{"id":10184,"date":"2011-09-14T15:31:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T19:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=10184"},"modified":"2011-09-14T15:31:49","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T19:31:49","slug":"taft-the-party-animal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2011\/09\/taft-the-party-animal\/","title":{"rendered":"Taft the Party Animal"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Statue<\/a>Is there a Taft fashion cult lurking about campus?\u00a0 This morning saw the William Howard Taft statue outside the College of Law decked out like he was going to a Jimmy Buffet concert.\u00a0 Replete with hula skirt, tee shirt, shades, and beanie, Big Bill definitely looked like he was ready for an end-of-summer blowout.<\/p>\n

The Taft statue was erected on the east side of the law school in 1992.\u00a0 Sculpted by William T. Moore III, the statue shows Taft in his judicial robes and clasping a law book in his hand.\u00a0 A graduate of Woodward High School, Yale, and the Cincinnati Law School, William Howard Taft served as dean of his law alma mater from 1896 to 1900.\u00a0 The Cincinnati Law School was the last remnant of the original Cincinnati College founded in 1819.\u00a0 As dean, Taft assisted with the 1897 merger of his school with the Law Department of the University of Cincinnati and served as dean of the combined programs, called the College of Law.\u00a0 He was appointed by President William McKinley to the Philippine Commission in 1900 and soon became governor of the Philipines.\u00a0 From 1904 to 1908, Taft served as Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt.\u00a0 As the Republican candidate, he was elected President of the United States in 1908, completing one term in office from 1909-1912.\u00a0 After he left the White House, Taft taught in the Yale Law School until 1921 when President Warren Harding named him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a position he held until his death in 1930.<\/p>\n

\"Taft<\/a>

Taft with his brothers, Henry, Charles Phelps, and Horace at the 1925 Alphonso Taft College of Law dedication<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Taft<\/a>

William Howard Taft from the 1900 UC yearbook<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Taft<\/a>

Sketch of the Taft statue from the 1992 dedication program<\/p><\/div>\n

It is said that William Howard Taft was never a happy president \u2013 his dream was always to be a jurist.\u00a0 And, when he was unhappy he tended to eat.\u00a0 Reflecting on his waistline after he left the presidency, he is reported to have written to a friend that he was much happier now, the proof being that he could button his trousers without the help of a valet.\u00a0 The statue shows a very happy Taft, in fact, a man in full smile.\u00a0 The bronzed Taft has been decorated before, and though some people suspect students from the College of Medicine are behind the pranks, it isn\u2019t really known who is operating behind the scenes.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly not an open-and-shut case.\u00a0 And, no one has found the briefs.<\/p>\n

To learn more about the statue or about Taft\u2019s years at the University of Cincinnati, contact the Archives & Rare Books Library at 556-1959, archives@ucmail.uc.edu<\/a>, or on the ARB website, http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/libraries\/arb\/index.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kevin Grace Is there a Taft fashion cult lurking about campus?\u00a0 This morning saw the William Howard Taft statue outside the College of Law decked out like he was going to a Jimmy Buffet concert.\u00a0 Replete with hula skirt, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[35,52,66],"class_list":["post-10184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uclibraries","tag-just-interesting","tag-uc-history","tag-university-archives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}