C-SPAN to join Dole Institute's presidential tour of East Coast sites

LAWRENCE -- C-SPAN, the public affairs network, has confirmed that it will be along for the ride when Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics Director Richard Norton Smith and 34 Lawrence-area residents embark on a 10-day Presidential Tour of New York and New England Oct. 3 through 12.Ê

"The producers at C-SPAN had considered filming a portion of the trip," said Erik Nelson, associate director of the Dole Institute at the University of Kansas. "They've recently decided they want to cover all 10 days. Apparently they are toying with the idea of making it into a documentary."

The current plan calls for one cameraman and one producer to accompany Smith's group, which is largely composed of members of the New Generation Society of Lawrence. The society, an organization in partnership with the Hall Center for the Humanities at KU, provides educational, volunteer and philanthropic opportunities for its members.

Among the historic sites they will visit are Sagamore Hill, home of Theodore Roosevelt, in New York; Franklin Delano Roosevelt's estate at Hyde Park, N.Y.; Plymouth Notch, Vt., the scene of Calvin Coolidge's dramatic lamplit inaugural in August 1923; the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston; and the Quincy, Mass., home inhabited by John Adams and John Quincy Adams.Ê

The trip will also feature an unprecedented televised tour of the Waldorf Astoria's 5,000-square-foot presidential suite; the Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills, N.Y.; Boston's Freedom Trail; and a visit to the Old North Bridge and other Revolutionary War sites in Concord and Lexington.