What Roosevelt Wrought
Memories Are Made Of This   
First in peace, first in war, and first to build a gigundous museum for himself. Franklyn Roosevelt’s great initiative to make history the way he liked it spawned our glorious presidential library industry, but what about the poor slobs before him?
Herbert Hoover built the first post-FDR prequel library, and we’ve recently had the Lincoln. But other Great Guys have been left to the mercies of families, local historical societies, and rich eccentrics.
But now, new hope for history’s remainders!
Congress is moving to correct the nation’s sad neglect of past presidents, offering the Pre-Hoovers matching funds if their mom and pop museums can claim to have raised new money. The bill began as a straight subsidy of Staunton, Virginia’s exciting new Woodrow Wilson Library and Museum, which commemorates Wilson’s vital first [and only] year spent in the tiny burg. Sponsors then somehow morphed the bill into a past president catch-all, introduced on September 11th to ensure that the terrorists don’t retrospectively win the War To End All Wars, or something.
Results may very in your area, but Staunton’s vital Wilson documents being “preserved” at are largely copies of documents elsewhere, proudly boasting that:
“The archives microfilm collection includes the Wilson holdings at the Library of Congress and the National Archives.”
Making the entire enterprise somewhat beside the point except as “economic development.”
