This week in National Press Club history: Olympic Torch and D-Day

JUNE 5, 2012: National Press Club member Tony Culley-Foster represented the United States as an Olympic Games Torchbearer when he carried the Olympic Flame across the borders of Counties Londonderry (Derry) and Tyrone in the village of Magheramason, Northern Ireland. In the summer of 1975, Tony ran 2.986 miles across the United States from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. to promote the President’s Council for Physical Fitness and Sports. In the spring of 1970, he became the only person in history to run the 1,234 circumference of Ireland. (That’s an average of 39 miles a day at a pace of under seven minutes a mile).

The gold-finished aluminum Olympic torch he carried in 2012 was displayed in the NPC lobby in a recent display featuring the many sports greats who have appeared over the years at the Club.

JUNE 6, 1944: The D Day invasion of Normandy begins. National Press Club members both past and present served during World War II in many capacities, as infantrymen, bomber and fighter pilots, war correspondents, in communications and Navy combat.

This Week In National Press Club History is brought to you by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s century-old history with lobby displays, events, panel discussions and its oral history project.

For more information about the Committee’s activities or to join the Committee, contact chair Gilbert Klein at [email protected].

For much more on the Club’s history, check out the NPC website at www.press.org/about/history. And be sure to take a look at the latest display created from the Club’s archives in the lobby across from the front desk.