Quick, Spencer R. Papers

Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President, Dr. John Steelman, 1952-1953

The papers of Spencer R. Quick relate predominantly to his work as Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President, John R. Steelman. The collection consists largely of correspondence between Quick, members of the Advertising Council, and colleagues on the White House staff regarding public service advertising campaigns. Also included in the collection are employment applications, pay stubs, personal records, photographs, printed material, travel vouchers and other items

See also Spencer R. Quick Files.

Size: Less than one linear foot (about 400 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: No donation of copyright was received with this collection. Documents created by U.S. government employees 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: Elizabeth Carrington (2005) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

The Papers of Spencer R. Quick document his work in the White House as Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President, Dr. John R. Steelman. The collection includes correspondence, memoranda, employment applications, notifications of personnel changes, pay stubs, personal records, service contracts, photographs, printed material, acknowledgements of reference letters, and travel vouchers. The collection is comprised of one series, a Subject File, arranged alphabetically by subject and thereunder chronologically.

Quick's chief role was as a liaison between the government and the Advertising Council, a non-profit group comprised of representatives from the American advertising industry. The Advertising Council's mission was to provide federal agencies, as well as private groups, with free facilities and assistance in developing advertising for "non-controversial" causes and public service announcements. Quick helped agencies develop public information campaigns in conjunction with the Advertising Council. He inherited these duties from his predecessor on the White House staff, John T. Gibson. Quick’s immediate superior was Charles W. Jackson, who worked directly under John R. Steelman.

The bulk of the collection consists of letters, memoranda, and reports written by Quick and others from January 1952 to March 1953, relating to Advertising Council campaigns in behalf of armed forces recruiting, civil defense, the Ground Observer Corps, forest fire prevention, savings bonds, and other causes deemed important to the national welfare.

Related collections in the Truman Library include the files of Spencer R. Quick, Charles W. Jackson, and John T. Gibson. Their files are part of the Staff Member and Office Files of the Harry S. Truman Papers.