PRINCEONG: Marking Wilson’s 100th anniversary

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   In the span of three years, Woodrow Wilson went from Nassau Hall to the White House, with a stop in between as governor of New Jersey.
   His rise to power is being celebrated locally to mark the 100th anniversary of Wilson’s election and inauguration as the nation’s 28th president. Events started over the summer and are due to continue into the spring, designed to “highlight Wilson in various ways and appeal to the community,” said Claire Jacobus, convener of the 15-member Wilson Centennial Committee.
   ”We envision this as a local . . . celebration of Wilson as he was leaving for the presidency. And in that sense, a notable Princetonian figure of his time here,” she said of the celebration called “Woodrow Wilson, a Complicated Man.”
   The events run from music concerts to a screening of a PBS documentary about Mr. Wilson, scheduled to show over two days, Nov. 5 and Nov.12, at the Princeton Public Library. The Princeton Historical Society recently wrapped up an exhibition of paintings by Mr. Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson.
   Committeemember John Burkhalter, an independent scholar, is organizing a concert, scheduled for March 4 at the public library, of music of the early 1900s.
   ”The Wilson family found music to be a particularly agreeable pastime, and President Wilson was very attuned to music and was well aware of the popular music and dance of the day,” he said.
   Mr. Wilson served as president of Princeton University, his alma mater, from 1902 to 1910. He was elected governor in 1910, only to run for president two years later in a three-way race in which he defeated incumbent William H. Taft in a contest highlighted by former President Theodore Roosevelt running as a third-party candidate.
   The night Mr. Wilson won the election, Princeton University students marched to his residence on Cleveland Lane.
   ”The bells were ringing on campus,” said Perry Leavell, a committee member and retired history professor at Drew University.
   The idea behind the celebration started with a conversation between two members of the Nassau Club, where Mr. Wilson is a past president.
   ”We thought on the occasion of the 100th anniversary, it would be a great idea to pull together ‘town and gown’ and all the institutions to coordinate efforts to remember Wilson and all his many facets,” said Dean Edelman, recalling his discussion with club member Alison Lahnston. The club has its article of incorporation hanging on the wall bearing Mr. Wilson’s signature, among other Wilson artifacts.
   From that, it grew to involve local entities in Princeton joining forces for a “year-long community event which we hope will educate and please and amuse and entertain and inform our community,” Ms. Jacobus said. “It’s a labor of love for the community and honoring a complicated man,” she continued.
   He was indeed a complicated man. Mr. Wilson was on one hand a native of Virginia, who thought it a good thing that the South lost the Civil War. He was an academic who hated research, Mr. Leavell said. He was a reformer who had the support of black voters but turned his back on them once in the White House.
   ”In many ways, there are a series of complications,” Mr. Leavell said in an interview at the Nassau Club, where a portrait of Mr. Wilson hangs.
   To learn more about the celebration, visit www.wilsoncentenial.org.