About that FDR portrait on the museum library wall

I've always admired this nicely framed portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the library at the Lucas County Historical Society Museum, but hadn't thought much about where it came from --- until yesterday, when I happened upon the following brief news item on the front page of The Chariton Herald-Patriot of June 16, 1932, under the headline, "Chariton Woman Gets Picture of Franklin Roosevelt": 

+++

A large pencil sketch of the Governor of New York adorns the Gittinger Drug Store this week. 

The sketch is the gift of Governor Roosevelt to Miss Mabel Gittinger. The picture is personally endorsed by the Governor as "To Mabel Gittinger, from her friend, Franklin Roosevelt."

Miss Gittinger is a delegate from the fifth congressional district to the national Democratic convention in Chicago, which starts June 27. Governor Roosevelt has been mentioned favorably as the Democratic candidate for the president of the United States.

+++

The rest, of course is history. Miss Gittinger attended the convention and, presumably, was among the delegates who endorsed the Roosevelt candidacy, one of those pivotal events in U.S. history. 

Mabel, like all of Lucas County's Gittingers, traced her origins to the Greenville neighborhood, southeast of Russell, but a majority of her 103 years were spent in Chariton. Her parents were Jake and Laura (Goltry) Gittinger; her father, variously Lucas County sheriff, clerk of district court, county assessor and state legislator.

The drug store where the portrait was on display during June of 1932 was operated by Miss Gittinger's brother, Burke. Henry Gittinger, longtime editor and publisher of The Chariton Leader, was her uncle.

A career educator and school administrator herself, Miss Gittinger was a lifelong Democratic party activist who also served one term as county auditor after her retirement from teaching. 

She obviously valued the Roosevelt portrait and it accompanied her south during 1971 when she moved to Branson, Missouri, to live near a favorite nephew, Leonard Gittinger. Leonard brought the portrait to the historical society after his aunt's death on June 8, 1994. Her ashes were returned to the Russell Cemetery for burial. 

+++

If you check out the value of a portrait like this online, you'll discover that FDR courted many "friends" with personalized signed portraits like this during the course of the 1932 campaign --- also that there's stiff competition for political memorabilia these days and the cost of one like this in good condition is considerable.

We value it, however, as an artifact of political life in the 1930s, a memorial to Miss Gittinger --- and as a reminder of another time --- when receipt of a signed image of an aspiring presidential candidate could be front-page news.