16 Febraury 14 • 2019
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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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