By JANICE E. RUTH
David Wigdor first came to the Library of Congress Manuscript Division in 1970 to conduct postdoctoral research in the papers of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, never anticipating that five years later he would join the division staff and embark on a 28-year career with the Library. He retired on Nov. 3.
The legal collections that drew Wigdor to the Library and to which he added immeasurably over his career held his attention until the very last minute. Shortly before 5 p.m. on his last day, Wigdor was still in his office surveying some of his favorite Frankfurter items for possible use in a forthcoming Library exhibition on the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.
Wigdor has been interested in the field of legal history since his graduate school days at the University of Missouri, where an earlier version of his book, "Roscoe Pound: Philosopher of Law," received the runner-up award for the Allan Nevins Prize given annually by the Society of American Historians for the best dissertation in American history. After receiving his doctorate in 1968, he served as a commanding officer in the Army's 35th Military History Detachment in Vietnam and as an historian with the Army's Office of Military History. His military service was followed by brief stints as an assistant professor of history at Lindenwood College in St. Charles, Mo., and as a program officer with the National Endowment for the Humanities.
In Sept. 1975 Wigdor joined the Manuscript Division as a specialist in 20th-century political history, and in Feb. 1985 he was promoted to assistant chief. In both positions, he was instrumental in establishing the Library of Congress as the preeminent repository for the study of the federal judiciary. He advised many judges and government officials about the disposition of their papers, and he took delight in bringing to researchers' attention the wealth of information available in the holdings of the Library of Congress and other repositories.
Said Manuscript Division Chief James Hutson: "David Wigdor excelled in all aspects of his position as assistant chief of the Manuscript Division but, unquestionably, one of his greatest strengths was in the acquisition of numbers of significant collections in 20th-century political and judicial history. Justice Harry Blackmun's papers was just one of the major collections that came to the Library as a result of David's patient and skillful negotiations."
Among the many other 20th-century collections Wigdor acquired or assisted in acquiring for the Library are the papers of Supreme Court justices William J. Brennan, William O. Douglas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Arthur J. Goldberg, Robert H. Jackson, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor, Wiley Rutledge and Byron R. White. He also successfully sought the papers of key judges on the United States Court of Appeals and the United States District Court, acquiring the initial or additional installments of papers relating to Gerhard A. Gesell, Clement F. Hayns-worth, Shirley M. Hufstedler, Frank M. Johnson, Harold Leventhal, Carl E. McGowan, John J. Sirica, Simon E. Sobeloff and J. Skelly Wright.
Wigdor also sought to document the work of government officials, cabinet officers, civil rights organizations and public interest advocacy groups. He helped bring into the Library the papers of New Deal officials Benjamin V. Cohen and Thomas G. Corcoran; influential senators Daniel P. Moynihan, Abraham Ribicoff and Edward William Brooke; lawyer and civic activist Joseph L. Rauh Jr.; journalist Hedrick Smith; and the records of the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Woman's Party, ERAmerica, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Center for National Policy Review.
As assistant chief, Wigdor presided during a time of significant change in the Manuscript Division's history, with the implementation of arrearage reduction efforts, digitization initiatives, off-site storage and retrieval of processed collections, new security procedures, and a greater emphasis on outreach, exhibitions and public programs. For several extended periods of time, he assumed the duties of the chief when Hutson was on special assignment preparing major Library exhibitions.
Security of the Library's collections was of special interest to Wigdor. He oversaw the expansion of the division's vault for storing classified documents, lobbied successfully for the creation of the staff position of classified documents officer, and conducted sensitive negotiations with State Department and military officials regarding the Library's administration of classified materials in the papers of Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Caspar W. Weinberger.
He also steadfastly supported the division reference staff in upholding reading room security regulations, and he moved quickly and determinedly in assisting police and federal prosecutors in two notable cases of theft of Library materials. In 1988, for his work in assisting the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the successful prosecution of Charles Merrill Mount, Wigdor was given a Meritorious Service Award by the Library and a special commendation by the bureau.
Throughout his career, Wigdor cultivated lasting ties between the Manuscript Division and the scholarly community. He assisted countless researchers, spoke at historical conferences on topics in legal and judicial history, and was a contributing editor of The Journal of American History from 1986 to 1991. When the Thurgood Marshall Papers became available for research use following the justice's unexpected death in 1993, Wigdor fielded numerous calls from the media, appeared on the "MacNeil/Lehrer" television show, and coordinated with his reference staff procedures for handling the 116 new researchers registered to use the collection during the first week it became available.
In 1982, at the request of the U.S. Information Agency, Wigdor lectured in India and Pakistan on aspects of American constitutionalism. For many years he worked with the American Historical Association in administering the joint AHA-Library of Congress J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship in support of postdoctoral research in the Library's collections leading to the recipient's first monograph. He also served on various committees of the Society for History in the Federal Government, American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, Manuscript Society, Foreign Service Institute and National Afro-American History and Culture Commission.
Wigdor's commitment to the research community extended to his work on Library symposia and exhibits. In 1985 he assisted the Congressional Research Service in planning a symposium on Robert La Follette. The following year he organized an exhibit on Roscoe Pound's library for Harvard Law School, and in 1996 he organized a symposium on "Nuremberg and Its Impact: Fifty Years Later," bringing in nationally and internationally prominent speakers for this two-day event co-sponsored with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Wigdor's contributions to the Library during his career were perhaps best summed up by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote to thank him for "his devoted service" and "caring initiatives," which have "enormously enriched the Library's legal collections for the benefit of researchers for generations to come."
Janice E. Ruth is staff editor and manuscript specialist in American women's history in the Manuscript Division.