Letter to President Locklin from Archibald (April 9, 1975)

Letter to President Locklin from Archibald (April 9, 1975)

Betty Archibald, daughter of Lyman Archibald wrote this letter to Wilbert E. Locklin, President of Springfield College, on April 15, 1975. Although the letter is dated May 9, 1975, it is stamped as having been received in April 1975, and Locklin's reply is also dated in April, suggesting that Archibald may have written the wrong month. The letter’s heading advertises the Archibald Fox Ranch in Warren, Pennsylvania, and its footer reads, “Every Woman is More Beautiful in Fur.” In this letter, Betty writes that she was horrified to see a picture of the “original basketball team” with an inset of James Naismith (the inventor of basketball) attached to an Old Crow advertisement in the magazine Sports. She writes that she knows her father, L. W. Archibald, never drank anything stronger than tea, and that he and the other players would be “turning over in their graves” to see the advertisement. She ends by asking Springfield College and the Basketball Hall of Fame to strongly protest the incident. Old Crow is a brand of Kentucky-made straight bourbon whiskey and was one of the state’s earliest distilleries. It is distilled by Beam Inc., which also produces Jim Beam.

April 9, 1975

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