This Week In National Press Club History: Club celebrates 25 years in 1933

March 23, 1970: The Board of Governors unanimously adopts a resolution creating the National Press Club Foundation.

March 24, 2001: Brian Jacques, author of the children’s fantasy series Redwall, reads an excerpt of his works at a Book Rap. Since the 1940s, in a change of policy, authors of every genre who are not members of the Club have been invited to appear at Club events, including Alex Haley in 1979, Michael Crichton in 1993, J.K. Rowling in 1999 and David McCullough in 2001.

March 25, 1969: Pierre Trudeau, the charismatic Prime Minister of Canada, addresses a full house at a National Press Club luncheon during his first state visit to Washington after his election a year earlier. He presents his liberal vision for the country’s domestic future, and relations with the United States.

March 29, 1933: Metropolitan Opera singers Morton Downey and John Charles Thomas, known for his recording of an FDR favorite, “Home On The Range,” sing arias at the Club’s Silver Jubilee celebration of its survival for 25 challenging and exciting years. The entertainment also included a skit, “Birth of a Nation’s Press Club,” set in a recreation of the taproom in the Club’s original quarters over the F Street jewelry store. Some of the original members of the Club were able to play themselves in the performance.

This Week In National Press Club History is brought to you by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s century-plus history through lobby displays, events, panel discussions and its oral history project.

For more information about the Committee, or to join it, contact Chair Gilbert Klein at [email protected].