The Mercury from Pottstown, Pennsylvania • Page 60

A24 The Mercury, Pottstown, Pa September 17,1977 Nancy Hanks made a patron of Congress By NORMAN NADEL WASHINGTON (NEA) In autumn of 1969, when President Nixon appointed Nancy Hanks to succeed Roger Stevens as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the four-year-old bureau still was largely an experiment. Today, as she puts things in order for her resignation, effective Oct. 2, the Endowment is an institution. That transformation almost certainly would have occurred if some other dedicated and able arts administrator had been in the job. During those years the nation itself was finding its identity in the arts as never before.

Nevertheless, by virtue of the manner in which this metamorphosis took place, it can be credited to Miss Hanks. She is its architect, and its victim. Today it is hard to remember how indifferent and even antagonistic many Congressmen were to the idea of a federal arts program in the mid-1960s. (For anyone who cares to look, it is there in the voting records.) Still, on Sept. 29, 1965, President Johnson was able to sign into law a bill creating a National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities.

The first year budget of $2.5 million was a drop in the bucket by federal standards, and nothing to threaten any pet project. At its start, the program was largely a Democratic enterprise. However, GOP Congressmen soon discovered that while a majority of men and women working at the various arts were Democrats, most of the cultured civic who serve on museum and symphony boards were (and are) Republicans. As the awareness of an arts constituency around the country grew, the climate in Congress began to change. In 1968 Stevens noted that no longer is fashionable to oppose or make fun of the And a Republican legislator said: no longer have those horrible demonstrations of bad taste on the floor, nor do we encounter the implication that if you favor the arts, The arts were a long way from being home free, however, and trepidation grew as President Nixon proposed several replacements for Stevens who were painfully unsuited to the job.

(One, for example, announced he might accept the chairmanship as a part-time position.) As the candidates were being shot down, a few people most effectively Leonard Garment and Michael Straight were pushing for the appointment of Nancy Hanks, then 41 and an "STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH" WE'RE MOVIN' MONDAY SEPT. 19 WE WILL BE OPEN FOR BUSINESS AT OUR NEW LOCATION Y'ALL COME IN AND SEE US NOW. POTTSTOWN ROLLER MILLS Henry S. Saylor and Charles D. Saylor 625 Industrial Highway PH.

323-8620 executive secretary of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project. She had been staff director of Performing Arts: Problems and the Rockefeller panel report on the future of music, dance and theater in America, published in 1965. She was also Republican, with lineage back to Lincoln's mother, after whom she was named. She was (and is) a perfect lady, old as that phrase might be. In her company men tend to act more like gentlemen.

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