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CHICOPEE While the details have not all been worked out, Mayor Michael Bissonnette announced last week the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Museum would move from Worcester to Chicopee. Joined by the founder of the museum, Dr. John Plaud, the two men said the second largest collection of FDR memorabilia in the world would have a new home in the former Chicopee library building next to City Hall. The collection includes such items as personal papers of the longest serving American president as well as hats, canes and even the wristwatch he wore when in died in 1945. The new museum is scheduled to open here on March 8, 2008 marking the 75th anniversary of Roosevelt's New Deal legislation that helped end the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the period before the opening of the new museum, a number of artifacts from the collection that is valued from $5 to $15 million will be on display at the Chicopee Public Library on Front Street, the Chicopee Falls Branch Library and Elms College. Bissonnette could not say at this time the financial arrangement between the non-profit museum and the city. The city had issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) last year for the library building, but apparently there were no suitable development plans for the building. The museum itself is not buying the building. The mayor said there might be another RFP issued for the library building that might attract an outside developer. Bissonnette said there was much renovation work to complete on the building prior to the museum's opening. In order to raise funds for the renovations, Bissonnette said he has already spoken to Congressman Richard Neal and Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin about funding possibilities. The museum might pay rent as well and will raise money itself through its status as a non-profit. The mayor said that regardless of the details, the museum has "made a long-term commitment, a substantial commitment to the city." Elms College was described as a partner with the museum in the establishment of a Roosevelt Public Policy Institute, which would provide educational opportunities. Plaud, a clinical psychologist, told Reminder Publications he began collecting Roosevelt material when he was in junior high school. In 2000, a friend asked him what he was going to do with his collection, as it had become the largest of its type in private hands. He decided he didn't want to sell his collection or breaks it up by donating parts of it to other museums. Instead he took several years to plan for a museum of his own, which opened in Worcester's redeveloped Union Station in 2004. The museum was recently told it was going to have to vacate its leased space due to a change in the plans of how Union Station was going to be used. Despite having a majority of conservative presidents in the last 25 years who reflect a change in attitude in the American public, Plaud said that FDR's legacy remains "very meaningful" to people in 2007. Plaud noted some of FDR's long-standing achievements include Social Security, the Security and Exchange Commission, and federally insured bank accounts. While the active appreciation and acknowledgment of FDR's accomplishments might have diminished over the year, the importance of his actions have not. Plaud said that while every presidential administration has problems and faults, he quoted a line from Roosevelt's nomination speech in 1936 that he said summed up Roosevelt's administrations: "Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." | ||||||
