Apart from academics, journalists and staffers, U.S. Senate Associate Historian Don Ritchie says he takes plenty of calls from senators themselves. And many times, they want to talk about their favorite topic: their own place in history.
Ritchie says they frequently ask him if they’re the “first” to achieve something or other. For instance, “Am I the first from my state to be governor, representative and senator?”
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“Actually, there are 101 others,” Ritchie said, illustrating what might be a typical response. “Maybe if you stood on your left foot while doing it. …”
Ritchie spoke at a National Press Club lunch, as part of the club’s 100th anniversary celebrations. He noted that the reason the club may have succeeded where other similar organizations failed is that the other clubs allowed their members to run tabs at the bar. At the NPC, however, “There was no credit at the bar or for food. That seemed to have a stabilizing effect on the finances.”
Ritchie also told the audience that the first time women were allowed on the dining room floor during a “newsmaker lunch,” rather than watching from the gallery, was at the behest of the day’s speaker, Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev. “Khrushchev was always willing to expose a capitalist injustice,” said Ritchie. Later, when Martin Luther King Jr. spoke, he didn’t make the same demand, so desperate was he to publicize the March on Washington.
