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FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT AWARD
Michele Lyons, Office of National Institutes of Health History and Stetten Museum, retired
As curator of the Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, Michele Lyons was lucky enough to participate as the National Institutes of Health’s museum progressed from an electronic typewriter to stepping fully into the digital age. Starting at NIH in 1987 as an intern, Ms. Lyons continued to work at NIH until her really final retirement in December 2025. In her time at NIH, she built an extensive collection documenting NIH’s scientific contributions, programs and policies, and social environment. She helped create over 20 exhibits, authored numerous talks and articles about NIH history, and wrote thousands of social media posts. She also lugged about a ton of archival and museum donations around campus on a cart. Ms. Lyons trained for this career combining intellectual curiosity and sheer muscle at the George Washington University master’s program in museum administration, graduating in 1989. Her undergraduate work, in Medieval History of all things, was done at the University of California, Irvine. She’s also worked at the U.S. Information Agency’s Exhibit Program and the National Building Museum.
ROGER TRASK AWARDClaire Jerry, National Museum of American History, retired
Claire Jerry retired from her position as a curator in the Division of Political History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2026. During her ten years with the museum, she was project director for the exhibit The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden, team lead for the 2020 digital campaign #votehistory, a member of the museum’s contemporary presidential campaign collecting team, and a contributor to several exhibition teams.
Jerry’s research focuses on political rhetoric, the material culture of 20th- and 21st-century campaigning, the history of the presidency, and the rhetoric of woman suffrage. She has published rhetorical studies on the material culture of William Jennings Bryan, presidential portraits, suffrage newspapers, and women political leaders. She wrote the introduction for the Smithsonian Book of Presidential Quotations and edited and wrote for the forthcoming Smithsonian Book of Presidential Speeches. She has given more than 100 professional papers and public presentations.
Prior to joining the Smithsonian, Jerry held several museum positions including Chief Curator at McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, Curator of the Paul Findley Congressional Office Museum, and Guest Curator at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. In her first career, she served as a faculty member at the University of Denver, Butler University, and MacMurray College where she was a full professor of History and Communication and served as Chair of the Department of History.
Jerry holds a B.A. from Butler University (summa cum laude with highest honors in Religion and honors in Speech) an M.A. in Speech Communication from Miami University, an M.A. in Public History from the University of Illinois Springfield (Outstanding History Graduate,) and a Ph.D.in Communication Studies from the University of Kansas.
BOOK AWARD
Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security by Andrew Preston
The Society for History in the Federal Government (SHFG) 2026 Book Prize is awarded to Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security by Andrew Preston. Preston's work presents a strong, engaging argument for understanding the United States' modern concept of national security as a creation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's distinct internationalist mindset. By shifting the nation's threat perception from a narrow focus on defending its own borders to a wider recognition of potential enemies abroad, Roosevelt and the New Deal policymakers reshaped how the U.S. federal government has engaged with the world from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. Total Defense examines the connections between this remarkable policy transformation and the New Deal's domestic security agenda, illustrating how both aspects continue to enable and constrain the nation's approach to problems and challenges at home and around the world.
PRIZE FOR ARTICLE OR ESSAY
“The Defense Logistics Agency in Operation Enduring Freedom: The Commodity Side of Logistics Efficiency” by Colin Williams
Published in Federal History in 2025, Dr. Colin Williams’ innovative article provides a window onto an important and understudied area of U.S. history, contributing greatly to our understanding of Operation Enduring Freedom. It gives valuable insight into the role logistics played in the conflict and DLA’s contribution to supplying posts, establishing transportation routes, managing complex contracts, and then disassembling all of this infrastructure within a very short time frame. The article also reveals some of the ways in which large scale military operations changed over the course of the war. In addition, the work makes good use of documents and other government sources to form its argument, providing future scholars with an invaluable base upon which to engage in further research.
EXCELLENCE IN NEW MEDIA AWARDNational Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Topic Page by NASA History Office
The NASA History Office's National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) topic page, created in anticipation of the 110th anniversary of the NACA’s founding, features comprehensive NACA-related resources that include: encyclopedic overviews, biographies and oral histories of key figures, archival image galleries, history publications, and a new video series titled Launching the Future of Flight. NASA’s integration of different forms of high production value media, as well as with the staggering number of research hours represented by the website, are impressive. The Future of Flight video was particularly innovative in the way that it brought an extensive collection of still photographs to life with professional animation techniques.
Historic Preservation and Exhibitions Award
Call to Arms: The Soldier and the Revolutionary War by National Museum of the United States Army
The Army celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2025, and the National Museum of the United States Army is commemorating the semiquincentennial with the exhibition Call to Arms: The Soldier and the Revolutionary War. Through partnerships with dozens of other institutions, the exhibition’s team of curators and museum specialists realized the promise of the show's title, assembling a vast array of artifacts that document the founding years of the American military: firearms, powder horns, standards, cannons and much more. These artifacts are enlivened by interactive maps and other media elements that help visitors reach across time and explore every level of the Revolutionary War, from famous battles to the rhythms of day-to-day life in the Continental Army’s camps. Vivid, life-sized cast figures distributed throughout the exhibition encourage visitors to consider how individuals of different backgrounds and worldviews chartered their own path through the international conflict. Visitors leave Call to Arms with new insights into the lives of our nation’s first soldiers as well as the U.S. Army’s central place within our nation’s history.