Joyce M. Bisso opens this edition of “News and Notes” with a report on the effort to gather library books from the greater Oyster Bay, New York, area to build a library for the sailors aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt. The task fell to students from Oyster Bay High School and local public libraries. Bisso quotes the two sailors from the ship, Petty Officer Timothy L. Blackstone and Senior Chief Edward J. Tessier, who came to Oyster Bay to collect the books and other materials gathered by the community. The article also reprints a letter from Captain Paul W. Parcells, Commanding Officer of USS Theodore Roosevelt, to William Davison Johnston, the President of the Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA). A photograph of students examining books; one of Blackstone and Tessier; and another of the two sailors with Oyster Bay High School students appear in the article.
The section also contains a report on the natural history research grants awarded from the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Fund by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for 1986. The report notes the members of the TRA who serve on the awards committee, lists the winner of the largest award, Mark L. McKnight, and it provides a history of the involvement of Theodore Roosevelt and his father with the museum. A chart listing the number of award applications, the number of awards, and the value of the grants from 1961 to 1986 appears in this section.
“News and Notes” also reports that Elizabeth E. Roosevelt of the TRA will volunteer at the Roosevelt Study Center in the Netherlands when it opens in the fall of 1986. The section notes that Edmund Morris will be one of the speakers at the Center’s opening, and it relays the purpose and the location of the Center. The section discusses the work of several Roosevelt historians and biographers, including Sylvia Jukes Morris, John Milton Cooper, and Kathleen Dalton. “News and Notes” closes with an obituary of Julian K. Roosevelt who was an accomplished yachtsman and a member of the International Olympic Committee.