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The papers of Russell I. Thackrey were transferred from three file cabinet drawers into three boxes. Original order of the collection seems to have been alphabetical, although some parts appear to be out of sequence. The files have been placed in the boxes in the same order they were received. The papers reflect the post-retirement activities of Russell I. Thackrey. Most of the material is dated after 1970, although a few exceptions do exist. Earlier material consists of a few letters and articles between 1965 and 1970, and some letters with earlier dates filed in reference to a subject he was writing on. An example of such is within the Friends of Art File, in which letters and invoices concerning art bought in 1935 were filed among more recent materials. During their retirement years, Russell and his wife, Emily, relocated from Washington D.C. to Manhattan Kansas. From this location, he wrote numerous letters and manuscripts. The details of his career prior to 1970, which are not included in the collection, can be found in the Contemporary Authors, Volumes 37-40. The material present includes magazine articles, newspaper clippings, manuscripts, speeches, incoming and outgoing correspondence. Those represented in the collection were journalists, editors, members of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, of which Thackrey was Director emeritus, personal acquaintances, and Government personnel. A few included in the collection were Bob Dole, Nancy Kassebaum, Jim Slattery, and John Carlin. Letters to Duane Acker, President of Kansas State University, 1975-1986 were also found. Thackrey had worked on an article about former Kansas State University President Milton Eisenhower (1943-1950), and parts of the manuscript were found. The main emphasis of Thackrey's work was education. He was extremely concerned with the rising cost of college, and the problems associated with students finding financial assistance. He also kept files on desegregation, educational organizations and Government generated ideas. His commentary on the Bennett plan is an example of his concern for Government plans. He advocated the lowering of tuition. Two photographs were removed from the collection and placed under the heading of Russell I. Thackrey. One was of himself, and the other photograph was of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges meeting.

This collection includes diaries, literary works, documents by subjects, and college diplomas from Stuart and Rose Pady from 1921 to 1998. There are 66 diaries, 18 from Rose and 48 from Stuart. Stuart’s diaries describe his youth and early study in Canada, his work at the New York Botanical Gardens, trips to Canada, Alaska, and the Arctic to trap and study airborne microorganisms. Rose’s diaries describe planning and costs for their travels, records of her family’s daily lives, and details as to how she supported Stuart’s academic career. The literary works include Stuart's publications and dissertation. The subject documents include newspaper clippings, a college Sigma Xi certificate, college notes on mycology, and photographs of lab experiments and family photos. Oversize materials include college diplomas.

This collection includes research and personal materials of Stephen L. and Enid Stover from 1956 to 2013. The bulk of the papers is from Stephen's time as a geography professor at Kansas State University, with his slides, diaries, and manuscripts dealing with global geography, Kansas agriculture, and the scholarship and instruction of his academic department. Major topical areas include Kansas, New Zealand, Australia, Stover genealogical materials, and extensive information on geographic subjects from around the world. Additional materials are from Enid, Stephen's wife, and include personal documents, works of poetry, and teaching materials. Included are Enid's diaries from 1981 to 2004 (some missing years), some identification cards, drafts of her poetry, and drafts of Sue Stover's 2012 biography of Enid and of a 2014 publication of Enid's poetry.

This collection contains four boxes all consisting of different materials for the Open house, the Steel Ring Society puts on every spring. Along with materials for the Engineering open house there are photos from meetings of the Steel Ring Society and artifacts that were used in prior initiation of the society.

These materials are from the Landon Lecture series including booklets from the 2006 lectures by George W. Bush and Sam Brownback, a ticket to Richard Nixon's 1970 lecture, a parking permit for Ronald Reagan's 1982 lecture, a souvenir photo print of Richard Nixon and Alf Landon from 1970, and an inscribed copy of William Boyer's 1968 book, Issues 1968.

This collection includes K-State's Sports Information photography collection and team documents. The materials include documents and photos from a variety of sports, including baseball, basketball, field hockey, football, golf, gymnastics, swimming, tennis, track, rowing, and wrestling. The photography collection includes coach and player portraits, along with competition and sideline photos. The document collection includes scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, team files, scorebooks, and game programs. The collection is sorted approximately by item type and grouped into series by sport. The photography collection is stored in flip-top boxes, while the majority of the documents are in cubic foot boxes. The approximate dates of the materials are 1931-2000.

The Society for Military History records (1933-2006) consists primarily of administrative and journal-related correspondence, organizational planning memoranda, and internal officer level reports. The original general arrangement of the records has been retained wherever possible. The majority of the collection is related to the preparation for annual conferences and the publishing of the organization's quarterly journal. The collection is organized into seven series: 1) Historic Papers, 2) Administrative Records, 3) Subject Files, 4) Journal Publishing Records, 5) Financial Records, 6) Printed Material, 7) Photographs. More detailed summaries of each series follow the scope and content section.

Originating as collaboration between the army's publications/historical research office workers and several Washington, D.C. area archivists, the organization, originally called the American Military History Foundation, was formed in an attempt to supplement the military's primary resource-poor collection in preparation to fight future wars. In time, the organization gravitated towards the scholarly study of American war fighting capabilities and public policy. Eventually, the organization grew into a multi-faceted society of scholars, military personnel, archivists, and military history enthusiasts, encompassing a dual foreign and domestic orientation, which encouraged a veritable kaleidoscope of traditional and non-traditional subject fields. Hence, this collection spans the history of the organization's different incarnations chronologically and by subject. These periods of change are reflected in their changes in name. They are the American Military History Foundation (AMHF), 1933-1939, the American Military Institute (AMI), 1939-1990, and the Society for Military History (SMH), 1990-present, respectively.

Their main publication, frequently referred to as "the journal" in documentation, has also changed names several times. They are The Journal of the American Military History Foundation (1937-1939/1940), Military Affairs (1939/1940-1988), and The Journal of Military History (1988-present), respectively.

The records also reflect the organization's involvement with other scholarly organizations, most notably the American Historical Association (AHA), the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and the United States Commission on Military History (USCMH), as well as their affiliation and later absorption of the veterans/historians association the Order of the Indian Wars (OIW).

Consequently, the strength of the collection lies with documentation concerning both the shifting needs of the general military, academic community, and the general public as well as the increased diversification of the military historiographic landscape due to the organization's non-profit efforts in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The Historic Papers (1933-1972) series consists of (1) box of documentation, relating to the original goals of the organization, several early projects, certificates of incorporation, constitutions and by-laws, reports outlining the duties of officers, copyright information, taxes, early organizational correspondence between founding members, and agreements made with other organizations regarding membership and journal publishing, including the Order of the Indian Wars (OIW) and Kansas State University (KSU). Also found in the series are a few 1935 articles, published through Army Ordinance, which provided a mission statement, the creation of an organization beyond the Army History Division and served as the starting point for the organization's publishing arm.

The Administrative Records (1933-2007) series consists of (79) boxes of correspondence and reports circulated between the officers of presidential administrations, individual organizational members, the executive directors, and the boards of trustees. These files include such issues as membership drives, conference planning, journal publication evaluations, officer reports, and general correspondence. The papers covering the early years focus on daily administrative activities within a narrow scope of weeks and months. The papers covering the latter years of the organization span both daily material and long-range planning by the organization's officers. Many notable archivists and historians served as officers in the organization, including Trevor Dupuy, William Foote, B.F. Cooling, Russell Weigley, K. Jack Bauer, Alan Millett, Robert Berlin, Donald Bittner, Timothy Nenninger, Edward Coffman, and Edwin Simmons. Much of the correspondence and officer reports also shed light on several key events in the organization's history, including a 1940s attempted transformation of the journal towards a National Geographic-type format by Dallas Irving, the 1950s and 1960s performance of an all-volunteer editorial staff managed by Victor Gondos, Trevor Dupuy's late 1950 attempts to develop AMI into an increasingly scholarly organization, periodic evaluations of Kansas State University's journal publishing performance, the forces behind the creation of the Moncado Awards and the AMI/SMH Book Award, the search for a replacement publisher for the journal prior to the 1988 completion of Kansas State University 's contract, and reports outlining the sequence of fiscal/membership crises which nearly dissolved the organization. Similarly, the SMH papers of Donald Bittner collected in this series outline the entire process of conference creation from thematic conception to methodological process and management to the post-conference publication of several papers in the Marine Corps University's "Perspectives on Warfighting." Correspondence pertaining to several other noted military historians can also be found in this series, including material by Martin Blumenson, Victor Gondos, Brian Linn, Forest Pogue, Craig Symonds, Dennis Showalter, Robin Higham, Robert Berlin, and Bruce Catton.

The Subject Files (1908-1993) series consists of (11) boxes, containing a wide assortment of document-types from the organization's holdings according to topic and chronology. These files, originally retained separately from the general collection, were frequently utilized by different administrations as reference material for numerous policy initiatives described in other series. The set of records relating to the Order of Indian Wars contain both historic oral histories of the Plaines Wars and membership lists as a recruitment resource, which were incorporated into the organization when the Order of the Indian Wars merged with AMHF/AMI between 1938 and 1947. Other files contain biographical summaries of influential early members and journal contributors. Several files concern the drafts, correspondence, and memoranda on the reorganization of organization. Another collects the correspondence, submitted entries and judges description's for AMI's 1939 "Historical Fire Arms Contest." Still others include the efforts of several public relations to increase membership, membership paraphernalia, contractual agreements with other organizations, reports concerning the location and disposition of the AMI Library and Archives, federal tax-related forms, the history behind the Moncado Award, and one of the only successful 1960s Civil War commemorative events, the AMI Civil War Centennial Celebration.

The Journal Publishing Records (1933-1980) series consists of (13) boxes of correspondence, memoranda, reports, and papers submitted for publication by the journal. It covers the publication's many changes in name, editorial direction and format from The Journal of the American Military History Foundation (1937-1939) to The Journal of the American Military Institute (1939-1941) to Military Affairs (1941-1988), and, most recently, to The Journal of Military History (1989-present). The contents range from submitted manuscripts, such as "The United States Army Troops in China, 1912-1937" by Charles W. Thomas III (circa 1933), to editorial board-level material. Although originating in 1937 as the Journal of the American Military History Foundation, the majority of this collection was gathered together in the 1950s by Victor Gondos and served as the staff's institutional memory during his tenure as editor of Military Affairs. Researchers interested in business history and publishing will find the editor's daily correspondence particularly valuable, detailing the journal's on-going relationship with printers, advertisers, readers, reviewers, and prospective contributors. Another valuable resource includes the Cold War era's editorial board reports, which recorded membership/subscriber growth as well as managed printing venues, advertisers, subscribing institutions, and book reviewers. Other interesting subjects covered by the files include editor Dallas Irving's attempt to widen the journal's readership, the near dissolution of the journal in the late 1940s upon the resignation of the volunteer editor, the brief period in which the publication was maintained by the United States Army Office of the Chief of Military History, the 1949 attempt to rescue the publication by then-Columbia University President Dwight Eisenhower, the 1968 transition of publishing operations from a volunteer staff in the Washington, D.C. area to a paid professional publishing staff comprising Kansas State University's History and English departments and headed by Robin Higham, and a 1998 joint project with the United States Commission on Military History to publish an issue of Reveue Internationale D'Histoire Militair on the relationship between the United States Constitution and America's armed forces.

The Financial Records (1934-1999) series consists of (17) boxes of accounting records, receipts, officer reports, trustees meeting minutes, membership lists, and correspondence by subject and chronology. The first section of the records includes membership lists spanning the early years of the organization and the Cold War era AMI, detailing the status of active members, dues accrued, patrons, and honorary members as well as groupings of members by geographic region. Some individuals listed as members include George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Charles Summerall, Samuel Bemis, William D. Campell, Hoffman Nickerson, Hilario Moncado, Walter Lippmann, Milton Skelly, Bernard Brodie, Stephen Ambrose, and Harold Deutsch. The second section covers the accounting records of the early organization to the onset of the Second World War in the form of bank statements, bound ledgers, deposit slips, paid bills, and check books. The remainder of the collection covers the Treasurer and the Treasurer-Secretary's reports to the organization's officers, meeting minutes with the Board of Trustees, correspondence concerning member's status, investments, and bills to be paid. The financial arrangements made for joint conferences/seminars with other organizations are also interesting, including the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, arrangements made for the organization's own annual conferences, and the early AMI Treasurer's financial reports concerning membership shortfalls after World War II and the Korean War.

The Printed Material series collects in (3) boxes maps, posters, and illustrations as well as copies of conference programs, newsletters, and some newspaper clippings. The first section of the series contains several black and white illustrations, printed in England, outlining the evolution of weaponry from edged weapons and armor to firearms, graphics describing officer ranks, two World War II era posters ("Careless Talk" and "5th War Loan"), maps of the United States, the world, and a handful of World War I battlefield actions. The second section holds several programs for SMH Annual Meeting events, membership directories for both the AMI and SMH for the years 1981, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2002, respectively, and an eighteen year run of the Headquarters Gazette (1990-2008). The final section of the series includes newspaper clippings, featuring the obituaries of notable organizational members. A complete collection of Journal of Military History issues from 1994-2006 has been separated from the papers, catalogued, and shelved in the department.

The Photographs (1940-2008) series collects in (1) box the miscellaneous printed images and portraits of the organization's members. Included in the series are portraits of several early organizational presidents and officers, black and white pictures of the 1968 Victor Gondos Testimonial Dinner, a photo of Victor Gondos at his desk, an assortment of images depicting naval vessels, aircraft, military personnel, and combat actions collected for potential supplements to issues of Military Affairs, as well as amateur pictures taken of SMH awards recipients and panel discussions held at miscellaneous annual conferences.

The Shirley Smith Papers (1937-2011) include a wide array of varying fields and topics following the life and career of Shirley Smith. Growing up in rural Kansas and graduating from Kansas State College in 1951, Smith moved to New York City to begin her career as a model, then Broadway actress. In the early 1960s, Smith began to lose her hearing and focused her talents instead on an art career, which she continued for over 50 years. Much of her artwork hearkens back to Kansas roots, while other pieces are considered within the lyrical abstraction art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Smith, Bottomly, and Lill Family Papers, 1827-1984, document four generations of a family. The collection focuses primarily on George Smith between 1827-72, to a lesser extent on his children and grandchildren (the Bottomlys'), and then increases in volume with the next generation (the Lills'), especially between 1934-45.
In the first series, journals and diaries, there are four items. Included in one of the journals is an interesting account of George Smith's trip from Iowa to Nebraska by wagon in 1865.
Correspondence (1828-1984), the second series in the collection, is housed in three document boxes and comprises the largest series in the collection. Items within the series are organized chronologically. The bulk of the items are the incoming and outgoing correspondence from 1934-45 between Percy and Helen Lill and their seven children, most of whom were either attending Kansas State College, preparing for military duty, or actively fighting overseas in World War II. Correspondence among family and friends, while the Lill brothers were attending K-State, describes student life. Also included in the collection are some letters by their mother, Helen Bottomly Lill, when she attended K-State from 1900-05. Perhaps the most significant items in the collection, however, are the early Smith family correspondence from 1828-41 because of its description of life in Vermont and the settlement of the Midwest particularly Iowa.
Contained in the third series, literary works, are speeches and essays housed in five folders. Although some of the works are undated, most were, apparently, penned by George Smith.
In the next series, education, there are a variety of items including diplomas, school programs, teachers' certificates, and grade cards. These items are diverse and cover the period from 1927-1953 and are contained in two folders.
The fifth series, medicine, contains a single item, a 1921 handwritten cold remedy.
The sixth series, Booth Association, is housed in one folder. This organization was formed on November 15, 1854, in New York by descendants of the Booth family of England, who claim to be the lawful heirs of the Booth family estates. Included in the materials are the association's constitution and by-laws, a membership fee receipt, certificate, and newsletter made out to George Smith, and a broadside removed to a larger flat box because of its size.
In the seventh series, financial documents, there are many items dating from 1837-1953; ledgers, receipts, bank statements, tax information, and related pieces. These materials are organized chronologically with the ledgers filed separately at the end of the series.
Genealogy, the eighth series, is separated by surname. There are some original handwritten items placed at the beginning of the series but most of the materials are photocopied, typed, or handwritten reproductions of original documents. These materials, contained in eleven folders, provide biographical information about the families.
The ninth series, printed materials, consists of Christmas and greeting cards, advertising cards, certificates, and miscellaneous items. These are housed in five folders.
The last series, photographs, are separated by family surname, specifically, or more generally, as family and friends. All negatives and tintypes are identified. Unidentified photographs are filed at the end of the series. Photographs of locations in Kansas, particularly of the campus at K-State, have been removed and placed in the University Archives photograph collection.