October 22: Last Sunday afternoon our LOGOS class was invited to a free and very up-close and personal tour of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. A young member of our class, Trevor--his father is the curator at the museum.
We met downtown at 2PM. The location is a beautiful setting right on the Grand River in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids.
I didn't take a lot of pictures actually. But below is an actual slab of the Berlin Wall! Wow. I remember being a child and hearing about "the wall" and how terrified I was to think about the people in Germany and how they had suffered behind that wall. It was pretty amazing to actually see a chunk of it.
Below is a replica of The Oval Office. It made you feel like you were right there!
Trevor's dad told marvelous stories of the Ford family. I learned a bunch of stuff I had never known before. For instance, that Gerald R. Ford was actually born with the last name "King" and that his step-father didn't actually adopt him until it was time for him to go to college! He had just been called "Junior Ford" throughout his life. I had forgotten how athletic he had been in high school AND college--U of M (I'm a Sparty-fan myself).
Oh! And below is that ACTUAL stairway that led to the escape helicopter from the US embassy in Saigon at the end of the war ...
This is a replica of the Cabinet room. You were even allowed to take a chair and pretend you were an important person ...
I'm glad we got the opportunity to do this together as a class. I am provoked to return here and take a very slow and detailed look at all of the beautiful exhibits. The whole museum is very artistically put together. Very impressive.
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