A traveling tour of an exhibit on Woodrow Wilson makes its way to Morven.
By: Kristin Boyd
By today’s standards, Woodrow Wilson’s life story is worthy of a blockbuster movie minus the back-bending Matrix moves and Spider-Man web-slinging.
Think how cool it’d be to hear Don LaFontaine, that movie trailer guy, announce over a chorus of violins, "In a world where anything is possible, an underdog beats the odds to become the 28th president of the United States."
Recognizing audiences might be intrigued and inspired by Wilson’s role in history, the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C., beat Hollywood execs to the punch.
The organization produced Wilson 150: The Exhibition, a traveling exhibit now on display at Morven Museum & Garden in Princeton. The museum was selected because of Wilson’s ties to New Jersey as a former governor and as an alumnus, professor and former president of Princeton University.
"I think the exhibit will help visitors visualize this man that we’ve all read so much about," says Martha Wolf, executive director of Morven. "We can see how tall he was and what his glasses looked like. This exhibit shows how multifaceted he was. He was so talented and so active in so many areas."
Through a series of black-and-white images, the exhibit juxtaposes Wilson’s private and political lives. Memorable quotes and personal items, including his golf clubs and the first shell fired by American troops in World War I, offer a glimpse of the man behind the trademark pinched glasses.
"The first image is that iconic graphic figure: the man in the black top hat and the eyeglasses and the kid gloves," says Frank Aucella, executive director of the Woodrow Wilson House, a National Trust Historic site. "As you travel through the exhibition, I hope people get a sense that he was a lot more complicated than that."
Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the third of four children, was born in Stauton, Va., in 1856. Nicknamed "Tommy" as a boy, he struggled with his studies, only learning how to read at 12. Nowadays, he likely would’ve been diagnosed with dyslexia.
Wilson was groomed to become a Presbyterian minister like his father, Joseph, who headed churches in Augusta, Ga., and Columbia, S.C. However, Wilson sidestepped the pulpit and instead pursued an academic career.
He attended Davidson College in North Carolina, where he played center field on the school’s baseball team, before transferring to the College of New Jersey, now known as Princeton University. Unable to make the baseball team there, he joined the debate team and spent much of his time writing new constitutions for student clubs. A campus leader and fiery orator, he graduated in 1879.
In 1885, Wilson received a doctorate in the history of government from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. He remains the only U.S. president to have earned a doctorate, and his dissertation, "Congressional Government," is widely used in classrooms today. He received 33 honorary degrees during his lifetime.
That same year, he married Ellen Axon, and the couple had three daughters, Margaret, Jessie and Eleanor.
Wilson returned to Princeton University as a professor in 1890. Administrators, impressed with his eloquence and education, named him president of the elite university in 1902 the first non-minister to be awarded the position.
In 1910, Wilson made waves when he entered politics. A Democrat, he charged forward as a reformer, independent of political machines, and was overwhelmingly elected as the governor of New Jersey, normally a Republican state. He served one term before securing the 1912 Democratic presidential nomination. He beat out heavy hitters Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft for the presidency.
Throughout the exhibit, visitors learn Wilson’s eight years in office encompassed much more than World War I and his founding of the League of Nations, for which he won the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize.
Wilson created the Federal Reserve, Federal Trade Commission, Internal Revenue Service and NASA, then known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. He opened the Panama Canal, started airmail service and endorsed the creation of an interstate highway system. He outlawed child labor, instituted the eight-hour workday for railroad workers and established the first national observance of Mother’s Day.
Even with his "New Freedom" progressive reforms, some say Wilson was behind the times. He delayed conversion to women’s suffrage, never tried to abolish Jim Crow laws in the South and did not integrate the military during the war.
As president, Wilson maintained a reserved composure in public, rarely smiling and often coming across like a stiff bore. At home with his family, though, Wilson was much more easygoing.
He and his daughters often played Ouija board and acted out make-believe stories. He was also a funny joke-teller who poked fun at himself by reciting his favorite limerick: "For beauty, I am not a star. There are others more perfect by far. But my face, I don’t mind it. For I am behind it. It is those in front that I jar."
For entertainment, Wilson kept a regular box at Keith’s Vaudeville Theater in Washington, D.C., where he spent most Saturday nights. In 1915, falling back on his love of baseball, he was the first president to attend a World Series game. He paid for his own ticket.
Wilson was also fascinated with Hollywood and adored technology, including his Victrola, typewriter and illuminated alarm clock. He loved riding in automobiles but he never learned how to drive.
Wilson authored more than a dozen best-selling books on U.S. history, some of which are still considered must-reads. His personal library included an estimated 9,000 books, and after a stroke in 1919 left him partially blind, his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, would read aloud to him. His first wife died in 1915 after 29 years of marriage.
Strokes were Wilson’s downfall, and after touring for support of his League of Nations plan, his body continued to weaken. He remained a faithful Presbyterian until his death in 1924, saying, "Never for a moment have I had one doubt about my religious beliefs. There are people who believe only so far as they can understand. That seems to me presumptuous and sets their understanding as the standard of the universe."
Unwilling to compromise his ideals, Wilson believed people must study the past to appreciate what needs to be done for the future. The exhibit gives a sense of his history, revealing a president who was simply human, bound by flaws, accomplishments and unyielding faith.
"It’s a fine system," he’s quoted as saying, "where some remote severe schoolmaster may become president of the United States."
Roll credits, please.
Wilson 150: The Exhibit is on view at Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton St., Princeton, through Nov. 18. Hours: Wed.-Fri. 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Sat.-Sun. noon-4 p.m. Museum admission costs $5, $4 seniors/students; (609) 924-8144, ext. 100; www.morven.orgwww.woodrowwilsonhouse.org