ARKADELPHIA — U.S. Rep. Mike Ross announced Friday that he will donate his congressional and state senate papers to Ouachita Baptist University.

He said he wants the documents to stay in the 4th District, which includes the south and much of the west portion of the state, so the people he served would have access.

“Ouachita was an easy choice to archive my papers because it’s the only archive department in the 4th District,” said, Ross a graduate of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Ross did not seek re-election and will leave Congress on Jan. 3.

Ouachita Baptist University President Rex Horne announced the move in front of a room of students, staff members and visitors at the university.

Ross said he was excited to donate his papers to the university because his wife, Holly Ross, is a graduate, and he proposed to her near campus.

“So Ouachita certainly has a place in our hearts,” Ross said. “This is an extra-special moment for my family.”

OBU is already home to the papers of three former officeholders: Democratic U.S. Sen. John L. McClellan, and Gov. Mike Huckabee and U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey, both Republicans.

“They had two Republicans and one Democrat, and I thought, I had to level the score a little bit,” he said.

The papers are from Ross’ 10 years in the state Senate and 12 years in the U.S.House of Representatives. He said there are also documents from his employment in former Lt. Gov. Winston Bryant’s office.

“Personally, I cannot imagine anybody being interested in any of my scribbled notes or any of the documents from my time in Congress, but looking back on it, it’s been a very historic time,” Ross said. “Maybe 50, 100, 200 years from now it will help researchers or historians get a better glimpse.”

His time in the U.S. House included the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the country’s recent economic problems.

Ross said the collection includes photos from his campaigns and his time in Congress, as well as audio and video, correspondence, press releases, working papers, campaign ads, meeting memos and polling data.

Ross said he kept a few photos and knickknacks as mementos from his 22 years in office, but he recognized that most items had to go.

“What are you going to do, put them in a shoe box and eventually they accidentally get thrown away?” Ross said. “When you leave them with a professional archivist, you know they are going to be preserved for future generations.”

The collection includes about 200 boxes, 16,000 digital photos and 300GB of data files, Ross said.

University Director of Library Services Ray Granade said it will take three to five years to process the documents and files to make them ready for public use, and even longer for the digital files to be available because Ross is the first politician to donate so many digital records to Ouachita.

“That’s terra incognita to most of us because ... his is the first where we do have electronic resources that we’re going to have to deal with,” Granade said.

Ross said his state senate papers are already being transferred to the university. He said papers from his congressional and district offices will be transferred between now and January.

He said it will take time to raise the money to process and archive the papers so they can be made available.

The papers of Arkansas’ political leaders are divided between institutions across the state. Their destination often depends on which university the person attended or which university is in the area they represented.

Many documents have landed at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville or at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

The Little Rock school houses the papers of Arkansas Govs. Carl Bailey, Winthrop Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers, Frank White and Jim Guy Tucker at its Center for Arkansas History and Culture in the Arkansas Studies Institute.

The center’s senior archivist, Linda Pine, compared maintaining political records to keeping poetry, art or music.

“It is important that a culture protects its history,” Pine said. “Those kinds of things are important. There are connections that … give us a place in the world.”

The Special Collections section of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville is home to the papers of nine U.S. senators, 21 U.S. representatives and 13 governors, head of Special Collections Tim Nutt said.

The Arkansas History Commission holds the papers of at least 16 governors and a dozen congressmen, Commission Director Wendy Richter said.

Arkansas State University Archivist Brady M. Banta said the university holds the congressional papers of every person who represented the area in Congress from 1939 to 2010.

“It’s a prestigious thing for you to get any major political collection like that,” he said. “Especially these congressional collections of a time period of when these congressmen, and they were mostly men, who when they were elected tended to stay for a long period of time. People got used to turning to them.”

He said researchers benefit from reading letters from constituents who sought help.

“Not only does it contain information about politics or government policy but it also contains information about what was going on back here at home,” Banta said. “You get a first-glance glimpse, in the constituent’s words, what kind of problems they were facing.”

Saving history

The papers and correspondence of past Arkansas political leaders are archived at several facilities around the state. Where the documents go is up to the politician. Here are the known locations of some leaders’ writings. Some collections are partial or split among institutions. The time of service is in parentheses.

University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

U.S. SENATORS Augustus H. Garland (1877-1887) James H. Berry (1885-1907) Jeff Davis (1907-1913) Joseph Taylor Robinson (1913-1937) John Elvis Miller (1937-1941) Hattie Wyatt Caraway (1931-1945) J. William Fulbright (1945-1975) Dale Bumpers+ (1975-1999) David Pryor (1978-1996)

U.S. REPRESENTATIVES Edward Cross (1839-1845) Logan Holt Roots (1868-1871) James Millander Hanks (1871-1873) Thomas Chipman McRae (1885-1903) Hugh Anderson Dinsmore (1893-1905) Joseph Taylor Robinson (1903-1913) William A. Oldfield (1909-1928) Hiram Heartsill Ragon, Sr. (1923-1933) John Elvis Miller (1930-1937) Clyde T. Ellis (1939-1943) William F. Norrell (1939-1961) Oren Harris (1941-1966)J. William Fulbright (1943-1945) Brooks Hays (1943-1959) James W. Trimble (1944-1966) Catherine D. Norrell (1961-1962) David Pryor (Rep. 1966-1972, governor (1975-1979) John Paul Hammerschmidt (1967-1993) Ed Bethune+ (1978-1984) Beryl Anthony+ (1979-1992) William Asa Hutchinson+ (1997-2001) University of Arkansas at Little Rock

U.S. REPRESENTATIVES Vic Snyder (1997-2011) Arkansas History Commission U.S. SENATORS Ambrose H. Sevier (1827-1835+, 1835-1849) William Savin Fulton (1835-1845) Chester Ashley (1844-1849) Powell Clayton (1871-1877) Augustus Hill Garland (1877-1887) James P. Clarke (1903-1917) Jeff Davis (1907-1913) Joe T. Robinson (Rep. 1903-1913, Senate 1913-1937) Thaddeus H. Caraway (Rep. 1913-1921, Senate 1921-1930) Hattie W. Caraway (1931-1945) ++John L. McClellan (Rep. 1935-1939, Senate 1943-1979) J. William Fulbright (Rep. 1943-1945, Senate 1945-1975)

U.S. REPRESENTATIVES Edward Cross (1839-1845) Archibald Yell (1845-1847) Logan H. Roots (1867-1871) John D. Edwards (1871-1972) Ouachita Baptist University U.S. SENATORS John L. McClellan (Rep. 1935-1939, Senate 1943-1979) U.S. REPRESENTATIVES Jay Dickey (1993-2001) Mike Ross (2001-current) Arkansas State University

U.S. REPRESENTATIVES Ezekiel C. Gathings (1939-1969) William V. “Bill” Alexander Jr.

(1969-1993) Blanche Lincoln (Rep. 1993-1997, Senate 1999-2011) Marion Berry (1997-2011) Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

U.S. SENATORS Blanche Lincoln (Rep. 1993-1997, Senate 1999-2011)

+Unprocessed collection ^Territorial representative ++ Appointed to fill vacancy of her husband, subsequently elected.

First woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

SOURCES: Arkansas History Commission, Arkansas State University, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Ouachita Baptist University, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, University of Central Arkansas, 2008 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Arkansas, Pages 11 on 12/08/2012