Truman Library Focuses on Korea 60 Years On

With her brother on her back, a war-weary Korean girl tiredly trudges by a stalled M-26 tank at Haengju, Korea, June 9, 1951. Photo by Major R.V. Spencer, USAF

Friday marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War—a war that still has no end. President Harry S. Truman lived the sleepless nights of the conflict, a war that dragged his popularity with the American people to an all-time low. Now, the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum has an exhibit about this “Forgotten War”–join me to hear the curator’s take.

Publish Your Family Story with KY Workshop

Looking to publish your family’s story? The Kentucky Historical Society and the Kentucky Genealogical Society will host a free family-history workshop “Publishing Print and Electronic Family Histories” from 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. March 13 at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in downtown Frankfort.

Researcher/writers and book publishers will help you make the transition from research to interpretation to publishing. After the session at 1:45 p.m., the Kentucky Technology in Genealogy Users Group will offer a free program, “Finding Family Histories Online–What Has Been Printed, Where to Find Them and Whether the Books Are In or Out of Copyright.”

Reservations are required by noon March 12: 502-564-1792, ext. 4460 or RefDesk@ky.gov; a light lunch is available for $6. Free Family-History Workshops repeat each month.

Toast Ohio Historical’s 125th with Free Party

The Ohio Historical Society will be throwing a big party for its 125th birthday on March 13, and everything’s free. During Happy Birthday, OHS! at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus, the parking and admission will be free, as well as family activities and birthday cake from 1:30 p.m.

• A display will highlight Ohio Historical Society milestones from 1885 to 2010. Uncommon Ohio tours will feature Ohio’s Garden Path at noon and 2 p.m., and Echoes in Time Theatre will present “Saints Preserve Us! The Irish in America” at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

• In the galleries with the permanent exhibitions, Nature of Ohio and Ohio: Centuries of Change, you can meet people from the society’s past played by costumed interpreters. Shake hands with archaeologist William C. Mills, who discovered the Adena pipe in 1901, and U.S. Ambassador to Egypt J. Morton Howell, who donated the mummy known as Nasi-Khonsou-Pa-Khrodou, familiarly known as Nibit-Pi, meaning “the Mistress of the House,” and her sarcophagus to the Ohio Historical Society collections.

Today, the Ohio Historical Society has 58 historic sites and museums around the state, including the headquarters at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus. Collections total more than 3 million items, and OHS has educational and historic preservation programs in all 88 counties.

Free Genealogy Workshop at Hayes Center

Are you using RootsMagic genealogy software to build your family tree? Then here’s a free chance to meet the software creator, Bruce Buzbee, and learn the latest tips and tricks.

The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, is leading a free workshop 1-4 p.m. April 25. The center uses RootsMagic to maintain the family history of 19th U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes.

Pre-registration is required: 419-332-2081 or by email to bhill@rbhayes.org.

Halloween’s Horror-Rama Roundup

You can’t have too many frights for Halloween. Here are a few heart-pounding possibilities, as well as some gentle family events.

Winnipeg, Canada, has launched its first Ghost Walk, a 90-minute trail led by experienced ghost guides. What was found hidden in the walls of the old Masonic Temple? Where did the first executions in the province of Manitoba take place? How is the Burton Cummings Theatre connected to the worse maritime disaster in Canadian history? Find out Thursdays and Saturdays through Oct. 31.

• Ohio’s Hale Farm & Village in Bath will kick off a family-friendly Halloween with storytelling by candlelight at 6 p.m. Oct. 30. Adults and teens can try to conjure up spirits at 7 p.m. with “Western Reserve Paranormal.” This group, well attuned to “listening,” will lead a program and discussion on the art of discovering spiritual activity in homes and historic places. Then, a one-hour exploration of three Hale Farm historic buildings will try to uncover any lurking “activity.” This haunted lesson is for ages 16 and older. Reservations are required.

• Ohio’s Salt Fork State Park Resort in Cambridge will start with trick-or-treating from cottage to cottage in a traffic-free area at 6 p.m.  Oct. 31. Hay rides will leave from the lodge parking area, and families can warm up with hot chocolate. A costume-judging contest, along with games and crafts, will wrap up the evening at the lodge.

• Across the pond in Wales, spirits are stirring. It might be the long-dead souls at Llancaiaich Fawr Manor, a living history museum that’s set in 1645 and considered one of the 10 most haunted buildings in Britain. It’s said that eight former residents, including soldiers, children and a maid, roam the house and gardens. Or maybe it’s the sight of Robin Drwg, half man, half beast, at Maesmawr Hall in Powys. Or could it be Sir John Wynn on the spiral staircase at Gwydir Castle in North Wales? Plan your own ghost hunt here.

• England’s Alton Towers is celebrating Halloween Scarefest through Nov. 1, with indoor and outdoor scare attractions. The theme park will be open until 9 p.m. every night. A Superbreak package costs $327/£199 per family of four based on two adults and two children sharing a family room at the three-star North Stafford Hotel, including a full-day ticket to the park for all the family. Breakfast is included for the adults, children pay locally. Valid Friday to Sunday in October; Monday to Thursday costs from $391/£236.

• The National Trust of England, Wales and Northern Ireland and its American affiliate, Royal Oak Foundation, have gone ghost hunting in their own properties.

• Better than a pink elephant?

Lift a glass with your spectral friends at Belfast’s Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street in the city center. The pub was a stop for travelers on the Great Northern Railway years ago, and one visitor recalled sitting with three ghostly men and a woman in one of the famed booths—a snug– while waiting for her friends to arrive for cocktails.

• Kennel Club Fur-ever

Ham House in Surrey was just too nice a home for one King Charles spaniel, who refuses to leave. The dog’s portrait hangs in the gallery, and the four-legged ghost often wanders the halls. A recent investigation by the Ghost Club, a paranormal research organization based in London, concluded that there may be as many as fifteen ghosts living at the property.

• SOS

The medieval Old Post Office in Tintagel, Cornwall, now a converted manor house, is famous for its flickering lights. One clever researcher used the antique Spagnolli receiver, a precursor to Morse code, to decode the message: “Noah,” it said, over and over – the surname of a previous resident.

• Anne Boleyn in the hall

Blickling Hall in Norfolk has every right to be haunted. This was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, the husband who had the lady beheaded.

In one incident, two delivery men returned a painting to the home and when asked about the authorization, said, “Oh, the lady signed for it… the lady in the Dining Room.”

The house administrator was supposed to be the only person living in Blickling Hall at the time, so it’s assumed Anne wanted the painting returned.

She may wander at her leisure, of course, but it’s pretty certain that Anne appears on the anniversary of her death each year, May 19. The Grey Lady, her nickname because of her long grey dress with lace collar, has been spotted looking across the lake and riding up the drive in a coach drawn by a headless horseman.

Indy Hotels Offer King Tut Ticket Packages

“Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharoahs” runs through Oct. 25 at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and five Indy hotels have become King Tut Hotels for the duration. They’re offering packages for two or a family of four from $129-$249 per night, with a breakfast buffet and VIP tickets to jump to the head of the line.

Explore ‘The Great War’ at National WWI Museum

By Betsa Marsh

It was, of course, the War to End All Wars, and we know how well humankind has fulfilled that prophecy since World War I engulfed the globe in 1914-1919.

This Sunday will be the 90th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles, the formal document that ended the war. Maybe the best place to commemorate that day is the National World War I Museum in Kansas City.

The nation’s official WWI museum is less than three years old, but it’s retrofitted into the Liberty Memorial that grew directly out of the war. In 1919, Kansas City residents raised more than $2.5 million in 10 days, and five years later, President Calvin Coolidge delivered the dedication speech, saying “the magnitude of this memorial, and the broad base of popular support on which it rests, can scarcely fail to excite national wonder and admiration.”

Dreamers of the Liberty Memorial began collecting in 1918, and those original posters still stop you in your tracks today. Curators and donors have been adding to the collection ever since.

This can be an overwhelming museum, with a vast circular display of artifacts, interspersed with movie theaters and a diorama that jars you with shell blasts and blinding light. Then there are the two towers adjoining the central museum that have their own stories to tell of regiments and individuals soldiers.

Don’t miss the mural painted after the Liberty Memorial dedication on Nov. 1, 1921. A docent will point out that this was the only time these WWI leaders were together at one place: Lieutenant General Baron Jacques of Belgium; General Armando Diaz of Italy; Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France; General John J. Pershing of the United States; and Admiral David Beatty of Great Britain.

The dedication, and the opening of the National World War I Museum 85 years later, were both grand events with thousands of people ringing the column. But one of the most moving moments for me was just walking across the glass bridge deep into the heart of museum, above a field of 9,000 red poppies–each represents 1,000 people killed in battle.

 

Climb to the top of the towers for a fabulous view of downtown KC. Betsa Marsh photos

New Traveling Teddy Explores New Harmony

Traveling Teddy pauses at the replica of the Granary in New Harmony, Ind. Betsa Marsh photo

By Betsa Marsh

Traveling Teddy, who will be named by the incoming third-grade class of Meredith Schroeder at St. Joseph Consolidated School in Hamilton, Ohio, began his globe-trotting year with a jaunt to New Harmony, Ind. The Traveling Teddy program is a geography outreach program of the Society of American Travel Writers.

Teddy toured some of the 1820s buildings left by the Harmony Society, a group of German Utopians who stayed for 10 years on this land

Teddy prepares a frontier Harmonist meal. Betsa Marsh photo

near the Wabash River. They built sturdy brick and frame buildings, and became mostly self-sufficient. In 1824, they returned to their first home in America, Western Pennsylvania, and built their third and final community, Economy, near Pittsburgh.

Teddy toured the gardens and fountains, and

Teddy meets 7-year-old Garrett Cardwell. Betsa Marsh photo

met 7-year-old Garrett Cardwell from Tennessee at the famous Roofless Church, designed by architect Philip Johnson.

As a special treat, Teddy discovered a honey booth at the town market. Yum!

Teddy with beekeeper Dennis Herrmann. Betsa Marsh photo

He bought a plastic bearful of honey from beekeeper Dennis Herrmann.

Teddy stayed the weekend in the 1860 Orchard House, which was next door to the Harmonists’ cemetery–they didn’t believe in headstones or markers, so it’s an unbroken field of grass enclosed by brick walls.

At Orchard House, Teddy took his baths in a clawfoot bathtub–the claws looked a lot like his!

Teddy at his weekend home, Orchard House. Betsa Marsh photo

Awash with Sights on the Chicago River

By Betsa Marsh

On a beautiful spring day, there may be no more serene way to explore a city than gliding along on a quiet boat, looking up at the tall buildings and sighing. It works in Venice, it works in Chicago.

In the Windy City, the focus is on those tall buildings during Chicago Architecture Foundation cruises, which take us along the Main, North and South Branches of the Chicago River to see angles we’d never see any other way.

The Wrigley Building, left, and the Tribune Tower. Betsa Marsh photo

Volunteer docents weave in some painless history and give us the skinny on more than a century of building ever higher.

And while Chicago likes to proclaim it’s the birthplace of the modern skyscraper, as a loyal Cincinnatian I have to toss my vote to the 1902-03 Ingalls Building downtown, which was the first reinforced-concrete high-rise office building in the world.

But I don’t quibble as I drift past Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City, Mies van der Rohe’s 330 N. Wabash, and the Sears Tower, tallest in the Western Hemisphere. Docent Michael Defty tells us to look quick at the black landmark, because it’s

The 311 S. Wacker Building in the foreground with the Sears Tower behind. Betsa Marsh photo

soon slated for a coat of silver to help deflect the heat. Plus a glass bump-out that will let the truly brave step out onto a glass bridge and look 1,000 feet straight down. You go ahead–no really, you first.

Brutus the Bear Hits the Heights in Pittsburgh

By Betsa Marsh

Brutus the Traveling Teddy hopped onto the historic Duquesne Incline in Pittsburgh and chugged all the way to the top.

Brutus travels for the third-grade glass of Meredith Schroeder at St. Joseph Consolidated School in Hamilton, Ohio. The Traveling Teddy program is a geography outreach of the Society of American Travel Writers.

The Duquesne Incline has been climbing up the hill since 1877. At the top, Brutus met Pittsburgh Pete, another teddy, and Mary Maund, who gave Brutus a pin to prove he’d been onboard.

To celebrate, Brutus pressed a penny into a medal and drank a birch beer at the Church Brew Works.