I had a dream. In a lifetime of devotion to the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal I had amassed over a twenty five year period the largest private collection of signed historic documents and other materials related to the Roosevelt era, worth many millions of dollars as I found out in early 2003. Instead of cashing in I decided to start a nonprofit organization and a museum in my home of Worcester, Massachusetts, to share this great liberal legacy with the world, free of charge.
Three years later, on the precipice of becoming a major museum of New Deal history, the City of Worcester pulled the rug from under us. I put all my personal resources into making our museum (http://www.fdrheritage.org) a success, but shortly we will be homeless, as a consequence of a City Hall wanting to expunge the legacy of the New Deal.
The City of Worcester, Massachusetts is a curious place with an interesting history. Founded in 1673, Worcester has developed for over 300 years in the large shadow of the city of Boston, and was recently surpassed by Providence, Rhode Island and is now the third largest city in New England. Despite the fact that Worcester has several outstanding centers of higher education and cultural institutions, something is perpetually awry in the city’s vision for itself and its management of its people and institutions. I was born in Worcester, and would be the first to note its noble institutions of higher learning and notable cultural and historic institutions. But even to those of us who were born and raised in Worcester and its environs, there is a pervasive pattern of behavior over the decades by its leaders that seems to counteract any clear path for Worcester to emerge in its own right from the shadows of Boston or Providence. My own personal experiences during the past several years have allowed a glimpse into this pervasive pattern of civic identity confusion that will keep Worcester a second tier city. I am starting to think, however, that perhaps Worcester city government is just fine with that.
In an effort to market itself as an up and coming city the term "Worcester Way" was adopted by the city to denote a central philosophy based upon a high quality of citizenship, including leadership in promoting the cultural side of life. After all, Providence’s second coming during the past decade was founded on a resurgence of the cultural community in the city and an openness to collaborative activities between the business and arts communities. The "Worcester Way" has come to mean something very different for me, and provides a telling tale of why Worcester has many miles to go before it can sleep. Here is my story.
In 2003 I faced an interesting dilemma. During the past quarter century through a family-bred love of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal I had collected signed historical documents and other ephemera of the age of FDR that could be described as the largest collection of its kind in private hands. When a dealer in historic documents asked me my plans for this expansive and historically significant collection, I decided to forgo cashing in on the collection, and instead started a nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping the collection intact, and available to the public through the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center. I then sought a suitable spot to found a museum to display the collection, and in the process turn a personal passion into a center to share the most important twelve years (1933-1945) in American history with the public who are the beneficiaries to the democratic world that FDR fashioned from the ashes of fascism and totalitarianism in which the United States of America became the dominant force in the world. How could I sell and make a (large) profit with so much history at stake?
Due to my devotion for my native city of Worcester I endeavored to start what became the FDR Center Museum in the heart of Worcester, at the renovated 1911 Union Station, a beautiful building and train station restored to its original glory in 1999 by the infusion of over thirty million dollars of taxpayers’ money. After all, FDR actually traveled through Worcester’s Union Station many times, and there were many other connections to Worcester for FDR and his administration, including the first female cabinet secretary in American history, Frances Perkins, as well as other New Deal-era luminaries such as Molly Dewson. When I proposed to the office of the city manager our hope to open a museum in the largely vacant tenant space of Union Station, I was at first shunned, and then opposed. I refused to give in. With the assistance of then mayor Timothy P. Murray, a New Dealer if ever there was one, as well as Worcester’s progressive and dedicated congressman James P. McGovern and his then chief-of-staff (now state senator) Edward M. Augustus, Jr., we were able to override the roadblocks thrown up by the city manager’s office and opened to the public in an enormous public ceremony on July 24, 2004. Our grand opening was attended by several members of the Roosevelt family, including James Roosevelt, Jr. who cut the ceremonial ribbon, with a special video presentation by Studs Terkel from Chicago, and a special ceremony honoring hundreds of World War II-era veterans. During the past three years our FDR American Heritage Center Museum has hosted thousands of visitors, free of charge, and we have shared our large Roosevelt collection with school children, parents, college students, senior citizens and others. We have also hosted political leaders and scholars.
From the very beginning, far from encouraging and aiding us as an emerging cultural and historic institution in Worcester, the city manager’s office appeared to oppose us. I asked myself, is this what they really mean by the "Worcester Way?" The electoral success of Mayor Murray in 2006 meant that the mayor left Worcester City Hall several months ago to serve the people of the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts as lieutenant governor. The Commonwealth’s gain was the FDR Center Museum’s loss. In the last year the FDR Center Museum was emerging as a major museum of American history, profiled in national news reports such as USA Today, CNN, a large spread in the Boston Sunday Globe earlier this year, and a spot on WBUR’s Morning Edition on NPR, it was clear by all measures that we were becoming one of the largest and most significant repositories of the history of the New Deal era. Despite it all, the city manager’s office, through the assistant city manager Julie A. Jacobson did not wait long after Mr. Murray’s departure for Beacon Hill to signal the end of the museum at Union Station. She did so in a way that left no doubt as to the city manager’s intention to scuttle this Worcester monument to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal. Without informing us until the very evening of the announcement itself, the city manager’s office had earlier agreed to rent our museum space from under our very exhibits, and then announced that we would have less than three months to vacate Union Station -- until July 31, 2007. After experiencing the shock of these events last week, Ms. Jacobson then started telling the Worcester media that our museum had ample opportunity to remain at Union Station that we did not take advantage of, and that we knew for years that our tenure would be ending as tenants in this beautiful building as of July, 2007. Beside the fact that these statements are patently untrue, and contradicted by a July 11, 2006 Worcester Telegram and Gazette article about the FDR Center Museum in which Ms. Jacobson told the reporter that "The museum and the city will revisit the arrangement in a year’s time," lies the sad fact that the city manager’s office at no time approached our museum to renegotiate the lease, never offered us any means to stay at Union Station, and only informed us of the new tenant arrangement several hours before the deal was announced. I wondered aloud whether there is some anti-Roosevelt, anti-New Deal sentiment in City Hall manifesting itself in this behavior?
This incredible treatment inflicted upon our museum without notice or justification belies the more important issue: the people of greater Worcester will in all probability lose a major social and cultural institution, and a public building renovated with over thirty million dollars of taxpayers’ own money will become a glorified and restricted private office building. A museum of emerging importance is now rendered homeless, without cause and without recourse. This application of the actual, as opposed to philosophical, "Worcester Way" exemplifies why this city will never be Boston or even Providence, and in the end it is the people of Worcester who suffer. In the meantime our FDR Center Museum is looking for a new home. Perhaps the Boston Way or the Providence Way is our future, for the "Worcester Way" is a way to look backward, not forward. We only have a couple months, so Boston or Providence, if you are interested in keeping intact this extensive and historically important Roosevelt treasure trove, please contact a disillusioned but well-intentioned keeper of the New Deal flame. It’s easy: drop me a line at plaud@fdrheritage.org.