Smith is a Harvard University graduate who has headed the Gerald R. Ford presidential library in Michigan, the Ronald Reagan library in California, the Herbert Hoover library in Iowa, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower library in Kansas. He has been the director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas since December 2001 and is the author of several books, including An Uncommon Man: the Triumph of Herbert Hoover.
The governor’s office said Smith will oversee ongoing construction of the separate library and museum facilities, still under way, which were expected to open this year in February. The library building is now slated to open next spring, with the museum building open late in 2004.
Smith called the appointment an opportunity of a lifetime, saying in the October 2 Chicago Tribune that the $115-million complex dwarfs other institutions “in size, in scope, and above all, in imagination.”
Posted October 6, 2003.