Charles Elmore Cropley (1894-1952) worked at the Supreme Court of the United States for nearly all of his life, rising from the lowly position of page to a senior staff position, Clerk of the Court.
As the Court’s Clerk, Cropley held the Bible at a number of presidential inaugurations. Probably the most notable was January 20, 1941. Cropley held the Bible on which President Franklin D. Roosevelt took his oath of office, from Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, at the start of FDR’s third term.
Cropley then, unfortunately, dropped the Roosevelt family Bible.
(Six months later, Cropley held on perfectly to the Bible on which Robert H. Jackson, after receiving his judicial commission, took his oath of office.)
Six years later, as 1947 came to an end, Mr. Cropley sent year-end words of thanks to Justice Jackson:
I am sure that Cropley sent kindly New Year’s Eve words to each Justice, in 1947 and probably every year.
But Cropley’s 1947 words to Jackson strike me as more than boilerplate.
They seem consistent with the complimentary words that Cropley had penned to Jackson two years earlier, when he was away without leave from the Court, prosecuting Nazis at Nuremberg:
Cropley’s 1947 words also seem consistent with the special view that a good son would have toward someone who showed kindness to his mother. (Jackson was acquainted with Cropley’s mother, and he at least once sent her, via her son, blooms from the lilac bushes at Jackson’s rural home.)
I hope that you are someone who (still?) can read cursive handwriting.
Happy New Year!
