[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 8591]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    IN RECOGNITION OF THE OPENING OF THE AMAZING WORLD OF DR. SEUSS

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                          HON. RICHARD E. NEAL

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 25, 2017

  Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to 
include in the Record entitled ``Oh, the places you'll go when visiting 
the new Seuss museum'' that was published in the Boston Globe on May 
25, 2017. This article comes ahead of the grand opening of The Amazing 
World of Dr. Seuss in Springfield, Massachusetts this June. This 
impressive museum honors the legendary work of Springfield native 
Theodor Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss. Geisel inspired 
generations of children and adults with his stories that have become 
iconic in American folklore.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that everyone will have the chance to visit this 
exemplary place and enjoy the marvels that Dr. Seuss created.

                 [From the Boston Globe, May 25, 2017]

      Oh, The Places You'll Go When Visiting the New Seuss Museum

                          (By James Sullivan)

       Springfield.--Theodor Geisel loved his father, but he was a 
     practical man. Not for him your fantastic tales of elephants 
     and giraffes and a brass band, as the boy daydreams in 
     Geisel's first children's book, ``And To Think That I Saw It 
     on Mulberry Street.'' The boy in the tale, inspired by 
     Geisel's childhood, tells his father the truth: He'd seen a 
     plain old horse and wagon.
       Geisel--better known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss--may have 
     had to leave this horse-and-wagon town, the place where he 
     was born in 1904, to free the full potential of his 
     extravagant imagination. Yet throughout his life the 
     Springfield of his youth remained a touchstone.
       Now, 15 years after the city unveiled its Dr. Seuss 
     National Memorial Sculpture Garden at the Springfield 
     Museums, crews are scrambling to put the finishing touches on 
     the Amazing World of Dr. Seuss, the first museum dedicated to 
     the life and work of the revered children's author and 
     illustrator. Opening on the first weekend of June, it's not 
     on the real Mulberry Street, but it's just a few blocks away.
       ``He left here at a certain age, but this was always his 
     hometown, make no mistake,'' said Leagrey Dimond one of 
     Geisel's two stepdaughters from Audrey Stone Dimond, his 
     second wife. Dimond was in Springfield recently to help set 
     up the museum displays, which include a recreation of 
     Geisel's cozy living-room workspace in the family's hilltop 
     home in La Jolla, Calif.
       ``This was our soapdish,'' Dimond said, holding up one 
     artifact as she led a group of sneakpeekers through the 
     galleries.
       The Seuss museum will be housed in the William Pynchon 
     Memorial Building, a two-story stone-block Georgian colonial 
     located on the Springfield Museums quad, in the former home 
     of the local history museum. Inside, the rooms feature 
     expertly rendered murals from Seuss's books, painted by a 
     team of UMass honors-college students under the direction of 
     artist John Simpson. There are oversize figures from his 
     books and a tribute to Geisel's childhood home in 
     Springfield, and the second floor walls will be lined with 
     one-of-a-kind Seuss artworks, many of them doodled 
     specifically for his stepdaughters.
       ``You never knew when he'd come in and drop a little 
     something on your bed,'' recalled Dimond, 59, who owns a 
     small bookstore in San Francisco. Her sister, Lark Grey 
     Dimond-Cates, is the sculptor who designed the memorial 
     garden on the lawn in the quad, which includes bronze statues 
     of the Lorax, Horton the Elephant, the Cat in the Hat, and 
     other famous Seuss creations.
       ``People ask where he got his ideas from,'' said Dimond, 
     who was 10 years old when her mother married her ``step-
     pop.'' ``Who knows? What matters is they were there.''
       Geisel, who had no biological children, had pet names for 
     his stepdaughters. He called Dimond ``Lee Groo,'' or 
     ``Snunny.'' (He dedicated his book of tongue-twisters, ``Oh 
     Say Can You Say?,''to ``Lee Groo, the Enunciator.'')
       But for all of the wacky wordplay for which he was 
     renowned, Geisel was also a voracious reader of books for 
     grown-ups. He loved a good mystery, Dimond recalled, and ``he 
     could recite from memory entire pieces of Shakespeare.''
       She fully expects the museum to attract plenty of adults 
     who are just as enthralled as the children.
       ``As you grow older, you love him in more and more ways,'' 
     she said.
       Simpson, the art director (who is married to the president 
     of the Springfield Museums, Kay Simpson), said it's been a 
     joy for him to bring the pages of Seuss's books to life on 
     the walls of the museum. As a Springfield native whose 
     favorite story growing up was ``Yertle the Turtle,'' ``it's 
     been the greatest honor to lose myself in his lines and 
     marks,'' he said.
       Each room is a new immersion. The yellow walls of Geisel's 
     home studio are the same yellow they were in La Jolla, said 
     painting contractor Walt Reynolds, who was on his hands and 
     knees on a drop cloth, finishing the trim. The ceiling in the 
     basement, which will be a children's activity room, will be 
     painted purple, he said. All the walls will be coated with 
     polyurethane, for easy cleanup.
       ``My grandkids are dying to come in,'' said Reynolds. 
     ``Hopefully my grandkids' grandkids will see this.''
       Until now, Dimond has been reluctant to call attention to 
     her place in Geisel's life. She did name her bookstore 
     Thidwick, after the ``Big-Hearted Moose'' of the 1948 Dr. 
     Seuss book. But it's one of his lesser-known works.
       With the opening of the museum, it was time to ensure that 
     the Dr. Seuss legacy will have its permanent home, she said: 
     ``I emptied out my house. I kept one lamp, a blue sheep, and 
     a couple of pictures.''
       She's never felt the need to speak publicly about the 
     private life of her step-pop. Anything you need to know about 
     what he was like in person is contained in the books, she 
     said.
       ``The kindness, the warmth, the wit, the sense of fun--it's 
     all there. He can absolutely speak for himself.''

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