George Washington gets recognized

Monmouth Junction school receives presidential portrait

By: Jamie Simpson
   Bill Sanders is a man on a historical mission.
   On Feb. 11, Bill Sanders, executive director of Portraits of Patriots in Mountainside, met with Jane Quaglin’s fifth-grade class at Monmouth Junction Elementary School to donate a portrait of George Washington to the school.
   Mr. Sanders is asking legislators to pass a bill that would distribute state funding to give one portrait of President Washington to each school in the New Jersey school district.
   "I started this project in 1998 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Washington," Mr. Sanders told the class. "There isn’t a town in this country that shouldn’t celebrate George Washington."
   Mr. Sanders’ one-man campaign to have George Washington hanging on the walls of public schools is driven by reports that history textbooks are now concentrating on more contemporary topics and George Washington is slowly being removed from our nation’s past, he said.
   "Our children are not clear on why our country was founded," Mr. Sanders said.
   In 1932, a congressional mandate was passed to make the George Washington picture mandatory in all public schools. By the 1960s, the mandate was removed and, according to Mr. Sanders, history slowly began to disappear.
   According to Mr. Sanders, the New Jersey Education Association has caused a bit of controversy by saying "no" to a proposal to make it mandatory for a portrait of George Washington to be posted at each school. He said there is a concern that the portrait might diminish the achievements of other historical figures.
   "Washington really epitomizes America. He set the example for the beginning of our country," Mr. Sanders said.
   Ms. Quaglin’s class wrote letters to Mr. Sanders asking him to donate a portrait to Monmouth Junction Elementary School to celebrate Presidents’ Day. Mr. Sanders was happy to oblige and he even offered to conduct a question and answer session with the children.
   "Do you know George Washington’s favorite color?" a student asked.
   Although Mr. Sanders did not know the founding father’s choice of color, he did however, dispel rumors of Washington’s mythical wooden teeth. It had been long believed that because Washington’s portraits never showed his teeth, that they were in fact wooden. Mr. Sanders told the children that although Washington’s teeth were not real, they were not wooden.
   The children treated Mr. Sanders like a celebrity, even mobbing him at the end of the interview for autographs.
   "George Washington’s portrait is hung all over in important places," Ms. Quaglin told the class. "Monmouth Junction school is now one of those important places."