Hats Off to Archivists!

I just learned recently that October is American Archives Month. I’m interrupting my stories on seagoing cowboys today to take my hat off to the many archivists who have helped me gather my own archives of historical materials from which I write this blog.

Over the past nearly twenty years, I’ve been traveling around the country gathering materials from archives and individuals to document this little-known history of UNRRA’s and Heifer International’s seagoing cowboys. And what a rich history it is! I could not be telling it without access to the gems of primary source materials which I have found in the archives I’ve visited.

Searching through Heifer International historical materials at Vital Records Control, Maumelle, AR, 2011. Photo credit: Rex Miller

Kudos to the many archivists who have assisted me at:

• The Brethren Historical Library and Archives [BHLA] in Elgin, Illinois – home of the historical materials of Heifer International founder Dan West and the many Brethren leaders and organizations that helped usher in the Heifer Project. A special tip of the hat to the late Ken Shaffer and the recently retired archivist Bill Kostlevy.
• The United Nations Archives and Record Management Section in New York City – home of the archived materials of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration [UNRRA], a precursor to the UN.
• The Manchester University Archives – home of alumni seagoing cowboy records and Brethren history. Kudos to archivist Jeanine Wine.
• The Mennonite Church USA Archives when they were located at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana – home of records of Mennonite seagoing cowboys. My thanks to former archivist Dennis Stoesz.
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library – home of the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen records.
• And last, but not least, the many staff members of Heifer International who have been caretakers of Heifer International’s historical materials while they were located at Vital Records Control in Maumelle, Arkansas, and are now located at Heifer’s headquarters in Little Rock. May these precious materials one day find a dedicated archival home. Many, many thanks to retired staffer Kathy Moore, herself a seagoing cowgirl, for her organization of Heifer’s historical materials before I started my research. You made my search for relevant documents ever so much easier than it would have been.
  

  Kathy Moore receiving Heifer International’s “Make a Difference Award” during their 70th anniversary celebration, March 2014.

“Archivists bring the past to the present. They’re records collectors and protectors, keepers of memory. They organize unique, historical materials, making them available for current and future research.”
— Lisa Lewis for the Society of American Archivists

Thank you to archivists everywhere who help us navigate the present by understanding the past.

Seagoing cowboy L. W. Shultz unites Warsaw, Indiana, with Warsaw, Poland, 1945

A side story from Heifer Project’s S. S. Santiago Iglesias trip to Poland, of the two previous posts, revolves around Indiana seagoing cowboy L. W. Shultz.

L. W. Shultz photo and autograph in cowboy supervisor Clifton Crouse’s scrapbook. Courtesy of Merle Crouse.

One of those larger than life figures in the Church of the Brethren, with his fingers in many pots, Shultz was instrumental in the formation of the Brethren Service Committee (BSC) in 1939. He served on the committee through the years of World War II and was therefore involved in the creation of the Heifer Project, a BSC program.

In 1942, the year Heifer Project began, Shultz took a leave of absence from his duties as professor and librarian at Manchester College to work more actively with the BSC’s development of their relief work. So it comes as no surprise that when Heifer Project was preparing to send its first shipment of heifers to Poland in the fall of 1945, they called on Shultz to serve as cowboy foreman for the trip. He was sent to the UNRRA headquarters in Washington, D.C., to make arrangements.

Shultz was a mover and a shaker who didn’t miss out on opportunities. Somehow, through the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, who was also the Minister of Agriculture and who was in Washington, D.C., at the same time as Shultz, Shultz made arrangements to take a trip to Warsaw while his ship was in Poland. And somehow, it developed that the city of Warsaw, Indiana, sent a gift of $1,000 with Shultz to be presented to the Mayor of Warsaw, Poland. The slowness in unloading the livestock and cargo off the S. S. Santiago Iglesias gave Shultz ample time for a three-day trip to Warsaw to deliver the monetary gift from Indiana.

L. W. Shultz, left, greeting Mayor Stanislaw Tolwinski in his office in Warsaw, Poland, December 1945. Photo courtesy of the Shultz family.

A year later, in November 1946, Shultz went as cowboy supervisor and foreman with another load of Heifer Project cattle to Poland, this time on the SS William S. Halsted. Before leaving home, Shultz had arranged for himself and three other cowboys to stay in Poland to lay plans for Brethren Service Committee work there. In his autobiography Shultz writes, “Our captain was determined that we all should return [to the United States] with him but on the last night in port we four went ashore AWOL and stayed over night in the home of an old cobbler. The next morning we went down to the dock just in time to see the ship pull out.”

During their travels, the foursome visited heifer recipients and distributed relief supplies they had brought along. Shultz’s service to Poland on both trips did not go unrecognized by the Polish people. In a December 3, 1945, thank you letter from the mayor of Warsaw, Poland, to the mayor of Warsaw, Indiana, for their monetary gift, Mayor Tolwinski writes,

As Mayor of the City of Warsaw, the most ruined city of all by the Hitler barbarism, I have the privilege to extend to you through Mr. Lawrence Shultz my heartiest brotherly greetings to you personally, and through you to the people of the City of Warsaw, Indiana U. S. A.

We are proud that the tradition of the struggle for freedom in the United States in which our Polish warriors took part, is still so deeply alive among the American Society as to express itself in giving the name of our city to an American City.

One of those warriors to whom Mayor Tolwinski refers was Tadeusz Kosciuszko, born in Poland in 1746. He came to America in 1776 to help during America’s war of independence, becoming a Brigadier General of the Continental Army. He remains to this day a symbol of Polish-American goodwill. A medal created on the bicentennial of Kosciuszko’s birth in 1946 was presented to Shultz on his second visit to Warsaw, Poland – a fitting tribute, as the city of Warsaw, Indiana, resides in Kosciusko County, named after the General. The medal now resides in the library of Manchester University [previously College] where Shultz spent so many years as librarian.

Kosciuszko medal awarded to L. W. Shultz. Photo: Peggy Reiff Miller.

Kosciuszko medal awarded to L. W. Shultz. Photo: Peggy Reiff Miller.