AN AMERICAN PROFILE

I believe the American Profile TV series for which I once wrote scripts provides an excellent Blog format presenting little known "Makers of America"....The following quite remarkable "Profile" could not be imagined.

I first encountered Yale University's Archivist Larry Dowler at a book reading and signing when he introduced himself as the Archivist responsible for saving the Kent State University Archives from destruction by bringing them to Yale.

I explained how in 1990, my access to these Archives catalyzed the writing of Snapshots USA, my work of fiction based on the facts about the Kent State tragedy.

Writing professionally since 1948 I have a warm spot in my heart for all Archivists and Librarians who have made my career of research and writing possible. And Larry Dowler was both an Archivist and a Librarian, retiring in 1998 as Associate Librarian of Harvard College.

At a time when "Blanket Hill", the shooting site, was leveled and being replaced with a Gymnasium, Larry Dowler was hired by opponents to this "destruction of evidence" to testify to the historic and legal value of the site and associated archives.

He believed this so called "Cover-up" would fail an imperative obligation to future Historians.

Well, the Administration won. The Gymnasium was built. Blanket Hill did not become a Shrine for students to memorialize their dead. The archives and a full scale model of Blanket Hill were moved to Yale.

Today, Presidential Libraries, with few exceptions, "spin" the history of our Leaders.

The withholding and revising of public records frustrates our responsibility to learn from our past.

Archivists of professional integrity, like Larry Dowler, are essential servants of the Truth without which we will perish as a democracy.


Norman Weissman
Author of:
Snapshots USA
Acceptable Losses