TYPED LETTER TO SEYMOUR HALPERN SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT OF OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE REMSEN DUBOIS BIRD. by Bird, Remsen DuBois. (1888-1971). President of Occidental College, Los Angeles 1921-1946 - 1931.

Los Angeles, CA: April 14th, 1931., 1931.. Very good. - 69 words typed on an 8-3/8 inch high by 5-3/8 inch wide sheet of "Occidental College / Office of the President" letterhead. Signed "Remsen D Bird". The bottom edge of the letterhead is lightly creased & there is a tiny piece out of the bottom left corner. Very good.

Bird is sending a signed photograph [not here present] to Seymour Halpern, then a young autograph collector. He explains that through a newspaper error the name of Dr. Freeman, a Trustee of the college, has been appearing under a picture of Bird. "At the request of Dr. Freeman I am autographing the picture [of Bird] which you have sent him....He is a very much better person and it is too bad that you can't have his signature."

After a childhood marked by dire poverty and by the death of his older sister, followed four years later by the death of his mother, Remsen DuBois Bird [1888-1971] determined to devote his life to service. He earned a degree in church history at the Princeton Theological College, studied further in Berlin and then returned to the seminary to teach church history. A strong believer in an open and liberal mind, he fell out with the school's conservative attitudes and moved to California. In 1921, after serving at YMCA centers in France during World War I, he was offered the post of President of Occidental College in Los Angeles. He stayed in this post for twenty-five years. His tenure at Occidental attracted some criticism because of his tendency to act on impulse and emotion rather than rational; analysis. He was satirized by Aldous Huxley in the 1939 novel "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan"'

The Queens, New York Republican Congressman Seymour Halpern [1913-1997] started his political career as a campaign aide to New York's powerful mayor Fiorella La Guardia and first served in New York's State Senate for 14 years before seeking a seat in the U.S. Congress. In Albany Halpern sponsored 279 bills that became law, including measures on schools, housing, civil rights, nutrition and mental health. A Liberal, he was something of an anomaly as the lone Republican representative from New York City, and generally garnered support from Labor Unions and endorsement from the Liberal Party. Yet he never even considered switching parties as he considered membership in the Republican Party a family tradition and commitment. While he found ample time for his private pursuits, including painting and collecting autographs, he took his legislative duties very seriously. Of these, he was proudest of his co-sponsorship of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and of the original 1965 Medicare legislation.