THE CALLIGRAPHERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100020014-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2011
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: June 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/09/15 :CIA-RDP91-005878000100020014-6
kPTI^L~ ~PP~AREB ~
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l~'.ASHINGTONIA1~t
Jtme 1985
?as~vc~~24~a
The Calligt~aphers
Tl~.ey Are Elegant, Quiet, acid Steady of Haaza'
ince ]881, there have been
nineteen chief executives at
]600 Pennsylvania Ave-
nue-and six chief calligra-
phers. The staying power of
the men who produce the
White House's elegant hand-lettering
owes much to the exotic nature of their
skill. Bess Abell, social secretary for the
',Johnson White House, remembers a
conversation she had with Luc}~ Win-
Chester, the Nixon social secretary, as
the Nixons were moving into the White
.House. "I was talking to her about
White House staffers who stay from ad-
ministration to administration," says
Abell, "and she said, 'Well, I don't
know if we'll be keeping on any of those
;people.' "Abell advised her not to make
an}~ announcements until she'd really
thought about trying to find a political
appointee accomplished at calligraph}~.
j Sanford Fox was the chief. calligra-
pher at the time, and he survived that
transition-and many othtrs. Now in his
sixties, with distinguished white hair and
a white goatee, Fox first found his calli-
graphic skills in presidential demand
when, in 1943, he was flying as a naval
purser on the plane takir.~ Franklin Roo-
seveh to the Tehran conference. When it
became known that Fox could do hand-
' lettering, he was pressed into service to
pen the place cards for a stopover dinner
in Cairo, where the guests included Roo-
. sevelt, Winston Churchill, and Maaame
and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
When Fox left the Navv. he went to
the A, w tc asst~neo tm tot e
V~'hite House from time to time. At the
end of the Eisenhower administration,
he was hired permanenth~ b.' the Office
of Social bntenainments-in charge of
calligraphy-and shortly thereafter he
became head of it.
When he needed help. he turned to the
C1A. There he found Russell Armen-
trout, stall, thin, congenial fello~~, who
succeeded Fox as chief of Social finter-
Russell Armentrout adds finishing
touchesto adinner-program cover.
tainments in 1974, and Bill Gemmell, a
handsome. dark-haired man who is head
calligrapher today. Bess Abel] remem-
bers atime when the C1A tried ersist-
ently to et Gemmel back. buts a man-
aged to save him or her own and ture
social offices b~~ calling C1A dtrector
Admiral William Raborn and asktnb,
"Couldn't you lease et someone else
to fore passpons . "
The number of White House calligra-
phersfluctuates from one administration
to another. The Reagan White House is
about average, with three men and a
woman who hand-letter everything from
Mcdal of Freedom citations to inscrip-
tions on presidential photographs. To
understand their workload, consider the
demands of a single state dinner:
^ Working with magnifying glasses
and chisel-pointed pens, the calligra-
phers insert on each invitation the name
of the person or couple invited; fne let-
tering the}~ use matches the engraving.
In old-fashioned Spencerian handwrit-
ing, they address each envelope.
^ Using afifteenth-cenrury Italian
style, they write guests' names on escort
envelopes. which contain table num-
bers. They do place cards in a copper-
plate script, a srvle that requires a special
oblique penholder fitted with a sharp
nib. Using an italic cursive hand. they
letter the dinner menu, which is then
reduced and printed on white, gold-bev-
eled cards embossed with the presiden-
tial seal. The calligraphers also de-
sign the programs for the after-dinner
entcnainment.
^ On the night of the dinner. one of the
calligraphers stays until all the guests are
seated. By way of explanation. Maria
Downs, social secretary during the Ford
years, remembers a bad moment before
a state dinner when an aide came rushing
up to ask whether Secretary of the Interi-
or Rogers Morton had been invite. "I
told him no," Downs says, "but he told
me that Secretary Monon had arrived
nonetheless. so we had to scramble
around, rearrange the seating-and do
new place cards, of course."
It's not on]}~ White House functions that
require elegant hand-lettering. "I think
we probably do more calligraphy in
R'ashin}'ton than anyplace else in the
countr}~," says Muffle Brandon, for-
merly social secretary to Mrs. Reagan.
"There's a residue of diplomatic and
official entertaining here that requires
it." Savs Gretchen Poston, social secre-
tary during the Caner years: "People
are becoming more and more aware of
it. The corporate world likes it, too, as a
special touch."
Calligraphy is also becoming recog-
nized in Washington as high an, largely
thanks to Sheila Vvaters, an bnglish-
woman who moved here in 1971. A
member of the exclusive. London-based
Society of Scribes and Illuminators. Wa-
ters has helped Washington appreciate
the composition and design possibilities
of hand-lettering. Another of her contri-
butions has been in the person of her son
Julian. 28. who is said by man}~ to be the
top calligraphic designer in ~`ashington.
At the other end of the spectrum, cal-
ligraphy has come to be viewed in the
past decade as a popular c: aft. a kind of
macrame of the pen. Learn-it-yourself
books and courses abound, which means
there are plenr}~ of people who can be
hired to do all the place cards Washing-
ton entertaining demands.
fixperts will tell you, however, that a
few classes don't make a calligrapher.
Russell AtTrtentrout, in great demand as
a commercial calligrapher since he left
the White- House in 1979, has never had
any formal training. But he did serve a
long apprenticeship under Sandy Fox,
putting in man}' years of practice to
make the hand unfailingly confident and
the letters beautifully consistent.
"About once a week 1 get a call from a
young person who wants to knoW~ if I
need any help," says Armentrout, '`but
it usually tarns out that they're no more
calligraphers than people who've been
to one piano lesson are ptantsts. "
-LYNNE CHENEY
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/09/15 :CIA-RDP91-005878000100020014-6