Pamela H. Sacks
WORCESTER TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Union Station will soon host another major attraction.

After months of negotiations with city officials, the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Museum will open July 24 at the renovated railroad station in Washington Square.

Whitinsville's Dr. Joseph J. Plaud, who has amassed a collection of Franklin D. Roosevelt memorabilia that is considered the largest in private hands, stands in front of a portrait of his hero. (T&G Staff / JIM COLLINS)

The museum will showcase original documents, artifacts and other memorabilia related to FDR and the New Deal. It will be located on the station's second floor, near Union Blues, the jazz and blues club, according to Dr. Joseph J. Plaud, who owns the collection.

The opening ceremony, now in the planning stages, will be an all-day affair, with speakers, programs and activities, Dr. Plaud said.

Dr. Plaud, a forensic psychologist who lives in Whitinsville, has been a collector of FDR materials for a quarter-century. He has amassed what is widely considered to be the finest collection of its kind in private hands.

The assemblage includes 700+ signed documents and more than 10,000 items in all.

Dr. Plaud has gained ownership of many unique pieces of personal memorabilia, such as the hat FDR wore at the 1943 Tehran Conference during World War II and the wristwatch he used at the 1945 Yalta Conference, shortly before his death.

There are handwritten letters going back to the earliest years of FDR's political career and even the original, signed handprints of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, complete with palmistry readings, which was a popular method of personal analysis in the 1940s.

" Rarely have I looked at hands in which the markings showed such a wide range of ideas, such a great vitality and such ease of accomplishment along so many avenues of physical and mental activity," renowned palmist Nellie Simmons Meir wrote in FDR's reading.

The material will be on display on a rotating basis in the museum, in an adjacent common room overlooking Washington Square and in a kiosk on the first floor near at Union Station The Restaurant. Archivist Cyrus Lipsitt will be the administrator.

The museum's hours are not yet set, but, Dr. Plaud said, it will be open significant number of hours each week.

" The collection is very large and diverse," he said. "We will be able to focus on different themes on a monthly basis. There will be new things to come back and see all the time."

The museum is a project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Inc., a nonprofit organization formed by Dr. Plaud to promote FDR's legacy. Through the museum, the center will develop and disseminate curriculums to integrate into primary and secondary schools.

" We will expand on that significantly," Dr. Plaud said. "We want to get into the schools to teach kids about this era of history."

The center also is working with Clark University to develop student internships and plans to develop a group of volunteers.

" We're providing for the people of Worcester to come use Union Station for transportation, or to have a dinner, or to hear jazz and blues, or to stop by and relive an important part of the last 100 years of our history," said Dr. Plaud. "It will give people another reason to value and enjoy the history of Union Station."

Copyright 2004 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.