16 Febraury 14 • 2019
jn
A
ttorney Henry Meyers, a dis-
tinguished leader in the Detroit
Jewish community, walked his
daughter Joan down the aisle when
she married her husband, Dr. Robert
Jampel, on Oct. 2, 1952. Two months
later, when her father died at age 57, city
dignitaries attended his funeral service
at Congregation Shaarey Zedek.
Joan’
s mother, Delia Imerman
Meyers, missed the wedding entirely.
She was 46 and the former president of
Temple Beth El Sisterhood and several
state-wide Jewish women’
s organizations
when she passed away in 1946.
Throughout her life, Joan Jampel, 89,
has honored the legacy of the parents
she lost so early. Through her initiative,
the main Detroit Public Library (DPL)
on Woodward is exhibiting a sam-
pling of donated letters written by U.S.
presidents. Jampel said Henry Meyers,
a former DPL president, started the
collection because he was “interested
in documents in all areas of American
history.
”
“U.S. Presidential Autographs: An
Exhibit of Letters from the Special
Collections Department of the Detroit
Public Library” features letters signed
by Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Harry
S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon
Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter,
George H.W
. Bush, Bill Clinton, George
W
. Bush and Barack Obama.
Meyers “managed to secure signed
letters from each president, beginning
with Washington through Truman, but
then he [Meyers] passed away,
” said
Mark Bowden, DPL coordinator of spe-
cial collections.
“I’
d long wanted to complete the col-
lection of presidential letters,
” Jampel
said. Her introduction to Bowden came
via Barbara Madgy Cohn, co-author of
The Detroit Public Library: An American
Classic (Wayne State University Press,
2017). The women met when Cohn was
conducting a tour focused on library
art and architecture for the Jewish
Historical Society of Michigan.
“Mark [Bowden] found the presiden-
tial letters, which are part of the Rare
Book Collection, and we went through
them,
” Jampel said. Bowden, who has 23
years with DPL, oversees the five sepa-
rate collections that comprise the main
library’
s special collections.
The presidential letters are kept in
two ornate boxes. The first “volume,
”
as Bowden called it, contains mount-
ed letters starting with Washington
to Eisenhower. The DPL collection’
s
longest letter, and Joan’
s favorite, is
Jefferson’
s lengthy, handwritten letter
that outlines his plans for the future
University of Virginia. Most of the let-
ters are typed.
A ‘Presidential’
Achievement
ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Daughter completes father’
s presidential letters
collection, on display now at the Detroit Public Library.
COURTESY OF DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY
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