WABASHA, Minn. The bald eagle is getting closer to becoming the official national bird of the United States. You can pardon yourself if you didn’t think this was necessary.
A unanimous vote to incorporate the official national bird designation into the U.S. code was approved by the Senate late one Monday night in July, after the majority of senators had already left for the day.
After Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., moved to approve the bill without any opposition, Senator Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., stated that it was so ordered.
It was off to the House in an instant.
The bald eagle is not yet the national bird of the United States, although the U.S. constitution officially names the oak tree as the country’s national tree, the rose as its national flower, and Congress even decided in 2016 to make the bison the country’s national animal.
Congress is on the verge of fixing that, thanks to one citizen who found the omission. In one of Congress’s final acts of the year, the House approved the bill Monday night, formally establishing the bald eagle’s national significance and sending it to President Joe Biden for signature.
The ‘eaglevangelist’
In Wabasha, Minnesota, where the National Eagle Center is located on the banks of the Mississippi River, bald eagles are especially beloved. The community, which bills itself as the Eagle Capital of America, is home to roughly 1,500 people, one of whom has devoted his life to the bald eagle’s heritage.
To put it bluntly, Preston Cook has an obsession with bald eagles.
One sentence from the 1966 film A Thousand Clowns that I saw was, “You can’t have too many eagles,” Cook noted. “That might be an interesting thing to collect,” I observed as I left the theater.
And so he began to collect and collect and collect. Cook’s collection has grown to over 40,000 objects over the years, making it the largest in the nation, in his opinion.
Cook stated, “I may have gotten a little carried away in my collecting here, but I’ve loved the whole process.” “I would buy it if it had an eagle on it.”
The collection, which includes playing cards, artworks, magazine covers, and political buttons, is housed in two warehouses close to the Mississippi River. There are eagle-studded stilettos, ginger beer bottles, and Lego sets and sculptures.
Cook started searching for a location for the collection because it had grown so large. The National Eagle Center in Wabasha became its home.
While investigating the eagle’s role in American history, he also made the decision to publish his collection as a book.
According to Cook, we have never had a national bird.
The turkey myth
The National Eagle Center team was surprised by the omission since they believed the bird that nests in the trees around their offices had already received the award. After Alaska, Minnesota boasts the nation’s second-largest bald eagle nesting population.
When Preston Cook brought that up to us years ago, Scott Mehus, the National Eagle Center’s director of education, replied, “Oh, come on, you’re kidding me.” I’ve been telling [them] in class for years that it’s our national bird and our national symbol.
“Everyone in the country, including myself, has been mistaken for years,” Mehus remarked.
Soon after the country’s creation, the bald eagle was featured on the great seal, making it the most recognizable bird in the country. Originally entrusted with the duty, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson couldn’t agree on a seal to represent the nation. In 1782, Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson submitted a version featuring the bald eagle, which was later approved that same year. The eagle-emblazoned seal has been a national symbol ever since it was first used on a document that gave George Washington permission to negotiate a prisoner-of-war exchange.
However, not every one of the founding fathers loved eagles. In a well-known letter to his daughter, Benjamin Franklin expressed his regret that the eagle had been selected as the United States’ representative, describing it as a bird of poor moral character and added, “He does not get his living honestly.”
In his letter, Franklin continued by stating that the turkey is a far more respectable bird and a genuine Native American.
The idea that Franklin spearheaded talks to designate the turkey as the national bird, however, is a hoax; historians think he was kidding. Scott acknowledged that Franklin made some disparaging remarks about the eagle, but he claimed he never supported the idea that the turkey should be our grand seal.
The bill
Cook joked that this is one of the few laws that won’t have any effect.
Cook’s original bill, which he prepared and sent to Congress, is devoid of funding and does not even support bald eagle conservation initiatives. It only inserts a phrase stating that the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is the national bird between the national tree and the rules for inauguration festivities.
A bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., took the bill to the floor for unanimous passage in the upper chamber after he forwarded it to the offices of Minnesota members in both chambers of Congress.
Klobuchar said of the National Eagle Center and Cook, “They are the ones who came to us and said it’s not the national bird.” That, then, was the catalyst.
Any object that wants to be designated as a national treasure requires an act of Congress and the president’s signature; the oak tree received the accolade in 2004 and the rose in 1986.
It’s merely a correction; nobody needs to alter anything. According to Cook, it is merely a historical correction to put things right and return them to their proper state. We’re taking care of it because it was one of those small bits of history that I thought needed to be preserved.
The blazer
Cook’s love for eagles isn’t exactly visible, but it’s pretty near. Eagles fly on his red, white, and blue suspenders, and he has an eagle badge on his lapel and an eagle-embroidered bow tie.
He nods to the buttons he got when he was enlisted into the Army in the 1960s, which are now stitched into the blue jacket he frequently wears, when you ask him what his most treasured Eagle property is.
These buttons with the great seal were given to me on my formal uniform. He remarked, “I got out two years later, cut the buttons off my military uniform, and I’ve been wearing them ever since.” I began collecting eagles for the rest of my life with these first artifacts, which are the first objects in my collection.
He acknowledges that he hasn’t stopped collecting things, referring to it as a working collection, as he examines tables covered in old magazine covers featuring cartoons of eagles taking off with little infants in their claws. He laughs, “Don’t tell my wife that I’m still collecting,” while he cycles the objects through exhibits at the National Eagle Center for kids and curious visitors to view.
“I am grateful to my wife for her great tolerance,” he remarked. She will sometimes remark, “You have too many eagles.” Sometimes she will say that.
However, marriage is about compromise, just like legislation, and even Cook’s household has its limitations.
“You can put them anywhere in the house,” she replied, laughing, “but you can’t put them in the bedroom.” Okay, I can live with that one, I said.
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