|
$600K exhibit planned for L-M
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · July 31, 2014
Next spring, a row of new homes will pop up along the Downey trace, which motorists will see driving into town on Parkside Drive.
The Hoover Presidential Foundation last week announced that a village similar to those in Belgium where Herbert Hoover fed millions would help visitors grasp the feel, if not the magnitude of desperation, of the many starving in World War I.
That village makes up part of a $600,000 exhibit the Hoover Foundation plans for 2015 to mark the 100th anniversary of America’s involvement in WWI and West Branch’s Herbert Hoover giving up his private life to help war relief efforts in Europe.
The Belgian village is one of the the latest major details the Hoover Foundation released in the exhibit, which the group hopes will draw a bigger crowd than the 90,000 who visited “Over There” at the Hoover Library-Museum in 1989.
“The exhibit will be the largest ever undertaken at the Library-Museum,” according to a press release.
Four other elements of “The Making of the Great Humanitarian: Herbert Hoover and World War I,” which opens in April, includes:
• The Hoover 4-D experience, which includes “3-D projection mapping and other effects” appearing in the Figge Auditorium, modeled after the Ghost of Lincoln exhibit at the Lincoln Library.
• The Savoy Hotel depiction — The London hotel was Hoover’s base of operations while rescuing thousands of Americans trying to get back to the states after the war started. This part of the exhibit will fill the Quarton Gallery.
• WWI trench — Visitors can activate senors in the exhibit to trigger “immersion technologies that simulate battle conditions,” read a press release.
• A 46-foot, one-sixth scale replica of the Belgian Relief Ship used by Hoover to get food to Europe. “Visitors will learn about the difficulty of shipping relief supplies into a war zone and how much labor was needed to move the goods,” Executive Director Jerry Fleagle said.
The ship, as well as the Belgian Village Cafe, one of the parts of the Belgian village display, will visit the Iowa State Fair Aug. 7-17 to promote the exhibit and, hopefully, build support.
The cafe building will serve as a backdrop to the Hoover Foundation handing out more than 50,000 “Hoover Cookies,” which are symbolic of the “Hoover biscuit,” a nutritional biscuit handed out during WWI. And, yes, the cookies will be on a stick. Hy-Vee has been commissioned to create the cookie dough.
Fleagle said Iowa City’s Dan Yeager of Yeager Instruments is designing the exhibit. Yeager also designed “Over There” some 25 years ago.
The Hoover Foundation purchased and painted a special trailer for transporting the ship, which was designed by Yeager to bend around corners, making it feasible to display in parades.
Fleagle said he is uncertain if the ship will be ready for Hoover’s Hometown Days.
Yeager, in a statement released by the Foundation, said the finished ship will have a horn and working smokestacks. The ship is expected to tour the Iowa State Fair twice a day.
According to the Foundation, Hoover’s efforts during WWI fed about 2.5 million children from 1914 to 1918.
Belgium was a priority because 80 percent of its food was imported, but war cut off those imports.
“Hoover created the Commission for the Relief of Belgium and is credited with saving 10 million people from starvation there,” read the release.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
