- DAVID SHEPARDSON THE DETROIT NEWS
Washington —Toyota Motor Corp. is donating $100,000 to help preserve and display 10 key documents from American history at the National Archives.
They include President Richard Nixon’s August 1974 resignation letter, and the pardon he received from President Gerald R. Ford; the 100-year-old 1914 proclamation creating Mother’s Day; and the GI Bill of Rights passed by Congress in 1944.
The donation from the Japanese automaker’s American arm is the latest example of the U.S. government looking to outside sources — from billionaires to foreign companies — to pay for things that taxpayers covered in previous generations.
“It is with a deep sense of honor that Toyota makes this donation to the Foundation for the National Archives in recognition of our nation’s rich history,” said Jim Lentz, CEO of Toyota’s North American Region.
“We are proud to help preserve treasured documents marking major milestones in American history,” Lentz said.
“Toyota’s generosity recognizes the vital importance of the National Archives,” said the Archives Foundation’s executive director, Patrick M. Madden. “These are one-of-a-kind historic documents that range from light-hearted to monumental acts. Each one still resonates in our country’s consciousness today.”
Toyota, which directly employs more than 32,000 Americans and has done business here for 60 years, isn’t the only automaker to support quintessentially American artifacts, monuments and projects.
Last summer, Volkswagen AG donated $10 million to help restore a big chunk of the National Mall in Washington.
General Motors Corp. donated $10 million in 2001 to fund a 20,000-square-foot transportation exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s American History Museum. Ford Motor Co. has been a major donor to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, outside Washington, and sponsors the National Zoo’s “Panda cam.”
In the 1980s, Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca led fundraising efforts to restore the Statue of Liberty.
The one-percenters have helped, too.
Last year, Oprah Winfrey donated $13 million toward the Smithsonian’s $500 million National Museum of African American History, which is expected to open late next year.
Last week, Chicago-based aerospace firm Boeing Inc. said it would donate $30 million for a major renovation of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. In total, Boeing has donated $58 million to the museum.
Billionaire Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein donated $7.5 million to help fund the restoration of the Washington Monument damaged in a 2012 earthquake.
“The country doesn’t have the resources it once did. We don’t have the ability to fix things that we should do,” Rubenstein told an Aspen Institute panel discussion last month.
“Many things that (were) financed previously by the federal government cannot be anymore,” he said.
The National Archives, created in 1934, draws more than 1 million visitors annually and has 10 billion pages of textual records with major holdings dating back to 1775.
Toyota’s donation will undergird the Archive Foundation’s exhibition fund and help the Archives prepare and display records in the “Featured Document” exhibit in the museum’s East Rotunda Gallery over the next six months. The exhibit is located near displays of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The first document that Toyota is helping preserve goes on display from April 17-May 8, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Smith-Lever Act, which created agricultural cooperative extension services in connection with land-grant colleges. That will be followed by the 100th anniversary of the Mother’s Day proclamation from May 9-21. Mother’s Day is May 11.
The GI Bill of Rights goes on display June 6 — in honor of the 70th anniversary of D-Day — and runs until July 14.
The Gulf of Tonkin resolution — which provided the legal basis for the extension of the Vietnam War — goes on display on July 15-Aug. 7 — in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of its passage on Aug. 7.
Nixon’s resignation letter and Ford’s subsequent pardon go on display Aug. 8-11, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the only president in U.S. history to be forced out of office.
Other documents include House passage of the Bill of Rights in 1798 that will be on display from Aug. 12-Sept. 10, as well as documents on the attack on Baltimore and Ft. McHenry and the burning of Washington during the War of 1812 — the 200th anniversary is Sept. 13-14.
They go on display Sept. 11-Oct. 30.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140409/AUTO0104/304090026#ixzz2yQxTZHd7
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