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THE NEW SMITHSONIAN // GIFT GUIDE // FOOTBALL’S DAY IN THE SUN THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE FALL 2016 For 30 years in the Senate, Harry Reid, JD ’64, has burnished an image as a fighter, a pragmatic workhorse and the consummate inside player. The chamber’s top-ranking Democrat leaves Congress in January on his terms, with few regrets and still plenty of gw magazine / Fall 2016 GW MAGAZINE FALL 2016 A MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS CONTENTS [Features] 26 / Rumble & Sway After 30 years in the U.S. Senate—and at least as many tussles as tangos—the chamber’s highest-ranking Democrat, Harry Reid, JD ’64, prepares to make an exit. / Story by Charles Babington / / Photos by Gabriella Demczuk, BA ’13 / 36 / Out of the Margins In filling the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture, alumna Michèle Gates Moresi and other curators worked to convey not just the devastation and legacy of racism, but the everyday experience of black life in America. / By Helen Fields / 44 / Gift Guide From handmade bow ties and DIY gin to cake on-the-go, our curated selection of alumni-made gifts will take some panic out of the season. / Text by Emily Cahn, BA ’11 / / Photos by William Atkins / 52 / One Day in January Fifty years ago this fall, GW’s football program ended for a sixth and final time. But 10 years before it was dropped, Colonials football rose to its zenith, the greatest season in program history and a singular moment on the national stage. / By Matthew Stoss / [Departments] On the cover: Photo courtesy of A visitor to the Smithsonian’s new 5 / GW News John Shinkle/Politico National Museum of African American History and Culture (“Out of the Margins,” 60 / Alumni News Pg. 36) descends an escalator as light filters through the bronze-colored metal lattice that envelops the building. LOGAN WERLINGERLOGAN gwmagazine.com / 1 SIGN UP TO RECEIVE THE LATEST NEWS FROM GW TODAY VIA E-MAIL Be Informed | Be Connected | Be Notified gwtoday.gwu.edu Fall 2016 Volume 27, Issue 1 What’s the best gift you’ve ever given or received? MANAGING EDITOR // Danny Freedman, BA ’01 ASSISTANT EDITOR // Matthew Stoss GIVEN: “A museum- PHOTO EDITOR // William Atkins quality replica of a human skull for a UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHER nephew who was an // Logan Werlinger art student.” DESIGN // GW Marketing & Creative Services ART DIRECTOR // Dominic N. Abbate, BA ’09, MBA ’15 RECEIVED: “My grandmother gave me the diamond earrings my ART DIRECTOR // John McGlasson, BA ’00, MFA ’03 GIVEN: “A trip to grandfather had given her Scotland for Christmas.” on their first anniversary.” CONTRIBUTOR // Keith Harriston (senior managing editor), GW Today CONTRIBUTOR // Kurtis Hiatt, GW Today GIVEN: “My dad accuses me GIVEN: “A series of 50 of throwing away his old high handwritten notes that my CONTRIBUTOR // Julyssa Lopez, GW Today school yearbook when I was siblings and I sent to my parents mad at him as a little kid (no in the mail for the 50 days leading proof). For Christmas last year, CONTRIBUTOR // Kristen Mitchell, GW Today up to their 50th anniversary.” I found a PDF of the original yearbook and had it printed.” CONTRIBUTOR // Ruth Steinhardt, GW Today RECEIVED: INTERN // Rebecca Manikkam, GWSB ’17 RECEIVED: “One Direction “A college education.” concert tickets” Steven Knapp PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY Aristide J. Collins Jr. Lorraine Voles, BA ’81 VICE PRESIDENT FOR DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNI RELATIONS VICE PRESIDENT FOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS Sarah Gegenheimer Baldassaro Matthew R. Manfra ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR ALUMNI RELATIONS Rachel Muir Leah Rosen EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR EDITORIAL SERVICES ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR MARKETING AND CREATIVE SERVICES GW Magazine (ISSN 2162-6464) is published three times per year by GW’s Division of External Relations, Rice Hall 5th floor, Washington, D.C. 20052. Phone: 202–994–5709; email: [email protected]. © 2016 The George Washington Opinions expressed in POSTMASTER Please send change-of-address notices to GW Magazine, University. The George these pages are those of GW Alumni Records Office, 2033 K St., NW, Suite 300, Washington, Washington University is an the individuals and do not D.C. 20052. Notices can also be sent via alumni.gwu.edu/update, email equal opportunity/affirmative necessarily reflect official to [email protected], or 202-994-3569. Periodicals postage paid at action institution. positions of the university. Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. gwmagazine.com / 3 “We’re taking all those people that studies have shown have worse outcomes and we’re saying, ‘This is your Statue of Liberty, this is your place to come get transplanted.’” TRANSPLANT SURGEON JOSEPH KEITH MELANCON (P. 10) From the archives ___________ 15 5 questions ______________________ 17 george welcomes _____________ 18 Bookshelves __________________ 20 GW NEWS sports ____________________________ 22 [history] The Final Word After 50 years at GW and 22 volumes of work, researchers prepare to hit the lights on a project that became the definitive history of the first WILLIAM ATKINS U.S. Congress. // By David Frey gwmagazine.com / 5 GW NEWS n a windowless room in a West End diaries, correspondence, historic doodles stolen artifacts and an FBI sting. office building, Charlene Bangs and the occasional acerbic poem. Each book, “There are big bins full of paper debris Bickford’s life work fills desktops, published by Johns Hopkins University going out of here every day at this point,” bookshelves, filing cabinets and, Press, is as thick as a fist—some more than a Ms. Bickford says. “It’s a little strange.” increasingly, several very large recycling thousand pages—bound in blue with gilded When the books are published, she will WILLIAM ATKINS bins. lettering. retire, ending a career entirely dedicated For more than 50 years, her First Federal “It’s an enormous scholarly achievement,” to a momentous but overlooked period of Congress Project has set out to document a says historian Fergus Bordewich, whose American history. little-known nor long-remembered period of 2016 book, The First Congress, relied on The First Federal Congress convened American history, when a group of mostly the project’s work. “It’s packed with rich from 1789 to 1791, before the District of forgotten Founding Fathers gathered to take detail and has a comprehensiveness that is Columbia had been carved out along the the framework of a new Constitution and unmatched by any collection I’ve worked banks of the Potomac River. Most of those build a government. with.” first 95 senators and representatives left Ms. Bickford, MA ’69, joined the team as When Ms. Bickford and her team—co- behind families to meet in New York and, a graduate student in 1967, a year after the editor Ken Bowling and associate editors later, Philadelphia, to cobble together an project left the National Archives to be based William diGiacomantonio and Helen Veit, experiment in federalism. at GW, within the Columbian College of Arts MPhil ’77—publish the final two volumes in “We are in a wilderness without a single and Sciences. She’s been its director since the 2017, a project that officially began in 1950 footstep to guide us,” lamented James 1970s, steering it through the publication of will end, and the office will close the doors Madison, then a congressman from Virginia nearly two dozen volumes that document that on more than a half-century of research that and one of the few in that first Congress who first Congress using official records, personal included gumshoe sleuthing, codebreaking, remains a household name. “WE ARE IN A WILDERNESS WITHOUT A SINGLE FOOTSTEP TO GUIDE US,” LAMENTED JAMES MADISON, THEN A CONGRESSMAN FROM VIRGINIA. 6 / gw magazine / Fall 2016 The Articles of Confederation had failed. file folders she made 50 years ago out of he says. In one case, he tracked manuscripts The revolutionary government and many of stapled construction paper to hold oversized to a Pennsylvania auction, alongside a run the states were deep in debt. Threats loomed documents. The project’s 20 volumes run of Hustler magazines. Another turned up from the British to the north, the Spanish down the center of the table like a spine. Page precious letters in a Wilkes-Barre, Pa., barn. to the south and Native American tribes to proofs for Volume 21 lie stacked in a dozen Dr. Bowling helped find Pennsylvania’s the west. States sparred with one another. piles on one side. Another stack destined for missing original of the Bill of Rights (it was Regions mistrusted each other. Four-dozen Volume 22—which nudges into the period hanging in the New York Public Library), currencies were in exchange. Americans, after the first Congress and collects some and North Carolina’s, which had landed including many of those first legislators, materials unavailable for earlier volumes— mysteriously in the hands of private distrusted a federal government. Amid sits on a desk in the entryway. collectors before FBI agents posed as buyers this backdrop, lawmakers put aside deep Across the table, Dr. Bowling, the co- and seized it. divisions to craft a government. editor, dumps a stack of papers into a gray bin Touching those old documents feels like In three sessions, the first Congress filled to overflowing. They’re all photocopies, touching history, Dr. Bowling says. “You established the Supreme Court and a federal he says; the office has no original manuscripts. have your hands on something” that one of judiciary. It created the first executive The papers he’s tossing are old newspaper the Founding Fathers touched, he says. departments—the Treasury, State and War accounts of the first Congress. Already gone But they also hold lessons that are still departments.