Washington news in brief
Scott celebrates sister on the ticket
State Rep. Jamie Scott, D-Little Rock, and U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., aren’t just fellow Democrats. They’re also, in a collegiate sense, family.
“I’m super-excited, because Sen. Harris is my sorority sister,” Scott said after learning that Harris would be her party’s vice presidential nominee.
Scott joined Alpha Kappa Alpha as a student at Arkansas State University. Harris was initiated into the sorority at Howard University.
Scott said enthusiasm for Harris runs deep in Alpha Kappa Alpha circles.
“All of our sorority members are excited,” she said. “I think my sorority sisters are going to move heaven and earth to make sure she’s elected across this country.”
Scott, an early backer of former Vice President Joe Biden, was one of his delegates to last week’s Democratic National Convention.
She’s happy to see a Biden-Harris ticket, predicting that it will pay off in November.
When Harris was named, “I felt seen,” Scott said.
It was special, she said, to see a Black woman recognized.
“Oftentimes, I feel like we just do the work, and we’re kind of overlooked,” she said. “I felt like [Harris] earned her spot in history.”
Boozman marks a veteran’s passing
U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., paid tribute last week to retired Col. James Elmer, a former Little Rock Air Force Base commander who died July 14 at age 86.
The Wisconsin native served in the U.S. Air Force for three decades and chose to return to Arkansas once his time in uniform was complete.
His last assignment was at California’s Norton Air Force Base and ended with him serving as commander of the Aerospace Audiovisual Service.
“We did the aerial shots for the movie ‘Top Gun,’” Elmer said in a March 12 interview.
His assignments during the Vietnam War were less high-profile and more harrowing. He served as a navigator aboard C-130s.
“Our job was to fly and take off when the sun went down and land when the sun came up,” he said.
Dropping flares from 1,800 feet, the ground below “lit up like a house on fire,” enabling U.S. forces to better target their North Vietnamese foes, he recalled.
“We were shot at. Many times, we came back with bullet holes,” he said.
Boozman posted the video online and said it would be submitted to the Veterans History Project, a collection of audio and video recollections from more than 100,000 U.S. veterans.
Hill spotlights Library of Congress
U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., held a Facebook LIVE conversation Wednesday with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Lee Ann Potter, the library’s director of education outreach.
They discussed Library of Congress online resources that are available for free, ranging from digitized 100-year-old Arkansas newspapers to sheet music from all over the world.
The collection is so extensive that “we even have a lock of Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair,” Hayden said.
Hayden said the Library of Congress is “the world’s largest library, with a collection that rivals any research library in the world” — 836 miles of shelving and 171 million items compiled.
The library’s webpage is loc.gov.
Potter said library staffers have been “crazy busy” and working from home.
“We’ve been trying to draw attention to the library’s collections, as well as to strategies for using these collections in the classroom, in the virtual classroom, on the telephone, however we can get them into the hands of educators and students and parents and caregivers, because they really are extraordinary resources,” Potter said.
During Wednesday’s halfhour session, Hayden shared highlights from her 2018 visit to Arkansas.
In addition to a stop in Little Rock, she and her mother journeyed to Helena-West Helena, the city where her mother was born.
It’s a trip they both remember fondly. “She still talks about it,” Hayden said. Planning to visit the nation’s capital? Know something happening in Washington, D.C.? Please contact Frank Lockwood at (202) 662-7690 or flockwood@arkansas online.com. Want the latest from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Washington bureau? It’s available on Twitter, @LockwoodFrank.