This Week in National Press History: Club hosts FDR, Truman, LBJ

March 29, 1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes a National Press Club member and is assigned to cover the White House. Roosevelt’s favorite song “Home, Home on the Range” is sung by Metropolitan Opera singer Charles Thomas at the black tie dinner in the president’s honor for the Club's Silver Jubilee.

March 30, 1949: President Harry S. Truman, a frequent visitor to the National Press Club, presents membership card cases to three Club presidents: Joseph H. Short, Jr. (1948) of The Baltimore Sun, Oswald F. Schuette (1913) of the Chicago Inter Ocean, and John C. O’Brien (1949) of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

April 1, 2012: PBS NewsHour founder Jim Lehrer insists that the program’s serious approach to journalism is more relevant than ever as the public tries to make sense out of a flood of information. “More than ever, we need someone we can trust to go through it.” As a young reporter in Dallas on the day of the Kennedy assassination, Lehrer said he learned how fragile everything is. Since then, Lehrer says, “I have never gone to work unprepared for a calamitous earth-shaking event.”

April 2, 1981: Joe Gibbs, newly hired head coach of the Washington Redskins, discusses his approaching debut season at a National Press Club luncheon. In his second season, Gibbs leads the team to a Super Bowl victory over the Miami Dolphins (27-17).

April l3, 1963: Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, in a display of bipartisan camaraderie at the National Press Club’s Congressional Night, is joined by key Democrat and Republican legislators: Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.), House Majority Leader Carl Albert (D-Okla.), Rep. Hale Boggs (D-La.) and Republican Reps. Leslie Arends (R-Ill.) and Charles Halleck (R-Ind.).

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 revolving lobby displays of prominent NPC guests, panel discussions, events and oral histories.

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