When it came to the Russians and the looming Cold War, Luther Gulick could be amazingly insightful — a virtual clairvoyant  (if not always a perfect typist). Less than three months after the Nazi surrender and three years before the Berlin Airlift, he  foresaw the coming struggle over four-power Berlin, deep in the Soviet zone of occupation.

Gulick was a member of the mission under Edwin W. Pauley that accompanied President Truman to the Potsdam Conference with Stalin and Churchill to plan the peace.  In a memo for Pauley dated July 25, 1945, Gulick noted that “the draft agreement as it now stands makes no provision for access of the US Command to the US Sector of Berlin.”

He recommended “That you insist on a land corridor, along a rail line, if possible, connecting the western sector with our Berlin sector.”

No protected overland link from occupied West Germany to the former German capital with its American, British, French and Soviet sectors was ever agreed upon. In 1948, to squeeze the West, Stalin cut off road access to Berlin. The besieged city had to be supplied by air — one of the most stirring chapters of the fight for freedom in the postwar world.

But if they had only listened to Gulick…

P.S. right after we found the memo, we found another curious document that helps explain the “Berling”:

Processing an archival collection can be like a trip to the attic of a relative. As each carton is opened and explored, there is a moment of anticipation–what has been hidden away, waiting for a curious eye?

The IPA collection is proving to be a perfect example of this process of discovery, and as the Head of the Archives, I have been observing the thrill of the archivists who are uncovering pieces of history each day.

Luther Gulick seems to have corresponded with everyone, and letters have emerged, signed by such notables as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Albert Einstein, and even our own Bernard M. Baruch, among others.

However, the collection reveals more than just the origins of public administration, and the politics of the day. We see hints of the everyday life of the principal player. Sales receipts, passports, and other memorabilia tell their own, more personal story.

What will be found in the next box to be opened? I’m certain there will be a knock on my door to let me know.

Luther Gulick was known for many things: heading the nation’s first Training School to groom professional public servants, directing the New York Bureau of Municipal Research in its pioneering struggle to reform government, advising FDR, beating plowshares into swords for WWII, negotiating reparations from the defeated Germans and Japanese, and much besides.

Now we see in the files that Luther Gulick  invented basketball.

Wait! Everyone knows that basketball was invented in 1891 by Dr. James A. Naismith, a member of the staff of the Y.M.C.A. Training School in Springfield, MA.

But who asked him to?

Luther Gulick.

Okay, not exactly our Luther Halsey Gulick (1892-1993), but close — his uncle of the same name. Uncle Luther was the brother of our Luther’s father, Sidney. [See earlier post, A Missionary Dynasty.]

Uncle Luther (1865-1918) was a physician who founded the phys ed department at the Y.M.C.A. school and was looking for a way to busy the young athletes between the baseball and football seasons. Indian clubs was deemed too tame and workouts with dumbbells — well, too dumb. He asked Naismith to come up with something.

Naismith, who had grown up in Ontario, Canada, remembered a childhood game called “duck on the rock” in which players threw stones at a standing target (the duck) and ran to retrieve their missiles before being tagged. He adapted it to a game of throwing a ball into peach baskets ten feet above the floor and made up 13 rules. That was the first basketball and it quickly caught on.

Naismith got the credit. But the IPA archives contain a letter from another physician, C. Ward Crampton, who played basketball at the Harlem Y.M.C.A. in 1892 and knew something of the game’s history. He remembered that an early  chronicler of the sport published a booklet with a photo of Gulick, crediting him as “the Father of Basketball.” The ever-modest Gulick demanded it be withdrawn, and so it was. Naismaith emerged with the glory.

In any case, Dr. Crampton concluded (misstating Gulick’s middle initial), Gulick was certainly “the grandfather of basketball.”

Not our Luther Gulick, but still…

You might think that the New York Bureau of Municipal Research that from 1906 struggled to bring a reform-minded rationality to inept and crooked city halls and state houses around the country would be universally acclaimed. [See our first post, Inventing a Science of Government.]

But you would be wrong.

There were lots of entrenched interests at the dawn of the 20th century that felt threatened by Progressive-era crusaders, and with good reason. The BMR espoused the radical belief that the people were entitled to honest and efficient government, free of the political bosses who ruled with cronyism and no semblance of a budget. This didn’t go over well with same, who dubbed the interlopers “The Bureau of Municipal Besmirch.” Good government advocates (goo-goos, as they became known) invited the BMR to send its experts to their cities and states for surveys and audits, but the teams often received a hostile reception from the reigning powers when they arrived.

That happened in the Old Dominion of Virginia, where BMR experts descended on Richmond in 1926.

The story is told in a witty ditty penned by a colorful newspaperman of the time  — Carter Warner Wormeley a/k/a “The Bishop,” as he proudly signed his name under his verses in this copy from the documents of records of the Institute of Public Administration, successor of the BMR.

Wormeley, who traced his lineage to a colonial member of Virginia’s pre-Revolutionary House of Burgesses, had been named Poet Laureate of Virginia while also serving as Director of Advertising and Publicity for Virginia. He died in 1938 at 64.

His poem, which singles out IPA director Luther H. Gulick and other BMR functionaries for particular scorn, begins:

“Municipal Bureau of Research,

Why do you dig so deep?

Why do you prod

In our books, by God!

Keeping us from our sleep?”

The verses consign the reformers to “…hell, where most ledgers are balanced”…and it concludes:

“Long, long in the Pit may you languish

‘Mid brimstone, which trickles in showers,

There, with other poor crooks,

May you cast up Hell’s books —

If ever you finish with ours.”

 

Peter Johnson Gulick, Luther’s great-grandfather, was the first person of the Gulick clan to embrace missionary work. Born in 1797 in New Jersey, Peter experienced a religious awakening as a young man, deciding to become a Presbyterian minister. Entering the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), he was befriended by a professor named Luther Halsey whose name would be passed on through generations of future Gulicks. During Peter Gulick’s last year at the seminary, in 1827, a returning missionary spoke of the importance of overseas work, leading the young graduate to apply to the recently established American Missionary Board for a position. The Board assigned him to Hawaii, then known as Sandwich Islands, where Peter spent the rest of his career. Of his seven surviving children, six boys and one girl, all became missionaries.

The eldest son, Luther Halsey Gulick, grandfather of our Luther, received an M.D. from the New York College of Medicine in 1850, becoming a medical missionary. Proselytizing in Micronesia, the family was forced to leave due to the difficulty of the living conditions. On the way back to Hawaii they had their first son, Sidney Gulick, the future father of Luther Gulick.

Sidney Gulick intended to become a professor of astronomy, attending Dartmouth College, but after the small school he was supposed to teach in went bankrupt, he became a pastor in New York City. When he found the work unfulfilling, Sidney became a missionary, moving to Japan in late 1887 or early 1888. Influenced by his education, Sidney Gulick espoused a liberal philosophy when it came to religion, believing that it was possible to be both a scientist and a Christian. This led him to try to reconcile evolution with religion. As a result of this work, the local mission board attempted to try Gulick for heresy and have him excommunicated. However, the main governing body, based in Boston, intervened and the case was dropped. Sidney was not the first Gulick to voice support for the theory of evolution. John Gulick, his uncle, was a friend of Charles Darwin and went on to publish a book on evolution where he refuted religious objections to the scientific concept.

Sidney Gulick had four children while in Japan. The first, Susan, was born in 1888, followed by Luther, on January 17, 1892. Another son, Leeds, and daughter, Ethel, rounded out the family.