WASHINGTON — Whiskey maker Jack Daniel may not get a national holiday in his honor. But, for a dead man, he certainly knows how to make an entrance.
A long, black bus with the Tennessee whiskey entrepreneur’s likeness emblazoned on the side rolled into Washington on Wednesday, part of the Jack Daniel Distillery’s long-shot campaign to get Congress to declare his birthday a national holiday.
Tourists on the National Mall stopped and watched with amusement as the bus parked just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol and as workers rolled a 53-gallon white oak whiskey barrel onto the sidewalk and set up a life-sized statue of Mr. Jack himself.
The nation’s capital was the last stop on a 10-city bus tour in which the Lynchburg, Tenn.-based distillery hoped to drum up public support for its unusual-yet-spirited campaign.
“We’ve seen great support in every city where we’ve been,” said master distiller Jeff Arnett.
At a sidewalk press conference, Arnett presented two Tennessee congressmen -- Reps. Lincoln Davis and Jim Cooper -- with petitions signed by more than 127,000 people calling on Congress to declare Jack Daniel’s birthday a federal holiday.
The mustachioed whiskey pioneer was born in September 1850, although the exact date has been lost to history: His birth records were destroyed in a courthouse fire.
Arnett suggested that Congress could pick any date in September to mark Daniel’s birthday. Daniel is deserving of such recognition, Arnett said, because he lived the American dream and his successful business is a perfect example of the American entrepreneurial spirit.
In Congress, there’s already talk about putting together a bipartisan coalition to look into ways to honor Mr. Jack, Davis said. But, “making a national holiday — that would probably be quite difficult,” he conceded.
Arnett wasn’t discouraged. The bus campaign may be over, he said, but the distillery plans to continue collecting petitions in support of a national holiday honoring its founder.
“When you make whiskey for a living, one of the things you have to learn is patience,” Arnett said. “It takes time . . . We’re certainly committed to what we are trying to do.”