Wrigley, Thomas Papers

Public Relations Representative for the Harry S. Truman Library, Inc. 1953-1955

The papers of Thomas Wrigley include correspondence, press clippings, and other items concerning Wrigley’s work in public relations in connection with the establishment of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Size: 2.5 linear inches (about 70 pages)
Access: Open.
Copyright: No donation of copyright was received with this collection. Documents created by U.S. Government officials in the course of their duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Molly Black (2019) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

The papers of Thomas Wrigley include correspondence, press clippings, and other items concerning Wrigley’s work in public relations in connection with the establishment of the Harry S. Truman Library. The papers are organized in a single series (a Subject File).

The collection contains correspondence between Wrigley and David D. Lloyd, executive director of the Harry S. Truman Library, Inc., the non-profit organization responsible for building the Truman Library. Their correspondence includes discussions of the Harry S. Truman Library Fund as well as other publicity ideas for the proposed Library. Included also are articles written by Lloyd about the importance of presidential papers and their preservation.

The collection also contains press clippings concerning Truman’s plans for the Library, as well as pamphlets about the Library. Also included is a transcript of a related speech by C .S. Murphy.

The documents in the collection reflect Truman’s personal belief that presidential papers should be made accessible to the public so that citizens can learn about the history of the United States and how its Constitutional form of government works. This was an important theme in the promotional and fundraising materials prepared by Wrigley.

Wrigley’s papers were originally opened for research as part of the Miscellaneous Historical Documents Collection (MHDC 117). The Truman Library also has the records of the Harry S. Truman Library, Inc., and the papers of David D. Lloyd.