When history leaps from the page
Some years ago I was sitting at a research table at the state archives in Harrisburg. I had filled out a research slip for something or other when I was handed (by mistake) a letter-size envelope containing a piece of canvas – a sample for those in state government in 1861 who bought tents for the soldiers early in the Civil War.
Opening the envelope, the aroma not just of that sliver of canvas but, I imagined, of an entire era of history – our most traumatic national moment – came wafting out.
I never felt as close to “history” as I did in that moment. I guess the lesson was that you can read history, you can write history, but to smell it is a whole other experience.
It’s not the only moment in which the gods of history have intruded into my here and now space. It doesn’t happen frequently. As a matter of fact, it hasn’t happened for some time now.
Speaking of such, I visited Arthurdale, W.Va., not far from Morgantown, for the first time in the early 1980s. It was already half a century old, having been created in the 1930s as part of the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt. You may have noticed, I mention Roosevelt with some frequency in this space. He was a tremendously consequential president during a tremendously consequential time – the Great Depression and World War II.
I don’t ever remember bringing up FDR’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. She was the first activist first lady. She was Hillary Clinton on steroids.
Eleanor Roosevelt was chiefly responsible for Arthurdale. It was the first of 90 or so “planned” communities. (Norvelt, in Westmoreland County, is another.) It was built from scratch. Mrs. Roosevelt and the New Dealers felt very strongly that coal miners, having experienced a decade of economic woes even before the Depression, needed special attention from the federal government.
She may have been right about that, though there were people who said she was wrong. Too expensive, too paternalistic, they said.
You would never make that case to Lova McNair. I met Lova in 1982. I was doing an article about Arthurdale, and she was an unofficial community spokeswoman. She was an original resident of Arthurdale.
Lova was responsible for another one of those special history moments, when the past seems to leap into the present.
She was transported, or so I imagined, and I, interviewing her, went along. I hitchhiked a ride with Lova back to the day in 1938 when FDR himself showed up in Arthurdale.
It was a lovely spring day. Hours earlier, Roosevelt had spoken to the Arthurdale School graduating class. It was his first and only visit to town. Eleanor was there often, and previous graduates had met the president on annual visits to the White House.
Some time on the afternoon of that day, Lova was standing at a window of her home on Q Street when she saw a car, a convertible, stop just outside her door. From a back seat, the president was taking a look at the town. According to Lova, he spent several minutes gazing at the flowers blossoming in her front yard.
That’s when it happened. The intensity of Lova’s recollection placed Roosevelt right outside her door, again. I know that sounds strange, but that’s what I felt, and I felt that way, I believe, because Lova felt that way.
Lova, 76 at the time, was still thankful to the Roosevelts for the opportunity to live in Arthurdale, for the lift it provided her and her family during the bleak, dreary years of the Great Depression.
I tried back in 1982 to tell the story of Arthurdale from the viewpoint of people like Lova who experienced it.
I succeeded some. I failed some. I failed to mention that Arthurdale was segregated. No Blacks allowed.
Eleanor, who fought for civil rights her entire adult life, opposed this policy before finally bowing to pressure that the thing would not fly otherwise. Still, it begs asking: Does this make the Roosevelts racists, closet or otherwise?
Even by today’s absolutist standard, it’s not certain, at least to me, though others would say it sure does. By the standard of 1938, it’s a pretty clear no. The question is: Which standard do we use – our contemporary standard or the standard of the time?
The answer matters because history matters. The past is never quit over, as both William Faulkner and Lova McNair knew.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.