Politics Takes a Back Seat : Presidential Museums: Popular Stops on Family Vacations

Most visitors to the Gerald R. Ford Museum are drawn first to the full-scale replica of the Oval Office, but just a few feet away is the document for which Ford’s presidency may be remembered best.

Unlike many of the other exhibits, this one has no accompanying audiotape or video; only the glass-encased paper on which Ford grants Richard Nixon a “full, free and absolute pardon.”

“We get a lot of comments on that one,” Frank Mackaman, director of the Ford museum and library, said.

He said he hears almost as much comment about Green Bay Packers coach Curly Lambeau’s letter offering Ford, on his graduation from the University of Michigan, a professional football contract.

Such nuggets about the men who have held the nation’s highest office are part of the lessons in American history to be learned from the eight presidential library-museums run by the National Archives. And plenty of priceless items of presidential trivia are thrown in.

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y., displays FDR’s wheelchair--a kitchen chair with the legs cut off and wheels attached.

At Harry S. Truman’s library in Independence, Mo., there are about 150 walking canes that were sent to Truman from all over the United States.

“He carried a cane even though nothing was wrong with him, so people started sending him canes,” Archivist Ray Geselbracht said.

“We’ve got a drawer with hundreds of pairs of gloves that people sent the First Lady (Bess Truman). I don’t know why, I don’t think she ever wore any of them.”

At the Herbert Hoover Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa, the first working television set is displayed--because Hoover was the first President to appear on the tube. It happened in the mid-1920s, during a broadcast from Washington to New York City.

There is also a photograph of Hoover fishing in a stream wearing rubber boots--with a three-piece suit.

“That man was never in casual clothes,” the curator, Maureen Harding, said.

On the premises of the Hoover, Roosevelt and Truman libraries and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center in Abilene, Kan., are the Presidents’ burial sites and the houses where they were born or lived as boys.

About 1.2 million people, many of them schoolchildren, visited presidential museums in 1988, and about 9,000 researchers used the libraries, each of which contains millions of presidential papers and photographs.

The museums are built with private funds, but operation costs-- more than $16 million in 1988--are federally subsidized.

The Archives’ establishment of a Richard Nixon library has been stalled because of litigation over who owns the 44 million documents, thousands of photos and 4,000 hours of taped conversation from his Administration. Nixon is building his own library in Yorba Linda, Calif.

Ronald Reagan’s library is scheduled to open in 1991 in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Center, on the Austin campus of the University of Texas, is the largest and most popular library. It draws more than 300,000 visitors a year; the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston is second.

“There is a love-hate relationship with our politicians and our leaders in general,” says James Kratsas, the newly appointed curator at the Ford museum. “People come here to see how government works, but also, Presidents represent a time in our lives.”

Presidential museums are popular with group tours; some families plan their vacations around them.

Kratsas, was curator at the 3-year-old Jimmy Carter museum in Atlanta before coming to the Ford museum, said that a day after the Carter museum opened, he met a San Diego family who had flown to Atlanta for the event because it was the only presidential museum they hadn’t visited.

Some former Presidents have been more involved than others in the direction of their libraries.

Truman, who in retirement lived less than a mile from the library that honors him, at times would surprise schoolchildren by dropping by to give the tour himself.

Some classified documents are not displayed for national security reasons, but living former Presidents have a hand in deciding how to present the sensitive issues of their Administrations.

“President Carter wanted to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis in a display. . . . President Ford evidently wanted to deal with the pardon,” Kratsas said.

In the Ford museum, a speech written before Richard Nixon was charged with any crime in connection with Watergate reads: “I have the greatest confidence in the President, and I am absolutely positive he had nothing to do with this mess.”

Exhibited next to the pardon are several letters criticizing--and just a few supporting--the decision to pardon Nixon.

The presidential library system was started by Roosevelt. Before his day, presidential papers, handwritten notes and memorabilia were considered personal items. They were kept in the Library of Congress or snatched up for university libraries or by private collectors.

The various cities that George Bush has called home already are fighting over the records of his Administration.

The only presidential library not operated by the National Archives is the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, which is supported by private donations.

Mackaman said surveys show that party affiliation has little to do with who visits a presidential library. It also appears to have little to do with who directs them, as shown in Kratsas’ transferring from Carter to Ford. Carter is a Democrat; Ford is a Republican.

“It doesn’t have much underlying meaning,” Mackaman said, “but it certainly proves we are a nonpartisan organization.”

PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES Here is a list of the presidential libraries that are operated by the National Archives. All of the libraries include museums, and some have the President’s birth home and grave at the site.

* The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y. The museum was dedicated in June, 1941; the library was opened in May, 1946.

* The Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Mo., opened in July, 1957.

* The Herbert Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa, opened in August, 1962.

* The Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan., opened in May, 1962. The museum was opened in November, 1954.

* The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, opened in October, 1979.

* The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library on the University of Texas campus in Austin, opened in May, 1971.

* The Gerald R. Ford Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, opened in April, 1980. The museum in Grand Rapids was opened in September, 1981. It is the only facility in which the library and museum are at different sites.

* The Jimmy Carter Library in Atlanta, opened in October, 1986.

* The Ronald Reagan Library is scheduled to be opened in Thousand Oaks, Calif., in February, 1991.

There is one presidential library/museum not operated by the National Archives, and another one is in the planning stages:

* The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, is in operation. It is supported by private donations.

* Richard M. Nixon is scheduled to open a private library in Yorba Linda, Calif. That, too, will be privately funded.

Source: Associated Press