Vice-President Harris

“Carl Sferrazza Anthony, 64, a presidential historian and author, lost the most valuable thing he owns on Monday while walking from the White House to his hotel room.” https://t.co/LQTzn72AUg

— darlene superville (@dsupervilleap) July 29, 2023

And something to watch out for, if you’re in the DC area. An update on Thursday’s Late-Night post (gift link):

… Anthony, 64, a presidential historian and author, lost the most valuable thing he owns on Monday while walking from the White House to his hotel room.

“I’m trying to keep rational about this whole thing,” he said. But he’s devastated and hopes someone, somewhere in D.C. may have found it.

It doesn’t look like much, a small notecard with a black-and-white engraving of the North Portico of the White House framed by spindly, leafless branches of winter trees. But over the years, Anthony has doggedly collected the signatures of eight presidents and eight first ladies on the card — making it priceless…

He had just picked it up from the White House, where it had been locked in a safe for a year and three months after he left it with first lady Jill Biden when she promised to get President Biden to sign it. Anthony was heading home.

“His signature is really, just beautiful,” Anthony said to himself when he picked it up on Monday, so chuffed to add it to his collection and to have the card back in his hands.

It’s not just a history geek’s version of a signed, World Series baseball. This is a living, evolving souvenir, growing more valuable with each presidency, rich with the stories of every encounter that resulted in a signature. Hallways, events, dinners, a former president’s Palm Springs living room.

It had surpassed any expectations he had when, on a whim in the early 1990s, he sprung for a rare engraving — given only to high-ranking White House officials — that was signed by President Ronald Reagan. He asked Nancy Reagan to affix her signature.

A native New Yorker who now lives in California, he worked as her speechwriter and went on to write books about first families — first ladies in particular — for decades. He was just wrapping up three weeks of speeches at historical societies and readings and signings for his latest book, “Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy,” on the East Coast when the unthinkable happened…

Reeling, his mind clicks through the memories: the sunny day in Palm Springs he picked up autographs from Betty Ford and President Ford; when he was down to the wire as the Clintons prepared to depart the White House in 2001. He mailed it to George and Barbara Bush trusting they would sign and return it. They did, with a stern letter from the first lady scolding him for getting the signatures out of order.

The Carters signed it. So did the other Bushes. And he’ll never forget the helpful assistant who took the card from him at the White House gate and ran it up to the Obamas as they were eating dinner. They both signed it and he got it right back.

The Trumps? Anthony said he never had any connection to President Donald Trump and was never invited to their events, so that Richter-scale Sharpie scrawl was missing. (As a historian, he knew he’d work to get it — eventually. Let’s leave it at that.)

Jill Biden signed it at an event last year. And when he asked her for the president’s signature and she understood how precious the card — now bearing the signatures of three dead presidents and first ladies — had become, she promised to keep it safe for him until he could retrieve it with Biden’s signature…