This is a guest post by Manuscript Division archivist Melissa Capozio Jones and is the latest in an occasional series that looks behind the scenes at the work of Manuscript Division staff.
As archivists, we become intimately familiar with the subjects of our collections, generally without ever meeting them. Papers often come to us after their creators have died, upon which we spend days, months, and even sometimes years reading their personal correspondence and diaries and looking at the photographs and other material that document their lives.
Like many of my colleagues, I have often wished I could meet some of the people in our collections and hear their stories firsthand. I have worked on the papers of folks from all over the globe, and I rarely have the chance to pay them a visit, as they are often deceased by the time their collections reach the Library. Earlier this year I was tasked with processing the papers of Captain Robert A. Lavender. The further entrenched I became in the work, the more I felt I had to take a little field trip if he was nearby.
Captain Lavender was an accomplished naval officer. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1912, then spent the next four decades in the Navy. Early in his career, he focused on radio communication and engineering, initially working as the chief of the Navy’s Research and Development Aircraft Radio Division for the Bureau of Engineering. In 1919 he served as team member and radio officer of the Navy Curtiss-3 (NC-3), a naval flying boat that was initially built to provide both air and water antisubmarine patrol off the coast of Europe. The NC-3 completed the first transatlantic flight alongside its sister craft, the NC-4. Starting from New York state, the NC flying boats made water stops off Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Azores Islands before completing their nineteen-day trek in Lisbon, Portugal. This accomplishment was quickly outshone by the first nonstop transatlantic flight completed just two weeks later by two members of the Royal Air Force. Eight years later, Charles Lindbergh would complete the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight, overshadowing both the NC crews and the Royal Air Force in the history books.
Lavender continued his naval service as a radio officer and communication superintendent for the United States Navy’s Asiatic Fleet of ships off the coast of China throughout the 1920s before pivoting to work in legal patents. In 1924 he became chief of the Patent Division of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy (JAG), and earned his bachelor of laws degree from George Washington University in 1927. For the next decade he worked for the Patent Division and became the flag secretary of multiple naval fleets overseeing correspondence and office operations for each fleet. He was also the commander of the USS Nevada and USS Tuscaloosa. He retired from active duty in the service in 1939 to pursue law. However, his retirement was short-lived. In late 1941, when the United States entered World War II, Lavender was recalled to active duty to work simultaneously as a patent advisor for the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) and later the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and as chief counsel for the Manhattan Project, the top-secret program to develop an atomic bomb during World War II. He oversaw patent matters for all OSRD contracts, determining who held the rights, title, and licenses to approximately 14,000 scientific inventions that were created for the war effort. In collaboration with the AEC, he helped establish a highly classified section of the OSRD devoted entirely to the creation of patents for nuclear energy projects, and in 1946 was awarded the Legion of Merit for his work overseeing the patents for the atomic bomb. In 1947, he officially left the service for the last time and returned to his private legal practice.
Captain Lavender’s collection is small, only six boxes in total, plus about 8.5 gigabytes of digital files. However, the contents are fascinating, especially for someone like me, who enjoys learning about all the incredible stories that make up the whole of a person’s life. Lavender’s work was both historically significant and wide ranging. His collection contains diaries and journals from throughout his naval career detailing day-to-day work as well as significant personal events, such as a 1917 plane crash into the ocean off the coast of Haiti. Lavender was testing wireless radio transmission between military planes and battleships when his plane stalled. It plummeted 400 feet, but through the skillful maneuvers of the accompanying pilot, he and Lavender survived. The crash and Lavender’s injuries and recovery are detailed in one of his diaries.
The collection also has extensive documentation related to the Navy Curtiss flying boats and the first transatlantic flight, including Lavender’s personal logbook from the NC-3’s flight, photographs of the event, and comprehensive reports to the chief of naval operations following the completion of the mission. There are multiple folders of Lavender’s research notes related to an investigation into Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commanding officer of the United States Navy Pacific Fleet during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Lavender served as legal counsel to Kimmel, who was under presidential and congressional investigation for his decisions leading up to the attack. The research material includes publications, correspondence, and research notes on all manner of subjects surrounding the attack.
Rich with information and research value, Captain Lavender’s collection was truly a treat to process. My favorite material by far was the hours of film footage and home movies I sifted through. Lavender’s work and personal pursuits took him all over the world, and he captured footage of every corner he visited. There are scenes from the streets of Japan and China in 1929, family travel across Europe, west Asia and northern Africa, Yosemite National Park and the California coast, the 1934 Rose Bowl Parade, and South America from the deck of a naval cruiser in 1939. Peppered through the globe-trotting footage are clips of Lavender playing with his grandchildren, enjoying the retirement he well and truly earned.
When I discovered that Captain Lavender and his wife were buried in Arlington National Cemetery, a mere mile from my house, I couldn’t pass up the chance to go say hello. It is truly an honor to become the steward of a person’s story once their papers have entered the Library of Congress. That is what makes my job as an archivist at the Library of Congress so magical.
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Comments
This post is one more example to support my belief that although the materials at the Library of Congress are amazing, the staff is the true treasure. I appreciate your work and enjoyed reading about this piece of it.