Crain, Darrell, Jr. Papers

The papers of Dr. Darrell Crain, Jr. include copies of travel orders, a vaccination certificate, a special passport, personal letters, photographs, a travel log, and notes from a U.S. government mission to Saudi Arabia in 1950, which he accompanied for the purpose of treating King Ibn Saud.

Size: 2.5 linear inches (about 60 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donors gave to the U.S. government their copyrights in this material and in any other material received by the U.S. government and maintained in a depository administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Documents created by U.S. government officials in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Jan Davis and David Clark (2017).
Updated by: Mikhail Faulconer (2018) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

Darrell Clayton Crain, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C. on March 29, 1910. He graduated from the medical school at George Washington University and served as a Major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II, receiving the Asiatic Pacific Service Medal and the Philippine Liberation Medal.

In 1950, while serving as a civilian consultant to the Department of the Army, Dr. Crain was a member of a U.S. government mission that was sent to Saudi Arabia to provide medical treatment to the ailing King Ibn Saud.

A practicing rheumatologist for more than fifty years, Dr. Crain was also an accomplished amateur photographer. The D.C. Public Library in Washington has a collection of photographs he took in the city and during his vacation trips.

Dr. Crain died in Bethesda, Maryland on July 22, 1995. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The papers of Dr. Darrell Crain, Jr. include copies of travel orders, a vaccination certificate, a special passport, personal letters, photographs, a travel log, and notes from a U.S. government mission to Saudi Arabia in 1950, which he accompanied for the purpose of treating King Ibn Saud. The collection is arranged in one series, a Subject File.

The collection contains a number of different materials from Dr. Crain's visit to Saudi Arabia. His travel orders, an International Certificate of Inoculation and Vaccination, and a Special U.S. Passport are included as documents necessary for travel. Dr. Crain's log, spanning the period from April 15 to May 6, is included with some handwritten notes.

Dr. Crain's papers also contain a handwritten letter to his wife Louise describing his experiences in Saudi Arabia, and letters to various individuals Dr. Crain met on the mission are also included. These letters mostly express gratitude for their hospitality.

About 185 slides of photos from Dr. Crain's mission to Saudi Arabia have been transferred to the Photograph Collection of the Truman Library. The photos feature members of the mission, the king and other members of the Saudi royal family, and scenes in the countries Crain visited, including Greece, Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Crain's papers include information concerning the photos he took during the mission.

The Truman Library has the papers of Dr. Wallace Graham, President Truman's personal physician, who accompanied Dr. Crain on the mission to Saudi Arabia.