Remembering the Lee Boyhood Home Museum

He leaned across the three-part table, his chin cupped in his his hands,gazing at the portrait of Light-Horse Harry Lee

I was completely unaware of the negotiations for sale of the Museum, so I had no idea that this would be my last tour. This group arrived after the last scheduled tour of the day had begun. Numbering about eight, they arrived by tour van as we were leaving the Dining Room. After getting permission from the original group, we added the eight to the tour, promising to cover the three rooms they had not seen after the regular tour ended.

So it was that my last tour ended in the Dining Room. We were well past closing time. The staff accepted the docents running overtime; both sacrificed their time to show the Home. The tour group listened courteously as I described the dining room furnishings, the lives of William and Ann Randolph Fitzhugh, and the exploits of Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, Robert's father. One could understand if the group wished get on its way, but one gentleman remained after the others had gone. Leaning across the three-part dining table, his chin cupped in his hand, he pondered the picture of "Light-Horse Harry" and said, "You know he was a greater man than his son."

However debatable this conclusion might be, it showed that the Museum had caused him to think. How many knew of Henry Lee's martyrdom to free speech and of his family's impoverishment? To enter this house was to encounter humanizing facts about Robert E.Lee and his family seldom alluded to in history books. The Lee Boyhood Home Museum was an exemplar of the museum which forces you to think. The home itself is an historic artifact and teaching tool. Without the museum it becomes but a Lee icon. Seeing the outside, without interpretation, you come away knowing little more than before. Preconceptions remain. Closing the Museum denied us a unique opportunity to experience three remarkable lives in terms understandable to us all.