This grant application is for a program which was to have been funded with $50,000 in federal money. It was created to help retired Presidential Appointees, men and women who at some point in their lives were considered so talented as to have been invaluable resources to the President and to the United States of America, return to “society [as] whole persons.” Err…what? In taking a Presidential Appointment were these people somehow excluded from “society?” What happened to them while serving in the Federal Government that caused them to become incomplete persons? How, if they were incomplete persons who had been excluded from society, could a course on taxidermy possibly help them? And who in their right mind would ever think that a home study course on brain surgery was a good idea?!
After finding this application and its accompanying documents I was completely outraged on behalf of the American taxpayers of 1969. “How dare the government be so careless with money?! And they would be spending it on themselves, no less!” That’s when someone kindly pointed out to me the fact that the whole thing was a joke.
“Oh.”
Face palm.
In my own defense I must say that these items were filed with other, non-prank grant applications and that, while falling for an old joke is embarrassing almost beyond belief, it’s also funny and that’s worth something. It only got funnier when I looked more closely at the application documents and realized that it was dated for the day after Berry’s retirement and was obviously meant for him to find. Judging from his fantastic response to the letter below, he got the joke more quickly than I did. I just love snark!
In 2010, the University of Cincinnati Libraries received a $61,287 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the Archives and Records Administration to fully process the Theodore M. Berry Collection in the Archives & Rare Books Library. All information and opinions published on the Berry project website and in the blog entries are those of the individuals involved in the grant project and do not reflect those of the National Archives and Records Administration. We gratefully acknowledge the support of NARA.
