This Week in National Press Club History: A very short speech

Aug. 4, 1967: This week Andrew Price begins his 45 years of service on the staff of the National Press Club. His trademark was serving head table guests gracefully at important luncheons, among them Robert F. Kennedy, Kirk Douglas, Boris Yeltsin and Henry Kissinger. At his retirement party in 2012, former president Art Wiese noted that many things had changed since then (a 25-cent coffee was now $2.55), but "one thing that hasn't changed," he continued, "is the kindness, attention to detail, and general loveliness of this very nice man...He has served nine U.S. presidents, and 45 Press Club presidents, always with a debonair charm and a quiet unassuming professionalism...The Press Club is extraordinary because people like Mr. Price have made it that way."

Aug. 4, 1974: President Richard M. Nixon resigns and leaves Washington the next day. Nixon had once said that "the press is the enemy" but in earlier years, he was often a presence at the National Press Club. As a young senator from California, he sometimes sat in on poker games with reporters at the Club. Photos show him at Club events as vice president, playing softball--and the piano, accompanying violinist Jack Benny. Just a year before his resignation, he had thanked then-Club President Don Larrabee for sending him a National Press Club jacket, "a most welcome and useful gift."

Aug. 10, 2011: Broadcasting legend Richard C. Hottelet, last of CBS's famous "Murrow Boys," receives a presidential citation at the Club Awards night. He makes one of the shortest speeches in NPC history, when, after a screening of a multi-media presentation featuring audio of his World War ll broadcasts, and imagery from the Battle of the Bulge and the invasion of Normandy, he accepts and remarks, "I have only one thing to say. I tried."

This Week in National Press Club History is brought to you by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club's history through lobby displays, events, panel discussions and its oral history project, which now contains 200 interviews of leading NPC members and officers, and are available to researchers in the Club's archives.

Highlights of the Club's 106-year history can be found in a brand new Timeline at the Club's website under "About/History".