, it went Democratic. If you have 218 Members, you’re in the majority (there’s 435 in the House). So they barely had a majority.
JOHNSON:
Did you notice any difference when the Democrats took control of the House?
RUPP:
Well, see, they were always in control when I went there. They took control in ’32, ’31, actually. Garner was a former Majority Leader, and he was elected Speaker.
JOHNSON:
What about when FDR became President and the famous “First Hundred Days” when so much legislation was passed? What was it like in Congress?
RUPP:
Well, I can tell you, we got messages every day—seemed like every day—from the White House and the Brain Trust. You’re familiar with the Brain Trust, aren’t you?16
JOHNSON:
Yes.
RUPP:
Yeah, well, they dictated, really, what legislation was to be passed, like the WPA [Work Projects Administration] and the AAA [Agricultural Adjustment Administration], NRA [National Recovery Administration], PWA [Public Works Administration], NYA [National Youth Administration], CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps], RFC [Reconstruction Finance Corporation], and Tennessee Valley Authority [TVA].17 Lyndon Johnson left the House, Kleberg’s office, when the NYA was passed, and he was made director of NYA in the state of Texas. That’s how he got his political start. And then, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Congressman James Buchanan of Texas, died, and he happened to be from Johnson’s area, in the same congressional district. So, Lyndon Johnson and nine other people ran for the House, from that district in Texas. Some newspapers alleged that Lyndon Johnson even found names off of gravestones that voted for him, and so forth. And he won, by less than 100 votes. That’s how he got started in the House. And he was given a seat on the House Naval Affairs Committee. That was after I was gone.
JOHNSON:
Just to backtrack a little, you said that you were receiving lots of messages during the period. Did you have to work into the night? Was that a common thing, because there was so much going on during that time frame?
RUPP:
Well, we worked, maybe, two to three nights a month, no more than that. [40:00]
JOHNSON:
And what was that like, what was a day like when you had such long hours that you had to work? Were you so busy that it went by quickly?
RUPP:
It was interesting, so we didn’t mind it. It was just part of the job, and we had to do it. So, we never even thought anything about it, we just did it. And we’d always have the light on the dome of the Capitol burning when we were in session. I suppose it’s that way, today, too, isn’t it? When they’re there at night?
JOHNSON:
Yes, it is.
RUPP:
I used to put the flag up, too, once in a while, up on the top of the Capitol, on the House side.
JOHNSON:
Was that a task assigned to Pages?
RUPP:
Yes. But I just did it once or twice. I don’t know who did it regularly. Well, there was one Page that we never mentioned. That was the amendment Page that sits down in front of the Speaker’s Rostrum, and if a Member wants to offer an amendment to a bill, he just holds it up, the Page runs down and gets it, and takes it up to the Speaker, hands it to the reading clerk, and that’s the way that’s handled. Oh, I have to tell you something that’s very interesting, that I think you’ll enjoy hearing. I’m probably the only person that ever introduced a bill for a Congressman who was dead, since the Congress started in 1789. A Congressman [Charles] Truax—T-R-U-A-X, from Mansfield, Ohio, came to me, and he said, “Glenn,” he said, “I don’t feel too well.” It was around 1:00, [and] he said, “I’ve got a bill here, a private bill, that has to be introduced today”—for some reason or other, I don’t know why—and he said, “I’ll give it to you, and you hang on to it; I don’t feel well, I’m going over to my apartment (near the Capitol, a couple blocks away) and I’m going to lie down. If I can make it back, I will, but if you don’t see me before the House adjourns, by 4:00, you introduce the bill.” Well, I didn’t see him, it was 4:00, so I put the bill in the hopper on the Speaker’s Rostrum. (That’s the way you introduce a bill, either addressing the Speaker and making some comments and giving it to the reading clerk, or to the enrolling clerk, for proper committee assignment.) So, I couldn’t do that, because I wasn’t a Member. So I put it in the box. And that evening, I read in the paper that he was found in his room between 2:00 and 3:00, and had died.18 And I had introduced a bill, and he was already dead. Do you agree that it might have been the only one?
JOHNSON:
It certainly is an unusual case.
RUPP:
{laughter} You can say that again.
JOHNSON:
I’m going to take this opportunity to stop for a minute, so I can change tapes. Would that be all right with you?
RUPP:
That’s fine.

End of Part One – Beginning of Part Two

JOHNSON:
All right, you had finished telling me about Congressman Truax from Ohio.
RUPP:
Ohio. Yes, Mansfield, Ohio.
JOHNSON:
And was there anything else that you wanted to continue with that story?
RUPP:
I’ll tell you about another incident on the House Floor, if you want to hear it.
JOHNSON:
Sure.
RUPP:
I wasn’t on the lobby door, I was still a Page on the bench, and the buzzer rang, and the overseer said to get the Speaker pro temp, whoever was in the chair, presiding. So, Jack Garner had left the chair, and he was sitting in one of the seats, and had his arm out in the aisle. And when the Speaker pro temp calls for a Page, you get down there in a hurry. So, I was flying down there pretty fast, and I hit him on the elbow pretty hard, and boy, I never heard a guy in my life being cussed out like he cussed me out. And then I apologized, and he said, “Forget about it.” And after that, every day when he’d come in from his office to adjourn the House—and he was a very thrifty man, this was a big deal to him, and it was fine with me, too—he’d hand me the Washington Star every day. Trying to make up for, you know, he’d been pretty rough with me—
JOHNSON:
For you accidentally bumping into him.
RUPP:
That’s correct.
JOHNSON:
There were several Speakers while you were a Page in the ’30s.
RUPP:
That’s correct.
JOHNSON:
And one of them, Speaker Byrns…
RUPP:
Yeah, J. W. Byrns.
JOHNSON:
He passed away while he was Speaker.
RUPP:
Yes, he did. He succeeded Rainey. There was Garner, Rainey, Byrns, and Bankhead.
JOHNSON:
And I read about a funeral held for Speaker Byrns.
RUPP:
Yes, they had the funeral in the House of Representatives, the only one who was ever there when I was there.
JOHNSON:
So you attended the funeral?
RUPP:
Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, someone from our district, from Van Wert, Ohio, they call it the Petunia Capital of the country—and they sent a nice bouquet of flowers. And the Congressman told me about it, asked me if I could get a picture. Well, you’re not supposed to take pictures on the floor, but I got a picture anyway and gave it to them. And they sent it back to the newspaper in Van Wert, Ohio. So they knew all about it, that their flowers got there. Are you interested in another funeral?
JOHNSON:
Whose funeral was it?
RUPP:
He was a Georgia Senator, in the Senate Chamber. [4:00]
JOHNSON:
Sure, you can tell me about it.
RUPP:
Well, that happened in 1932, and President Hoover was in the White House. And even he came down to the funeral. And I was there, just happened to be there that day, and I was there during the whole thing, and you know who his successor was? Senator Richard B. Russell [Jr.] from Georgia. He was appointed by the governor to succeed the deceased Senator. The Senate office building is named after him.
JOHNSON:
Right.
RUPP:
Russell. I was there and saw him sworn in, in 1932. And he turned out to be a great Senator. Johnson relied on him very much when he was Majority Leader in the Senate. He was appointed by the governor to fill the unexpired term and then was re-elected each [election] year thereafter.
JOHNSON:
I meant to ask you yesterday, did you elect any officers for the Little Congress Club?19
RUPP:
We elected all of them. We elected Johnson, in 1933.
JOHNSON:
In what position did he serve? [8:00]
RUPP:
I think first he was reading clerk, and then Speaker.
JOHNSON:
And what was your position?
RUPP:
Nothing, I was just one of the members, like a few of the other Pages.
JOHNSON:
About how many people were in the club?
RUPP:
In the beginning, there were just about 20 or 30. But then there were probably well over 100. Johnson pretty much got it packed by getting the elevator operators and anybody on the government payroll in the area to join.
JOHNSON:
And you had said that you previously met once a month, and then after Johnson came on board, you would meet weekly?
RUPP:
Yes, because he’d introduce prominent speakers—Senators or Congressmen, or Cabinet members. Anybody that he thought would do him some good, more or less. He ran it as his own little club. Shall I put it that way? I didn’t vote for Johnson, when he ran for President.
JOHNSON:
You didn’t vote for him, you said?
RUPP:
No. That tells you something too, doesn’t it?
JOHNSON:
Yes.
RUPP:
I’m a conservative.
JOHNSON:
If you don’t mind, we’ll step back just a little bit again. You had mentioned to me something about adjournment dinners that as Pages you had each year. Could you describe these dinners?
RUPP:
Well, the dinners, the only dinners that we had together, were the ones that Congressman [Joseph] Shannon of Missouri would hold for the Page group, either in the Wardman Park Hotel, or the Shoreham Hotel. I guess they’re called something different today, aren’t they?
JOHNSON:
I’m not sure what they’re called today. When you said, “together,” did you mean the Republican and the Democratic Pages?
RUPP:
Oh, yeah. Johnny McCabe’s in the picture with me, if you look at the one that I’m on, where the arrow is, Johnny McCabe is in there, too.
JOHNSON:
I’m going to describe it a little bit for people who are listening and can’t see [the image]. So, this is from the Washington Herald, and it was 1936, and it’s a picture of some of the Republican and Democratic House Pages, and you are in this image. And you mentioned that Johnny McCabe was in the picture as well, and he was the chief Page at the time.
RUPP:
I think that’s correct—the one that I sent you.
JOHNSON:
Right, for the Republican Pages. And so this was in 1936. The one that you sent me, and you also sent us a program of what you did during that evening. Can you describe what you remember from the night?
RUPP:
Well, it was kind of silly. We spoke either for or against Pages using roller skates [12:00] in the House of Representatives. Just something to take up the time.
JOHNSON:
I noticed that you voted against that.
RUPP:
I think I was against it, yeah. I had no reason. I can’t tell you what I said, but whatever it says there, that’s the side that I was on.20
JOHNSON:
Each of the five years that you worked as a Page, were there adjournment dinners?
RUPP:
Well, they really weren’t referred to as adjournment dinners. I think they were just dinners that Congressman Shannon wanted to show his appreciation to the Pages for what they were doing, and so forth. That’s the way I always took it. Nobody ever referred to it that I know of as an adjournment dinner, unless the Washington Herald referred to it that way.
JOHNSON:
Yes, the newspaper accounts, I believe, called it that.
RUPP:
That’s all right. It could have been. There’s nothing wrong with that.
JOHNSON:
Were there any other sort of events like this?
RUPP:
Oh, yeah. Sol Bloom, he was a Congressman from New York, the New York City area, and he was great. He always took the Pages to the Barnum & Bailey and Ringling Bros. Circus every year. He was the only one that did that sort of thing.
JOHNSON:
And what about for holidays, did you do anything special for any of the holidays?
RUPP:
No, nothing. Just like you would do, at the Clerk’s office. Probably work. {laughter}
JOHNSON:
Yes, and get away for an office party. What about school? I didn’t ask you about that yesterday. Did you go to school while you were a Page?
RUPP:
I went to the Strayer Business School when I could, at night, after the House adjourned, or if we didn’t have night sessions. And I took business courses there (shorthand and typing), that I could use in the Congressman’s office, and so forth.
JOHNSON:
The younger Pages, did they go to school?
RUPP:
Yeah. The Pages that weren’t graduates of high school always went to a Page school in the Capitol building. The House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court Pages all went to the same school, near where the Old Senate Chamber was. And when they graduated, they were issued a diploma on one of the local high schools, as I understand it.
JOHNSON:
Did you know anything specifically about the classes that were taught, or any of the teachers?
RUPP:
No, I didn’t. We didn’t know a thing about it. Never went to it, never saw it, really, except knew the boys were missing in school, and went there to do some of the work.
JOHNSON:
It doesn’t sound as if you had a lot of free time, because your job kept you so busy, but when you did, were there any sort of activities that you would do together as [16:00] Pages?
RUPP:
Not a thing. Oh, a few times, we had people like Fox Movietone would come down if there was snow on the ground, and we’d have snowball fights and things like that, which they would show in the different theaters, like they used to do.
JOHNSON:
They would show you having snowball fights?
RUPP:
Yeah.
JOHNSON:
And some of the things that I had read about were pranks that some of the Pages would play.
RUPP:
If we had a green Page on the job and he didn’t know ahead of time what we were doing, we might send him for a check stretcher, or a sky hook, and keep a straight face, and assign either the Clerk’s office or the House Document Room, or somewhere else to go get it. And he’d go there, scratching his head all the way over there to figure out how he was going to ask for such a silly thing. That’s just a saying that through the years, I think everybody did it. You only talked about it once, when you pulled it off. And it was no big deal, just a silly thing that happened every once and a while.
JOHNSON:
So it was a bit of a tradition among the Pages?
RUPP:
That’s it. That’s the only place I ever heard of it.
JOHNSON:
When you were a Page—this was during the 1930s—one thing I wanted to ask you about was the radio. Radio was becoming more popular, so I was wondering if any of the Members of Congress that you had to run errands for or spent time with had radios in their offices?
RUPP:
Oh, I think they did. I think some of them did.
JOHNSON:
And what about throughout the Capitol?
RUPP:
Well, I remember this. That I used to do this, when I was on the Speaker’s Lobby door. We’d have, at the time that the Congress, or the House, or the Senate, too, would adjourn sine die, usually late in the evening, and I would take different Congressmen into Mr. Robins’ office in the law library, where they had something set up so they could broadcast on the radio. And they would speak to the constituency. It went all over the country, as well as D.C. And I remember one time, I spoke, as a reward for doing this for the person in charge. He had me speak on the radio. And people back in Ohio heard me, too. My Congressman’s wife [20:00] heard me, too.
JOHNSON:
Oh, that must have been exciting. There also were radio newsmen that were trying to get into the Press Gallery. Did you know anything about the radio newsmen?
RUPP:
Yes, two friends of mine, Robert Burns and Bob Menaugh. Bob and I worked on the Speaker’s Lobby door for three or four years together; he was the man put in charge of the radio press gallery, or whatever they called it.21 That would have been after ’36.
JOHNSON:
I think that was about ’39.22
RUPP:
Yeah. He was the one in charge. And Burns went with him. And I saw them after they did that, but just once or twice, bumped into them. And that’s all I know about it.
JOHNSON:
What about air conditioning? Was that something that you…
RUPP:
Oh, I’m glad you mentioned that. That was the greatest thing in the world. In 1932, to come to Washington, and to be able to go into the House Chamber, and have it air conditioned. No other place in Washington had air conditioning, except the House Chamber. Not where you are now, or the Senate, or the White House, or anywhere else. We had it number one! And we had on the Speaker’s Rostrum, somewhere, a graph that recorded the temperature—I think it was a water-type of air conditioning. It took a lot of water to run it. It wasn’t the kind that we have today. It was on an experimental basis, I think, in the House. And either Dr. Calver, or somebody else, kept looking at it, periodically, and kept track of everything.23
JOHNSON:
And Dr. Calver was the Attending Physician?
RUPP:
Attending Physician. Yeah. Calver. Dr. Calver.
JOHNSON:
The House offices at the time, the Members’ offices, weren’t air-conditioned. Is that correct?
RUPP:
Oh, no. Oh, heck no.
JOHNSON:
Okay, so just the gallery.
RUPP:
The chamber.
JOHNSON:
Which must have made everyone very happy, with the humid summers that we have in Washington, D.C.
RUPP:
Oh, you know how they are. You can imagine how they were, rather. They were really…Washington and Baltimore are both really bad on humidity, and the humidity sometimes is higher than the temperature. I’m glad that you asked that, because I meant to tell you about it.
JOHNSON:
If you still want to talk, I have a few more questions.
RUPP:
Oh, sure.
JOHNSON:
Okay, great. The era of Prohibition was still ongoing when you were a House Page.
RUPP:
That happened in 1933, when they repealed Prohibition. And one Member from the Democratic side had made a talk in favor of repealing the Volstead Act, and [24:00] then he got up and made the statement that if we just passed this Prohibition Act, we can balance the budget with all the tax and revenue money that comes in from it.24 And all they had was 3.2 percent beer, that was how they started. Lyndon Johnson and I had a couple bottles together. The first I ever drank was with him. Just a coincidence, no big deal; I just remembered, that’s all.
JOHNSON:
Any other recollections about when the amendment [18th] was repealed, and people’s reactions to it?
RUPP:
Well, the only ones I would have seen would have been, most of them voting for it, in the House. There was no big fight about it, as I remember, in the debate for and against. I think people were pretty much in favor of doing it. So I don’t think there was a whole lot of opposition that I recall hearing about or seeing anything.
JOHNSON:
Since we’re talking about important and significant events of the period, what do you remember about the Bonus March of 1932?25
RUPP:
Well, did I mention that? Maybe [I] just mentioned it the other day. We heard, via the radio, and the newspapers, that a bunch of veterans of World War I were marching on the Capitol. They were a destitute bunch, and they were penniless, and their families in some cases were with them. They were called the “Bonus Expeditionary Forces.” And we were afraid up at the Capitol, because they were quite insistent on getting a bonus. This was in 1932, and President Hoover had already said that he would veto any bonus bill that was passed. Well, Wright Patman was in charge of the legislation in the House, and he used to give me money and checks to take down to General Glassford, who was Chief of the Metropolitan Police Force, and they used this money to set up soup kitchens for the veterans and their families.26 You know where the Commerce Department is, don’t you? Do you know the Old Post Office Building?
JOHNSON:
I do.
RUPP:
All right. They always talked about tearing it down.
JOHNSON:
Right. It’s still there.
RUPP:
From the Old Post Office Building, toward the Capitol, on both sides of the street, were businesses—old, torn-down businesses that were going to be replaced with government buildings. And they were down in ’32 at the time the Bonus Marchers [28:00] came here. And a lot of them went in those old buildings, and they crawled in, wherever they could get comfortable, and get warm. They would go in there and stay there. And the city, and the White House, and everybody, worked together to provide housing for them. And they went as far away as—you know where Anacostia is?
JOHNSON:
Yes.
RUPP:
We put some up over there, too. And the Architect of the Capitol was very concerned about the Bonus Marchers coming into the Capitol and getting up around the dome. There are 365 steps—that’s circular steps—that go around the dome of the Capitol, onto the top of the Capitol where the statue is, and we Pages used to go up there when it was still open.27 But they closed that, so we couldn’t go up there anymore. And it was never opened after that, I don’t believe.
JOHNSON:
So, they closed it during the summer of 1932.
RUPP:
That’s right, and never was opened since that, I don’t believe. And the reason they closed it, because the Architect—well, I know this to be a fact—it’s lucky to have stood as long as it has. The steel beams are such that they’re not too reliable, or something—if you had any mischief, or any fooling around with those beams that hold the dome the way it is, the way you see it, the whole dome would come crashing down.
JOHNSON:
He was worried about some type of destruction or vandalism?
RUPP:
That’s correct. I think it’s 585 feet tall from the floor underneath the dome in the Rotunda of the Capitol to the very top. It’s quite a distance, seemed like 585 was the number that they used to talk about.28
JOHNSON:
You mentioned that you would go up to the dome with the Pages. What did you do up there?
RUPP:
It was during our lunch hours; we’d just go on our own. We’d do one of two things—either go up there sometimes, or go over to visit the Supreme Court, which always met at noon in the Old Senate Chamber. And I think it did that until ’35; they built the new building, and they moved out of the old building.
JOHNSON:
In 1935.
RUPP:
Yeah. I think that’s right.
JOHNSON:
Did you have access to just about any place you wanted to go in the Capitol?
RUPP:
Oh, yeah. I used to go to the White House as easy as I went to the Capitol. You have to know somebody to do it. I knew Pat McKenna over there; he was the receptionist to the President. I didn’t misuse the privilege, I just used it [32:00] occasionally; if I had friends or important people, I’d call Pat and tell him I’d like to take a few people through the White House, if it’s all right, and if he can designate a time. And he never turned me down, once. And he would say, “Just come over to my desk,” and then when I would with the people, he’d say, “You know your way around the White House, just take them around like you usually do, and everything’s all set.” So, I’d go into the Oval Office with them, and show them that, and then take them to the Cabinet Room, to the room where they had the bowling alley, and to the East Room, and one time I had two people in the swimming pool area, and the door was closed. We were standing inside. And there was a rap on the door, I says, “Yeah?” They said, “Glenn?” They said, “The old man’s coming down the hall in a wheelchair. So keep your friends in there so they don’t see him.”
JOHNSON:
Oh, you’re talking about FDR.
RUPP:
Yeah, I said something about that in the Resort Report, I think.29
JOHNSON:
What about the Capitol? Did you have a favorite place that you used to like to visit there?
RUPP:
Well, I could…Can I tell you this story about the Senate Chamber?
JOHNSON:
Sure.
RUPP:
Well, Ed Weikert—W-E-I-K-E-R-T—and I worked together on the Speaker’s Lobby door for four years. And he and I went to the Senate Chamber on Inauguration Day and we went to congratulate two Senators, Senator Jim Mead, of New York, and Senator Ralph Brewster—B-R-E-W-S-T-E-R. They were elected to the Senate from having been previously in the House. So we were in the Senate Chamber, talking with them and just kidding around. All of a sudden, the bells rang, alerting the Senators to fall in line, double file from the Senate Chamber to the inaugural stand. So, we said, “Well, excuse us,” and tried to get away from all that. They said, “Absolutely not, you get in line with us.” And we marched with them all the way from the Senate Chamber to the inaugural platform, and sat with them there. But when they went through the Rotunda of the Capitol, I looked off to my left, and there was Eleanor Roosevelt, and Franklin, and John, and Elliott, standing there, awaiting their turn, until the Senators got on the platform, so they could go on. And there were only two people that could have stopped us, and I doubt if they would have had the nerve to do it, but they could have. One was Ralph Roberts, and the other guy was [36:00] Landon Mitchell. But they didn’t say anything, and we sat there, during the whole ceremony.
JOHNSON:
And what were their positions, why could they have stopped you?
RUPP:
Well, Ralph Roberts had this job on the floor before he was elected Doorkeeper—he always sat to the left of the Speaker. I never did know what his job was. But he was always there. And then he was elected Doorkeeper, and then Clerk. And the other guy was kind of an assistant to the Doorkeeper.
JOHNSON:
And this was in 1933?
RUPP:
No, no, this would have been later than that. I think Roosevelt’s second inauguration.
JOHNSON:
You were at his first inauguration, weren’t you?
RUPP:
Yes, I was on the inaugural stand March 4, 1933, looked out from where I was sitting, and saw Roosevelt sitting to the left of President Hoover. To his right, Roosevelt was President-elect, and Hoover was the President, and the open cars, and behind them was Mrs. Roosevelt, and Mrs. Hoover in the car that followed. And they came on up to the stand, Hoover and Roosevelt, and that’s where Roosevelt gave that talk about, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” I was about 20 feet from him. I could be the only person alive that heard that and saw it. I probably am!
JOHNSON:
Were all the Pages in attendance?
RUPP:
None of them.
JOHNSON:
No?
RUPP:
I don’t know of one that was there.
JOHNSON:
So, how were you able to attend?
RUPP:
Well, Henry T. Rainey and I were quite friendly then. He was Majority Leader, and knew he was going to be Speaker. And his wife had asked me if I wanted to be their timekeeper when Rainey was elected Speaker, and I told her, “Yes, and I’d like it very much.” And Rainey gave me a letter to take on the inaugural stand, to remove the Presidential seal the President was sworn in under. And I got another fellow that I knew there to help me. We couldn’t get a cab or anything, it was so busy, so I took it to the Speaker’s office (that was on March 4 of ’33) and left it there to pick it up and take it home the next day. And when I went in there, Mrs. Rainey said, “Glenn, if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep that presidential seal.” And what could I say but, “That’s fine with me.”
JOHNSON:
Right.
RUPP:
So that’s what I said. They went back to Illinois, and he died four months later.30
JOHNSON:
Wow, you have so many vivid memories. [40:00]
RUPP:
I think I probably have the best of any Page that ever served there. I really do.
JOHNSON:
You certainly have vivid recollections.
RUPP:
These are only things that I think about right now. I might think about other ones, later on. I was totally interested in it, and I had hoped to be able to stay there and work in the House the rest of my life as a Doorkeeper, or something like Ralph [Roberts] did, and work on the floor, until he was elected Doorkeeper, and then to the better job, as Clerk.
JOHNSON:
And you left in 1936. And what did you do after that?
RUPP:
I went to the Federal Housing Administration, to the administrator’s office. I was with him five years. And he was just below Cabinet level. On his desk was a White House phone. He picked it up and the White House answered. Even Congressmen or Senators don’t have that sort of thing. And then we had three limousines, or three chauffeur-driven cars. One was a top Cadillac, or Lincoln, or Packard, whatever the case might be. They got a new one every year. And an Afro-American six-foot-four-tall chauffeur in uniform with leather shoes and leggings and everything else. And we had that in the office—the Cadillac, and the rest of them. Assistants of his, none of them used the top car except the administrator, or he sent me occasionally, to go see Senators on the Senate side in the chamber, or to the White House, or Congressmen. Or go on personal errands for him; he’d always send me in his car. Like, one time, he sent me to his wine cellar to send a bunch of wine to a girlfriend of his, who was in the picture Gone with the Wind, by the name of Ona Munson. And it was illegal to do it, so I had to figure out, [but] I did whatever I was asked to do. So I told whoever it was, that I had books, I thought they were heavy enough to get by, and took the chance, and got away with it. And when I went to the car the first time, I told the chauffeur that I would sit in the front with him. He said, “No, you don’t. And you sit in the back, and you wait until I open the door, and close the door, and when we get where we’re going, you wait until I come around, and open the door, and let you out.” Those were my orders, and I [44:00] only had to have them once.
JOHNSON:
And then you followed them.
RUPP:
Yeah. I have to tell you something funny. I was in this administrator’s office, and he’s a kind of a big shot, just below Cabinet status.
JOHNSON:
What was his name?
RUPP:
Stuart McDonald. And the other one was Abner Ferguson. Stuart McDonald was the main one. He was a very wealthy guy. And he had married Mrs. Moon, of the Moon Motor Company in St. Louis—it used to be a pretty well-known automobile at the time, and they had sold out before the crash.31 Later Abner Ferguson became administrator and made calls to Senators and Congressmen that he knew that he’d talk with when the hearings were before their committees and so forth. And he couldn’t find anybody that would get him in to see Wendell Willkie, who previously ran for President on the Republican ticket. He was well known, and he was being investigated for something or other in the Senate.32 And so, finally I heard enough of it and I went in there and said, “Mr. Ferguson,” I said, “I think if you send me in the car to the Capitol, I can get you and your wife some seats at this hearing.” And he said, “Do you think you can?” I said, “I can’t guarantee it, but I think I can.” He said, “Well, go.” So I went, with the chauffeur, Matthew Hurd, and while we were going down there, I wondered, “Who in the world am I going to see?” I’d bit off a pretty big chunk, and I might not be able to chew it. I thought of somebody; I said, “Why not see Chesley Jurney?”33 He was the Sergeant at Arms and I knew he could do it, because he’d be over the Capitol Police and everybody else. So I went to his office, he happened to be in. And I said, “Do you remember me, Glenn Rupp, Page in the House?” and he said, “Yeah, I’ve seen you around.” I said, “Well, I’m on a difficult assignment. I’m sticking my neck way out and I’ll probably get it chopped off, but I told my boss, the Federal Housing Administrator, that I thought maybe I could find somebody down at the Capitol that’s nice enough to permit him and his wife to go to the hearing room.” The women of the big shots always liked to go to those things because they all talked about it, and if you couldn’t make it, that sort of dampened things.

Footnotes

  1. Mary Norton, Isabella Greenway, and Ruth Bryan Owen were Democrats, and Edith Nourse Rogers served as a Republican. For more information on women who have served in Congress, see Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, Women in Congress, 1917–2006 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006) and http://womenincongress.house.gov.
  2. Doorkeeper of the House from the 62nd Congress through the 65th Congress (1911–1919) and from the 72nd Congress (1931–1933) until his death on January 27, 1943, during the 78th Congress (1943–1945). For more information on his career, see “Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives Joe Sinnott,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=322.
  3. This incident was described in great detail by the local press. For an example of the coverage, see Robert C. Albright, “Gunman Demands Floor to Plead for Relief: House Members Terrorized by Armed Champion of Idle,” 14 December 1932, Washington Post: 1.
  4. For more information on the Speaker’s Lobby, the area reserved for Members and press which runs the length of the House Chamber from east to west, see William C. Allen, The History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction, and Politics (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001): 362.
  5. The Congressional Directory from this period lists William J. Bray as the Majority Messenger in Charge of Telephones. The Congressional Directory also lists C. H. Emerson as the Majority Manager of Telephones during this period.
  6. Served as Clerk of the House from the 81st Congress through the 82nd Congress (1949–1953) and from the 84th Congress through the 89th Congress (1955–1967). Roberts also served as Doorkeeper of the House during the 79th Congress (1945–1947).
  7. See Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, “House History,” http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/house_history/index.html for an overview of each Congress, including party divisions and leadership.
  8. Reference to the group of experts assembled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who shaped the policies of the New Deal in an effort to combat the Great Depression.
  9. The RFC (Reconstruction Finance Corporation) established by President Herbert Hoover in 1932, was not part of the New Deal legislation.
  10. Several newspapers ran obituaries for the Congressman. For example, see “Rep. Truax Dies in the Capital; Ohio Lawmaker,” 10 August 1935, Washington Post: 4.
  11. Scant scholarship has been devoted to the organization, “Little Congress.” The most comprehensive secondary source that includes information on the “Little Congress” is Robert A. Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Vintage, 1990): 261–265.
  12. Congressman Shannon’s 1936 dinner for the House Pages was covered by the local press. See, for instance, “House Pages Debate Virtues of Skates at Shannon Dinner,” 25 May 1936, Washington Post: X13.
  13. Bob Menaugh served as the superintendent of the House Radio Gallery (later Radio–TV Gallery) from 1939 to 1974. For more information, see “Robert Menaugh, Headed House Radio-TV Gallery,” 4 August 1978, Washington Post: B6 and “The opening of the House Radio Gallery,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=288.
  14. In 1939 Congress established radio galleries in the House and Senate, becoming the only national legislature to divide its galleries among different media. For more detailed information on the congressional press galleries, see Donald Ritchie, Reporting from Washington: the History of the Washington Press Corps (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
  15. George C. Calver was the Attending Physician of the Capitol from 1928 to 1966. For more information on his career, see Claude Koprowski, “Capitol’s First Attending Doctor Retiring Tuesday after 38 Years,” 9 October 1966, Washington Post: B2; “The Capitol’s first Attending Physician, Dr. George Calver,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=144.
  16. Also known as the National Prohibition Act, the Volstead Act, which passed Congress in 1919, helped with the enforcement of the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol.
  17. For more information on the Bonus March of 1932, see “World War I veterans bonus bill,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=366.
  18. For more information on Brigadier General Pelham D. Glassford and the Bonus Marchers, see “Glassford’s ‘Ads’ of Free Food for Veterans Curbed,” 4 June 1932, Washington Post: 1.
  19. Placed atop the dome in 1863, the statue “Freedom” was designed by the sculptor Thomas Crawford.
  20. The interior of the Rotunda (from floor to ceiling) is 180 feet high; the exterior of the dome measures 287 feet. For additional information, see the Architect of the Capitol’s Web page on the dome, http://www.aoc.gov/cc/capitol/dome.cfm.
  21. The Resort Report is a monthly newsletter published by Mr. Rupp’s Green Valley, Arizona, retirement community, La Posada. The May 2004 issue includes an interview with Mr. Rupp that is part of the Office of History and Preservation’s oral history files.
  22. Speaker Henry Rainey died on August 14, 1934.
  23. Reference to the stock market crash of 1929, which precipitated the Great Depression.
  24. Wendell Willkie, the Republican presidential nominee in 1940, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 1941 to urge passage of the Lend–Lease Bill. Willkie’s testimony received much fanfare and was covered widely by the press. For an example of the coverage, see “Crowds Set a Record,” 12 February 1941, New York Times: 10.
  25. Senate Sergeant at Arms from the 73rd Congress through the 77th Congress (1933–1943).