When you think of beautiful luxury pens, you can imagine the CEO of a large corporate company that adorns its massive table with a small but expensive collection of pens. However, American presidents also enjoy the wonderful feeling of using Parker pens for fountains and Waterman pens. As long as stock pens were around, presidents used them to sign some of the most important parts of our legislative history.
No one knows exactly when and who started it, but in Washington there is an obscure tradition, which only the most passionate fans of luxury pens probably know about. When the President signs an important bill, he uses not one, but dozens of pens to sign it. This tradition dates back to Franklin Roosevelt, but, as already mentioned, this could have begun long before him. So, what is the logic of this little fad? Well, after signing an important document, any pen used becomes an artifact. Therefore, the more pens were used, the more historical relics you now tied to this part of the legislation. However, not all pens are locked in a museum somewhere. Most of them are given as gifts. Who receives these wonderful gifts? Usually the people who participated in the creation of the bill.
After signing, luxury pens are usually engraved in the White House. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he used more than 75 pens! In fact, there is a video recording of this remarkable achievement, but after a while it becomes difficult to track all these luxurious pens! One of the first people to receive a pen as a gift was, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. Senators Hubert Humphrey and Everett McKinley Dirksen also received pens to help them pass the bill through Congress. In 1996, President Clinton used four pens to sign a veto bill that allowed the president to veto parts of the bill, not the whole bill. The lucky recipients of these pens were Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
A more recent example of this tradition was in March last year, when President Obama signed a bill on health care in the amount of 938 billion dollars with 22 pens. But the question remains, how can you use so many pens, especially if the document only needs its signature? For President Kennedy, this process came down to science. If he needed more letters so that he could use more pens, he would have thrown off the ink, writing his middle name and adding flowering under his name. In 2009, these questions were also asked to President Obama, and he told reporters that he was practicing to write his name very slowly and carefully.
However, not all presidents adhere to this tradition. President George W. Bush liked to use only the pen, and then offered unused pens as souvenirs. It is amazing to think that such a simple thing as luxury pens can have such an important influence on our country.
