Panama Canal 100th Anniversary By Lynn Niedermeier A century ago this month, on August 15, 1914, the steamship Ancon traveled fifty miles through the Panama Canal, making it the first vessel to pass from ocean to ocean through one of the world’s greatest shortcuts. The Ancon‘s transit through the Canal marked the completion of a daring and ambitious engineering project. This decade-long effort to save seagoing traffic the time-consuming and hazardous 8,000-mile detour around the southern tip of South America nevertheless cost about 5,600 laborers’ lives through accidents and tropical disease. Amazingly, another 22,000 are estimated to have died during a failed French attempt to construct a canal in the 1880s. In 1979, a treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter returned most of the Panama Canal Zone, then a U.S. territory, to Panama’s control. The remainder of the territory, known as the Panama Canal Area, was returned in 1999. Today, the Canal is a neutral international waterway through which some 15,000 ships pass each year. SS Ancon in the Panama Canal, 1914 Significant anniversaries such as the Panama Canal’s centennial allow WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections to showcase relevant material about the landmark occasion and to SC 2869 Manuscripts & Folklife Archives – Library Special Collections – Western Kentucky University demonstrate how international events affect even local people. Besides printed material related to the Canal, Special Collections also holds photographs of the engineering marvel, letters of people who worked in and visited the Canal Zone, and sound recordings that feature comments about the Canal when it became a political topic in the 1970s. We will be sharing some of these items on the blog during the month of August. SC 2869 Manuscripts & Folklife Archives – Library Special Collections – Western Kentucky University Bowling Greeners in the Panama Canal Zone By Jonathan Jeffrey Native Bowling Greener, Ruel Sullivan Love (1903-1987), suffered from wanderlust. He tried his hand at several occupations early in life before settling into a position as a court reporter in Chicago. When Judge Richard Curd Pope Thomas (1872-1939) asked Ruel to serve as his personal secretary and court reporter in the Panama Canal Zone, the young man jumped at the opportunity. Shortly after Ruel’s arrival, Judge Thomas, who was also from Bowling Green, wrote the young man’s father that his son was doing a fine job in the work, enjoyed plenty of rest, received a “good salary” of $27 per month, had a cozy home, and most importantly “married a fine little woman.” Thomas reassured him that Ruel had picked out a woman “of good common sense” and was “sensible in every particular and much better looking” than Ruel had led the family to believe. Letter from Thomas in the Canal Zone to George Love When Ruel took time to write, he informed his father that he was enjoying his work and asked about ways that he could invest his money in Bowling Green. In one letter he mentioned a recent court incident in which “They arraigned a Chinaman for murder. He killed two of his countrymen on one of the Dollar line boats. The case will come up soon before the Judge, and I imagine the Judge will have to pass the death sentence.” SC 2869 Manuscripts & Folklife Archives – Library Special Collections – Western Kentucky University R.C.P. Thomas President Franklin Roosevelt appointed R.C.P. Thomas as the District Judge of the Panama Canal Zone in June 1933. As he prepared to leave the U.S., local poet and friend John A. Logan penned a poetic tribute: “We send him away that the world may known/That hospitality/With justice and mercy go hand in hand/With Kentucky gallantry.” Thomas did an admirable job in Panama, but declined reappointment after his four-year term ended in 1937. He returned to Bowling Green, retired from his law practice, and spent time working with a herd of Jersey cows on his farm until he died in 1939. Ruel also returned to Bowling Green after Thomas’s term ended. He and his “sensible” wife divorced soon afterward. In 1943 Ruel moved to Louisville, where he established a court reporting business. Later he became a court reporter in New Orleans, where he remained until his retirement. Ruel died in 1987; both he and Judge Thomas are buried in Bowling Green’s Fairview Cemetery. In celebration of the Panama Canal’s centennial, the Department of Library Special Collections will feature items from the collection during the month of August 2014. SC 2869 Manuscripts & Folklife Archives – Library Special Collections – Western Kentucky University Maurice Hudson Thatcher By Allison Day Maurice Hudson Thatcher was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 15, 1870. The Thatcher family moved to Morgantown, Kentucky when Maurice was about 3-yrs-old and he grew up in Butler County. Maurice Thatcher worked as a circuit court clerk for Butler County, before he became Assistant U. S. District Attorney for Kentucky’s Western District, 1901-1908. Thatcher held the office of State Inspector and Examiner for Kentucky, 1908-1910. In 1910, Maurice Thatcher was appointed by the former U. S. President William Howard Taft as a member of the Isthmian Canal Commission which supervised construction of the Panama Canal. Maurice H. Thatcher served as Civil Governor of the Canal Zone, 1910-1913, during the construction of the Panama Canal. The Thatcher Ferry Bridge over the Panama Canal was named for Maurice Thatcher in 1961. Former U. S. President Robert F. Kennedy reportedly gave Maurice Thatcher the pen with which Kennedy signed the bill that named the bridge after Thatcher. However, the Thatcher Ferry bridge was later renamed as the Bridge of the Americas. Maurice H. Thatcher served in the House of Representatives, 1923-1933, from Kentucky’s 5th District. Thatcher sponsored legislation for the establishment of Mammoth Cave as a National Park. Thatcher actively supported a national parkway system from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park through the Mammoth Cave National Park and to the Natchez Trace Parkway near Nashville, TN. Thatcher also helped establish the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory in Panama City for the study of tropical diseases in honor of his old colleague on the canal commission, Colonel William C. Gorgas. In the House of Representatives address on May 29, 1930, the Honorable Maurice H. Thatcher concluded his speech on page 20 about the History and Significance of the Panama Canal with, “This slight ligament, which through the centuries gone has physically bound together North and South America, in the centuries to come, by the fact of its severance, shall bind and hold together the two continents in the closest bonds of commercial, political, and social friendship, and shall quicken and increase our contacts with all the lands of the earth.” SC 2869 Manuscripts & Folklife Archives – Library Special Collections – Western Kentucky University Maurice H. Thatcher Thatcher was honorary life president of the Panama Canal Society in Washington, D. C. and honorary life member of the Isthmian Historical Society. Other honors include: a medal and plaque of the Order of Vasco Nunez de Balboa from the Panama government, as well as honors from Venezuela and Ecuador for his service. Maurice H. Thatcher was the sole surviving member of the Isthmian Canal Commission when he celebrated his 100th birthday on the 56th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal. Former U. S. President Richard Nixon called to wish Thatcher a happy birthday. In a newspaper article written by William Greider, February 18, 1968, entitled …Always a Congressman, Thatcher said, “I keep my citizenship back in Kentucky,” he explained, “but I am domiciled here. I stayed here because of these public matters I was interested in. I felt I could do more good by staying here and could serve Kentucky and the Panama Canal better than I would by going back.” Maurice Hudson Thatcher died on January 6, 1973 at the age of 102 at his home in Washington, D. C. and he was buried in Frankfort, Kentucky. SC 2869 Manuscripts & Folklife Archives – Library Special Collections – Western Kentucky University Panamaniacs By Jonathan Jeffrey Americans were fascinated by the Big Dig going on in Panama in the early-1910s. The Latin American isthmus project was a sterling example of American ingenuity, Big Stick diplomacy, and cooperation. A Kentuckian with keen interest in the project was Earl Palmer of Paducah. He was co-founder of the Ferguson & Palmer Lumber Company of Paducah in 1898 and a man of adventure and florid words. The industrialist decided to satisfy his curiosity about the canal project by visiting Panama in 1913 and preserving his observations for posterity in print form. This first paragraph from the resulting book, titled The Panamaniacs, gives you an impression for Palmer’s prose and sense of humor: “When one packs a steamer trunk and fares forth to foreign parts in search of new experiences, fresh ideas and palpitating thrills, he is under no particular obligation to any one [sic] to reduce said experiences, fresh ideas and palpitating thrills to writing. Indeed he is more highly esteemed if he does nothing of the kind. But as the attempt is not yet actually prohibited by law, which possibly is due to oversight on the part of our dilatory legislators, I shall hasten to get into the game before our law-makers are awakened to a proper sense of duty.” Title page from “Panamaniacs” Palmer never mentions the names of his traveling companions; he simply refers to the other Paduchans as a Banker,