Joseph Plaud Continues to Preserve Legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt

Joseph Plaud is committed to preserving the legacy of FDR and the New Deal

WHITINSVILLE, MA, USA, June 26, 2014 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Joseph Plaud attended Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he majored in psychology and minored in history and philosophy. He graduated summa cum laude and with High Honors in Psychology in 1987.

Joseph Plaud enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Maine, and earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1993. He did his clinical internship at the University of Mississippi, and at the Jackson Department of Veteran’s Affairs Medical Centers in Jackson.

Today, he is licensed to practice in Massachusetts and New York, but he has also become an authority on one of the major figures of the twentieth century. “I am a professional forensic clinical psychologist,” Joseph Plaud says, “and have worked for decades in the preservation of the legacies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal.”

Joseph Plaud first became interested in Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt when he was in junior high, when his grandmother’s descriptions of the achievements of the thirty-second President really sank in. “She loved FDR,” Joseph Plaud recalls, “and as a kid she regaled me with stories of him.”

His grandmother’s stories had an enormous affect on young Joseph Plaud. He began to collect whatever FDR artifacts he could find; he also collected items relating to the former First Lady. There was nothing haphazard about it; Joseph Plaud collected things systematically, and in time he amassed some ten thousand pieces. There was so much material that he had enough to open the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Museum in Worcester, and experts were enormously impressed by it. It was a collection, one observed, that was put together with a lot of thought.

There was so much material that Joseph Plaud and his wife opened The Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, in July 2004. Among the items on display were an original land deed signed in 1696, in which five Native American chiefs gave their land to early Dutch settlers. This land later became FDR’s estate in Hyde Park, New York.

It also included FDR’s Tiffany wristwatch, which the President wore at the famous Yalta Conference, and a gold and diamond compact with an engraved message on it, FDR’s 1934 Christmas gift to Eleanor.

“The purpose of the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center, Inc.,” Joseph Plaud said at the time, “is to provide educational and other learning opportunities concerning Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, with focus on the New Deal in American history during the 1930s and 1940s, the continued importance and relevance of the New Deal legacy in the world today, and to promote dissemination of such topics to the public.”

The FDR center, he went on, “has become a major cultural resource to the citizens of greater Worcester, Massachusetts, including New England and many areas around the country whose citizens have visited our museum of American history.”

Ultimately, the museum was forced to close when the City of Worcester did not renew its lease, and a new location could not be found. Joseph Plaud sold most of his collection at auction. But he remains committed to doing what he can to preserve the Roosevelt legacy, and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees on the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York.

Joseph Plaud is committed to preserving the legacy of FDR and the New Deal.


Press release courtesy of Online PR Media: http://bit.ly/1nIgIhb

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