Evening Star Newspaper, March 5, 1933, Page 71

tee made use of them, using their personnel in the far-flung activities, his gigantic Inaugural Committee working out the whole program with a smoothness which old-timers say was not approached by a previous inaugural with- in their memory. The committee combed Washington thor- oughly, choosing workers by the hundreds, pick- ing out the leaders of every sort of endeavor and putting them to work to make the inau- gural a success. 3 The subcommittee chairmen, given prac- tically a free hand in preparing their plans for their own particular activities, drew on the best talent they could find among their busi- ness and social associates, and when the whole committee was rounded out there was a small army of men and women working toward mak- ing Washington’s welcome to the new Presi- dent the greatest ever accorded a new occu- pant of the White House. F course, the first job was to raise the money necessary to put the workmen to work erecting the stands and to take care of the necessary expenses of the Inaugural Com- mittee for clerk hire, stationery, etc. It was in connection with the stationery that Admiral Grayson’s committee met with its chief embarrassment. Determined not to waste money in any direction, the committee decided to “lift” the letterhead of the Hoover Inaugural Committee and use it again for the Roosevelt inaugural. The die for the letterhead was se- cured all right, and it made every bit .as im- pressive a letterhead for the Democrats as it had for the Republicans. But, in printing the stationery, the little pre- caution of closely examining the die was neg- lected, so that when stanch old partisans who had been voting the Democratic ticket since they became of age saw to their horror the names, not of the two stalwarts of the Demo- cratic party, Roosevelt and Garner, on the banner held by the eagle, which was the prin- cipal design of the letterhead, but the names of Hoover and Curtis, they blew up and wrote indignant letters to Admiral Grayson and other members of the Inaugural Committee. And there were a few red faces about the Inaugural Committee’s hearquarters in the Washington Building until the letterheads were rectified. Lloyd B. Wilson, president of the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co., and a group of other business men who formed the finance sub- committee of the Inaugural Committee, were the first to get down to actual work, and they canvassed the entire town for a $100,000 guar- antee fund with which to finance the activities of the Inaugural Committee. The money is to be returned to the guarantors when the affairs of the committee have been cleared up and the income from its various activities has been audited. All left over, it was provided in a bill passed by Congress, goes to charity, with the proceeds of the Inaugural Ball and the profits made on other activities of the committee, in- cluding the sale of souvenir programs and medals, also going to charity. Mr. Wilson and his committee found Wash- inglon business men, despite the depression, willing to dig down in their jeans for the money necessary to run the machinery that, it was estimated, would bring 200,000 visitors to the National Capital. The funds were forthcoming without a great deal of effort on the part of the finance committee, and immediately, with money to grease the wheels, the other activities of the Inaugural Committee were started at full speed Speed was always a factor in the preparations for this inaugural, for while three and a half months might appear plenty of time for pre- paring for such a show, much time had been lost while Washington 'wondered if it was to have the sort of show that characterized old- time inaugurals or whether it was to be another of the stifly formal affairs which have been held in the more recent past. Undertaking the greatest job of all, the com- mittee on grandstands and decorations, of which the architect Waddy B. Wood was chair- man, had to put on all steam possible to get done in time the gigantic task of erection of stands for 60,000 persons for the big parade. It was a task comparable with the erection of a modern college stadium, with the added diffi- culty of having the construction not concen- trated but spread over a wide area. These stands, it was decided early, must ac- commodate a much larger crowd than came to Washington for the Hoover inauguration, so with characteristic foresightedness Mr. Wood and his committee decided that since this in- augural was to be one of the biggest on record, 80 must the stands accommodate a much larger crowd. The capacity of the stands of the Hoover inaugural was practically doubled. An- other departure from the usual inaugural stand practice decreed that, in view of the fact that the variable March weather has marred more than one inaugural celebration, all but the cheapest stands be covered and its occupants protected from the weather. This plan was carried even farther in the construction of the Presidential reviewing stand, in the Court of Honor, where Mr. Wood de- signed the President’s section after the portico of old Federal Hall in New York, on the portico on which Gen. Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the United States. Mr. Wood designed a removable, glass-enclosed section that could be placed in front of the Court of Honor, and heated so that in the event of inclement weather Mr. Roosevelt would run no chances of iliness from exposure while view- ing the leng parade. Mr. Wood’s choice of the setting for this particular section of the show was effective. It was, in reality, a stage upon which the vast column moved, with the ‘audience on either side of the broad Pennsylvania avenue, the crossing of East Executive avenue, with its statues of Washington and Jefferson against a background of evergreens, on the right and left ~ Pennsylvania avenue on the eve of Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in March, 1913. sides of the Avenue, providing an appropriate proscenium arch and Pennsylvania avenue west of the stands providing an exit from the stage. OT the least of the chores in connection with the planning of the inaugural was the formation of the parade itself. The first two divisions, limited to the traditional Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, with their representative bands, the Citizens’ Mili- tary Training Camp representatives, the Re- serve Officers’ Training Camp representatives and Naval Reserves, for the first, and the gov- ernors and their staffs for the second division, were inflexible except as to size. Although more governors than had ever at- tended an inaugural before had accepted before Mr. Roosevelt's call went out, the special gov- ernors’ conferengg called by the President for tomorrow considerably swelled the number at- tending even after the record number of ac- ceptances had been received, and worked toward the success of this particular part of the in- augural. ‘The other two divisions presented the parade committee, headed by Col. E. M. Watson, with more problems. As the first call for volunteers for these divisions went out, the committee was flooded with offers from organizations of all sorts, from all over the country to come to the inaugural provided the Inaugural Committee paid their way. As there was no money for this, these organizations soon lost interest, but the enthusiasm with which the organizations which finally made up the two divisions participated in the plans was not approached, committee members said, by any previous inaugural. Another important job of the Inaugural Com- mittee, outside of providing stands for viewing the parade, and then making up a colorful but not too long and tiresome column, was the task of providing entertainment for the thou- sands of visitors, rich and poor, who crowded into the city. Realizing that such entertainments as the great concert held Friday evening, and the Inaugural ball could not reach more than a small fraction of the visitors who would come to Washington for the celebration, the enter- tainment committee, headed by Huston Thomp- son, former member of the Federal Trade Com- mission, sought to provide entertainment for every one, and the Constitution avenue carnival idea developed. The Army and Navy co- operated with the air shows, and the fireworks, which have been a feature of former inaugurals, rounded out the program. The incidental en- tertainments also were worked out with the assistance of the Inaugural Committee so that no two big events conflicted to the extent that the distinguished guests were inconvenienced, but that practically every hour of the inaugural celebration period provided ample entertain- ment for every one here for the occasion. So it went, every committee to its appointed task, and no task too small for one man, or a group of men, if necessary, to be assigned to make it go off smoothly. There was & vast amount of work in con- nection with the Inaugural ball, one of the biggest events of the kind in the history of the Nation, if not the biggest. With no big Federal building available for the ball, the Washington Auditorium had to be chosen be- cause it was the one place in the city which could accomodate such a crowd as attended the A former inaugural parade passing the President’s reviewing the W hite House. affair. Mrs. John Allan Dougherty, chairman and her Committee on the Inaugural Ball, one of the largest of the committees working with Admiral Grayson's central committee, put in long hours of planning to have the affair go off without a hitch and to raise the maximum amount of money for the charities which were the beneficiaries of the affair. Within a few days after she was appointed to the chairman- ship of the Inaugural Ball Committee, Mrs. Dougherty had established separate headquar- ters in the Hill Building, at Seventeenth and I streets, and the entire ticket sale, details of seating the Governors and their staffs, and the thousand and one other maiters in connection with such an affair were worked out separately from the work of the other busy committees about the inaugural headquarters in the Wash- ington Building. To Ray Baker, former director of the Mint, went another big task, and he chose the largest of the subcommittees under the General In- augural Committee to help him. He established offices next to Admiral Grayson’'s, in the Wash- ington Building, and immediately named more than 200 prominent Washingtonians to help him with the immense task of attending to the reception of the Governors and other distin- guished guests invited to the Capital for the inaugural. This always has been one of the greatest jobs in connection with the induction of a President, for the Governors must be treated with the consideration that their rank demands, and all must be treated alike. Trans- portation had to be provided, aides named to perform liaison duty between each Governor and the grand marshal of the parade, liaison be- tween each Governor and the President-elect, liaison between the governor and the officials of the ball, and so on, endlessly, so that no minute of the waking time of each Governor be spent in idle boredom, and no aide be left out of the proceedings in which his own par- ticular executive was taking part. EEKS of study were necessary to work out some of the details of the official inaugural program. J. Fred Essary, chairman of the Official Program Committee, had the 50-odd members of his committee doing yeoe man service digging up the historical data cone tained in the official program issued for this year’s inaugural. All avaflable records were studied, and each inaugural, from that first inaugural here, when Thomas Jefferson mount- ed his horse after breakfast, rode through mud to the Capitol, was sworn in, and on his return trip attracted quite an inaugural following, nearly 100 people, as he went back home agatn, President of the United States, was gone into thoroughly for traditions, precedents and any colorful features that might provide good read- ing for the purchasers of inaugural programs and for the guidance of the committee as & whole. & Mr. Essary employed such experts on Washe ingtonia as David Rankin Barbee, George Rothe well Brown, Ernest G. Walker, Miss Eleanor Connally and J. R. Hildebrand to aid him in compiling this work, and turn out a program that will be a model for all other such publi« cations. The history of the inaugural balls, the Presidents who have occupied the White House, the inaugural entertainments, the historical landmarks of the city, and the women who have been the first ladies of the land were studied and dealt with ‘at length, and the inaugural visitor was given a guide to the metropolitan Washington by aerial photographs, maps and other data. ‘To Daniel C. Roper, former Commissioner of Continued om Forty-fourth Page