I mentioned last week when I wrote about General Pershing’s 1920 visit to Rice that I had a few more good pictures of that event. Here are a couple of those. This was a very big day–you can tell just by the size of the crowd that this was an important visit–and there’s a lot going on in these photos. Most of the city’s important personages were present, including Mayor A.E. Amerman. Here’s Governor William P. Hobby getting in on the tree planting action, to Pershing’s obvious amusement:
And here’s a shot of Pershing and Lovett walking on campus. What’s interesting to me, though, is the proud carriage of Rice German professor Lyndsey Blayney (on the right in between Lovett and Pershing aide Colonel Aristide Moreno) who had served under Pershing in the Great War:
We have quite a few more photographs of this day, both professional pictures and snapshots taken by excited students and faculty. I’ve seen these pictures at least a dozen times, and have looked at them quite closely at least four or five times as I’ve tried to figure out who was who in each of them. But as I was scanning them yesterday I noticed something new. It’s a really small thing, such a tiny, tiny thing, the kind of thing you just notice and then forget. But I find I’m still thinking about it today, so I’ll show you. Remember this shot from last week?
I don’t know what it means or if it even means anything at all. But I do know that it makes me like Lovett even more than I already did, which was considerable.