Exhibit displays Geneva's White House links

Has today's primary revved up your political passion?

Do you want to cast another vote?

The Geneva History Center can oblige both desires with its new exhibit, "The President is Coming."

The exhibit features items related to U.S. presidents' visits to Geneva in the 20th century, as well as stuff from Genevans' visits to the White House, campaign memorabilia owned by Genevans and more.

A child's chair

It started with President Calvin Coolidge's boyhood bedroom chair, a simple wood-and-cane affair.

"I don't understand how we're holding on to this chair," thought curator John Costerisan, who was reviewing the history center's collection of items in storage.

What was its connection to Geneva? Why wasn't it in a museum dedicated to the 30th president?

He also found a trove of election-related materials, including campaign buttons, a handkerchief and hats, such as plaid caps worn by supporters of Adlai Stevenson.

Meanwhile, archivist Ron Rawson kept stumbling across mentions of presidential visits to Geneva in old newspapers and other documents.

And thus, a special exhibit was born.

Five were here

Five presidents visited Geneva in the 20th century.

Well, four visited, and one kind of did.

Theodore Roosevelt made a whistle-stop speech at the Geneva train depot in 1906. Herbert Hoover came here twice after he was out of office. Sen. John Fitzgerald Kennedy gave a campaign speech on the steps of the Kane County Courthouse about two weeks before the 1960 presidential election. Ronald Reagan visited with eighth-graders at St. Peter Catholic School in the early 1980s as he was pushing tuition tax credits for private schooling.

And the body of Warren Harding passed through town on his funeral train, from San Francisco, where he died, to Washington, D.C., for his funeral service.

"I thought it was interesting that five men who have lived in the White House would visit a small town that's never had a population greater than 27,000," said Costerisan.

Myriad items

There's a smock worn by a delegate to the 1964 Democratic convention.

Mrs. Ray Burnham wore a hat that matched the purse she carried when she greeted Kennedy when he stopped to rest his painful back at the Hotel Baker in St. Charles -- and they're in the exhibit, too.

There are details about the security precautions taken (or not) when each of the men visited, including the $60,000 spent on emergency communication equipment for the City of Geneva while Reagan visited.

There's a straw poll, asking visitors which candidate they would support in today's primary. Results will be posted March 5 and April 5. (As of Friday morning, more people had voted on the Democratic side than the Republican side.)

As for the chair? That came about because Forrest Crissey, a journalist from Geneva, visited John Coolidge, the president's father, to research an article about President Calvin Coolidge. He persuaded the man to get old furniture out of the attic and set up Coolidge's room as it would have been during his boyhood. After, the father gave Crissey the chair.

But you won't find any current campaign materials -- in fact, nothing from the 2000s at all.

"Current history is out there -- we're just waiting for it. We have to wait for people to be done with it.

"People probably have them (campaign buttons) in drawers and aren't ready to let go of them."

If you go

What: "The President is Coming"

Where: Geneva History Center, 113 S. Third St.

When: Through March 1

Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday

For details: www.genevahistorycenter. org; (630) 232-4951