Go Team Blue! Blog Post | Capital Jewish Museum

Sleepaway camps are giving way to back-to-school season, but I’m clinging to August even as it slips through my fingers like sand. I don’t have a kid in camp or at school anymore, and I haven’t been a camper or a student since the last century. But August still has those end-of-summer vibes, tinged with the sticky, sandy, scent of sunscreen, and the screams of “Color War!” wafting through the air.

To stretch summer into fall, our Collections Curator put together four fun display cases filled with items from the Museum’s archives that make up the four “teams” in our museum-nerd version of Color War. Color War is a staple at many Jewish sleepaway camps; it’s like an elementary school field day, except you wear a T-shirt with the color of your team, there are chants, and probably a bonfire. There’s tug-of-war, silly skits, and fun surprises (also the parents back home get surprises, like when your kid shows up in the camp photos in a hoodie repping a T-ball team from New Jersey, because he forgot to pack something orange. Not that I would know).

You must choose a team during Color War, and this year I’m picking Team Blue. I was on vacation when my colleagues put together this case, so I appreciated this vacation-related item: a Federal Employee Leave Card from 1961. The card came into our collection as a donation from Harold Wallace, who donated materials related to the career of his friend and colleague, Elliot Sivowitch.

Sivowitch joined the staff of the Smithsonian, in the Electricity Collection at what was then called the United States National Museum, in 1961. He was a radio and television historian, a violinist, and a synagogue president. He was also a federal employee for 39 years, from 1961 through his retirement in 2000. An amateur radio enthusiast, Sivowitch helped establish the Smithsonian’s ham radio station, and belonged to the American Radio Relay League and other radio clubs. He worked on exhibitions at the Smithsonian about the “Information Age,” and the history of transistor radios.

Card, Leave for Federal Employees, 1961. | Gift of Harold Wallace in memory of Elliot Sivowitch

Black and white photo of Elliot Sivowitch and unknown woman, date unknown. | Gift of Harold Wallace in memory of Elliot Sivowitch

Color photo of Elliot Sivowitch, date unknown. | Gift of Harold Wallace in memory of Elliot Sivowitch

Blue collection artifacts on view as part of a Collections Color War, August 2025.

And, apparently, he also took vacations! Or, at least, he kept in his possession the leave card issued to him by the federal government during his onboarding process. I looked into the history of leave in the federal civil service, interested in what kind of leave policies Mr. Sivowitch and his colleagues had. In 1910, President Taft [paywall] suggested that federal employees get two to three months of paid leave every summer! He thought it “necessary in order to enable one to continue his work the next year with that energy and effectiveness which it ought to have.” Where can I sign up? But for some reason that never came to pass. Instead, for about a century, federal employees seem to have had a relatively consistent base of 13 paid days of annual leave per year, plus federal holidays, sick leave, and (as of 1993) also family and medical leave.

Back to Team Blue, and our Color War case. We can see from this (blue) card that Mr. Sivowitch and his federal colleagues received this leave-tracking tool from their insurance company GEICO, the Government Employees Insurance Company. Founded in 1936, the company soon moved to Washington, DC; as the corporate website states, “they saw federal employees as good risks,” because the jobs were stable and reliable (I know, I know). In 1959, just a few years before this leave card was issued, the company opened new headquarters in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and the company continues to serve federal employees.

The card provided employees with a chart to track their leave in all categories (including annual, sick, compensatory, etc.), including a calendar listing federal holidays. Of course, the card also served as an advertisement for purchasing GEICO automobile insurance. Today, federal employees can access the GEICO Federal Leave mobile app to keep track of their leave, which they can take for “vacations, rest and relaxation, and personal business or emergencies,” according to the Office of Personnel Management’s website. For anybody reading this who has not yet taken a summer vacation, my wish for you is that your leave card has a few extra days on it, and you get to take some time off. Just remember to pack a T-shirt in each color.

The Museum’s initiative to collect items telling the stories of local Jewish federal workers is supported by Sue Ducat in memory of Stanley Cohen z”l.

If you have artifacts or images related to Jewish federal workers in the DC region, please contact us at archives[at]capitaljewishmuseum.org.