Boucher Teaches Political History At Virginia Tech

The Roanoke Times

A substantial collection of former 9th District Representative Rick Boucher’s political records are now housed in Virginia Tech University Libraries Special Collections and Archives.

The records span four decades of political history and progress in Southwest Virginia and the collection includes 76 boxes containing 6,111 folders and 72 awards spanning Boucher’s political career, according to a university news release.

Boucher, a Democrat from Abingdon, served in the state Senate for seven years before being elected to Congress in 1982, a post he held until 2011. With 28 years of service, he is the longest-serving representative in state history. republic District 9.

Boucher donated her collection to the Virginia Tech University Libraries to make it available to anyone who wants to learn from it, according to the release. University Archives and Special Collections Project Archivist Bess Pittman organized and described collection items to create a detailed finding aid and other access tools for researchers.

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“The collection reflects the professional work of Rick Boucher, including correspondence, numerous handwritten presentations he made in committees and on the floor of the House, hundreds of photos, awards, memos from his office, newsletters, brochures, pamphlets , campaign materials, basically everything that came his way during his work as a congressman and state legislator,” Pittman said in the statement.

Boucher said in the statement:

“I had a long association with Virginia Tech, working actively with four Virginia Tech presidents. It was the largest institution of higher education in my district and its largest company, and I wanted my papers to be given the respect that is the institution. The university’s acclaimed technical expertise appealed to me because so much of this collection now has the ability to be digitally accessible to anyone with Internet access.”

Right now, a small digital exhibit offers researchers online a sampling of just over 200 items from the collection, and archivists are now working to add more digital content from the collection to the site, according to the release.

Pittman was responsible for organizing all the materials into a cohesive collection, a process that took nearly a year.

“It gives a really amazing look at the work that goes into governing a region. The main focus is the 9th District, but you can see the ripples of the broader work that Boucher was involved in,” he said in the statement.

Specifically, Pittman, in the statement, pointed out how Boucher was instrumental in the commercialization of the Internet. He was the primary author of the 1992 legislation that, when signed by President George HW Bush, allowed commercial content on the Internet for the first time, allowing money to be made online and ushering in the world of electronic commerce and revolutionizing the global economy . After the signing of Boucher’s legislation, e-commerce was born in the United States and then spread to the rest of the world. n

Among the articles are materials reflecting Boucher’s involvement in major legislation that shaped telecommunications policy for a quarter of a century, including the Communications Act of 1996 of which he was a sponsor. The collection also reflects Boucher’s work as the lead author of legislation creating Virginia’s first natural forest areas and his handwritten documents and presentations from the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, during which he was selected by the Democratic leader of the House Dick Gephardt to take the leadership of the judiciary. Committee and the House as the main sponsor of the Democratic no-confidence motion as an alternative to impeachment.

The collection includes extensive files from when he, as a state senator, led to the passage of comprehensive legislation reforming the state’s criminal sexual assault laws and the state’s drug laws , according to the statement.

Boucher, in the statement, said he hopes this collection can influence others to engage in public service and advance ideas that promote positive change.

According to the release, researchers interested in the Boucher collection should explore the detailed research aid to help target material of interest. Due to the large volume of material, the collection is housed in an off-site facility that requires advance notice for retrieval.