DC
MOUNT VERNON
VA
WASHINGTON, REMEMBERED Clockwise, from above: rendering of Washington Library interior; Washington’s Bill of Rights; Mount Vernon Estate; Gay Hart Gaines, who spearheaded the campaign for the project.
scholars,” Gaines tells Newsmax. “Universities and schools aren’t teaching much about our founding and George Washington. “This is what we will be able to do with our library, which will have state-of-the-art video technology.” The library will be mobile: “We’re planning to beam
it into classrooms and home-schoolers, and to any col- lege university and classroom that will take it,” says Gaines, who serves as the Association’s vice regent for Florida. “We’re hoping there will be a resurgence of interest in George Washington.” Although the library will focus on scholarly research rather than hosting throngs of tourists, every existing letter and document that Washington wrote, as well as the books he owned, will be posted online where scholars around the world can peruse them. Among the largest underwriters of the library,
whose multimillion dollar gifts made it possible: The Las Vegas-based Donald W. Reynolds Foundation; Amway co-founder Rich and Helen DeVos; John and Adrienne Mars of the global confection and food-prod- uct company that bears their name; and David M. Ru-
62 NEWSMAX | MAY 2013
benstein, the co-founder of the Carlyle Group. The trove of Washing-
ton’s literary treasures will be unique. Unlike the other 13 libraries of former presidents that are operated and main- tained by the National Ar- chives, Washington’s will be privately held. Gaines is a for- mer regent of the Mount Ver-
non Ladies’ Association, which has always eschewed taking public funds for their work. Self-funding, she says, will keep Mount Vernon free from the ever-reach- ing tendrils of the federal bureaucracy that lies just on the other side of the Potomac. “We’re just proud of the fact that the American
people have funded this,” she adds. “It is an indica- tion of the love the American people have for George Washington.” The Ladies’ Association hopes to revive interest in a better understanding of the man whom the Founding Fathers considered their most beloved and trusted leader. “We’ll really use George Washington as an exam-
ple,” says Gaines. “We want to preserve his life and legacy. I don’t think we have a better example of char- acter than George Washington . . . the politicians of today could get a good dose of that.”
RENDERING, BILL OF RIGHTS, MOUNT VERNON/OURTESY OF THE MOUNT VERNON LADIES’ ASSOCIATION / GAINES/COURTESY OF GAY HART GAINES
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