Hello All!

Again I must offer apologies for being off-line for so long: the season dictates that the day job (landscape design) be all-engaging, and so this notice will be brief. But much good news: The FDR Suite was again in the New York Times; the manufacturing problems of the study wall paper have finally been resolved, and the final paper looks to be put up in June; and, most importantly, I’m proud to announce our first ever summer intern: Justin Roshak. The Restoration is finally sufficiently established to occupy the talents of a summer researcher, and Justin, who will be a senior at Hopkinton High School this fall, will be creating a database of all the Foundation items in the Suite (both for insurance purposes as well as for an eventual virtual Internet museum); in addition, he’ll also be researching the theater of FDR’s time at Harvard, to give us a better idea of how undergraduates of that era engaged in amusement. Lest any of you wonder why our first intern is a high school student, suffice it to say that Justin (son of Jen Childs ’86) has been an active participant in the project’s research for the last two years. Avidly interested in history, Justin put together all the references to the Suite in FDR’s letters that you now see online, in addition to the references to student activities. Oh, and did we mention he just received perfect SAT scores? (Way to go Justin!)  Perhaps he will grace the Harvard class of 2015, who knows? But for the summer, he’s ours, and he’ll be a great asset.

This internship program, by the way, is just the first of our scholastic efforts. As many of you know already, our plans call for establishing two scholarship programs, one to allow undergraduates to study and work at Hyde Park for the summer, another to provide traveling scholarships to needy students who otherwise wouldn’t have the money to participate in study opportunities abroad. I’ll be writing more about these programs in upcoming posts.

Until then, enjoy the return of warm weather!