Presidential Library

RUSSELL, Kan. -- Some thought the presidential library should be near the boyhood home, while others fancied sites near the county courthouse.Either way, weary travelers on Interstate 70 would pull off in Russell, to visit "Bob Dole Country." They'd hear how the 43rd president of the United States grew up humble. International scholars would peruse his official papers.This was the dream that Russell shared with Bob Dole, until it was shattered last night."In Russell you've got BD and AD -- Before Dole and After Dole," said Dean Banker, a Russell clothier.

RUSSELL, Kan. -- Like the hard red winter wheat that is its lifeblood, this lonely town on the prairie is waiting to bloom.At least, that's the view of some in wind-swept Russell, Kan., where Bob Dole was born 73 years ago today. The actual spot where he entered the world is no longer standing: his family's three-room house, not much bigger than a shack, beside the Union Pacific railroad tracks -- on the wrong side of the tracks, as Dole has said.Other landmarks from his early days remain, though.

It says something about the late President Lyndon Baines Johnson that his is the only presidential library offering free admission.The others -- those paying tribute to Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan -- all charge a fee. But this library reflects the man who, when he was in office, started what he called "the war on poverty.""He...

YORBA LINDA, CALIF. -- Nixon and Mao? Nixon and Ike? Nixon and JFK? No. No. And no.The first duo you see upon entering the gift shop of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace is the famous 1970 image of Richard M. Nixon shaking hands with a bloated, bleary-eyed Elvis Presley in the Oval Office.On a T-shirt, captioned "The President and The King." Yours for $14.50.The shirt sells, which is very important to the Nixon library, which does not receive government operating funds."We have the most successful gift shop in the history of presidential libraries," says Kevin Cartwright, the Nixon library's assistant director.

Samuel Cooper, a retired law professor who as a young lawyer in New York represented Franklin D. Roosevelt when he established his presidential library, died Tuesday of cancer at his Pikesville home. He was 79.He had taught contracts, mortgages, suretyship, legal accounting, corporate taxation and securities regulation at the University of Baltimore Law School from 1972 until his retirement in 1985.In describing his friend and associate, college president H. Mebane Turner, said, "Both the students and his colleagues had great respect for him. He was the consummate professor, and I had the privilege of knowing him for many years -- he was a close personal friend and associate.

WASHINGTON -- Great news, fellow Americans! Arriving in the mail around the country, just in time for Christmas, is -- the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace Gift Catalog!As Dave Barry would say, we are not making this up. The privately financed Nixon Library on the hallowed ground of the great man's Yorba Linda, Calif., birthplace is sending out a handsome, multicolored folder illustrating "Great Selections from the Museum Gift Shop" that you can have "shipped UPS within 24 hours!"