The call came in from France sometime on Saturday.
Thinking he might have received a call related to the death of President Ronald Reagan in California earlier in the day, Steve Kelley, senior congressional relations specialist for the Library of Congress, checked his office telephone messages from home on Saturday night, June 5.
Terry Boone, senior rare book conservator, and Mark Roosa, preservation director, show Librarian of Congress James H. Billington the condolence books that the Conservation Division created for members of the House, Senate and public to sign while former President Ronald Reagan lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda June 9-11. - Michaela McNichol
Kelley's intuition was correct; a staff member with Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert had called from Paris and left him a message, asking Kelley to do whatever was necessary to have the Library create condolence books for the ceremonies surrounding the lying in state of former President Ronald Reagan in the U.S. Capitol rotunda later in the week. Hastert was in France representing the U.S. Congress for the 60th anniversary of D-Day.
The task of creating the condolence books fell to the specialists in the Library's Conservation Office, a responsibility they had fulfilled on other occasions at the request of the congressional leadership. Led by senior rare book conservators Terry Boone and Yasmeen Khan, a team of three other book conservators (John Bertonaschi, Otoyo Yonekura and Lynn Kidder) created 21 hardcover condolence books bound in red or blue silk with handmade endpapers and high-quality blank pages for signatures in the space of two days.
Two of the 11-by-13-inch books were reserved for members of the House of Representatives and one for members of the Senate to write messages of condolence for Nancy Reagan. Others were to receive the condolences and signatures of congressional staff members and the thousands of mourners who streamed through the Capitol rotunda from June 9 to June 11.
After the Reagan funeral, most of the books were returned to the Library so that conservators could affix permanent gold-stamped leather labels to each book. The labels for the congressional books read: "Condolence Book of the United States House of Representatives (or the United States Senate) for President Ronald W. Reagan, 1911-2004," and the books that members of the public signed said: "Signature Book in Honor of President Ronald W. Reagan, 1911-2004."
All of the books will be sent to Nancy Reagan for permanent retention at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif.
