Booth Escape Tour

[L Verge]

We all had such a great time on the Booth Escape Tour yesterday. It was truly a wonderful day, and I really enjoyed spending so much time talking with Michael Kauffman. We shared a great deal of information together. He is such an incredible historian and shared so much with me. A true delight!

Here is a picture of us during the tour:

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Here is another picture. We had a great time talking outside the museum.

Talk about feeling old, Paige, Mike was about your age when I first met him!

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Is the Marker where the Garrett's lived in place?

Hi Bill,

Yes, the marker is in place, we drove past it yesterday during the tour. The property, however, is still prohibited. In fact, they have chains around the property now.

I have been on leave this past week, but received a call from a staff member who had just tried to handle an angry gentleman who called to complain about the new marker at the Garrett Farm. It seems that he has passed that marker many times over the years and does not appreciate the fact that the wording - especially the title -- has been changed on the new sign.

Instead of simply "John Wilkes Booth," as it appeared before, the new title is "Assassin's End." He had called the State of Virginia to complain, and they flipped him to Surratt House. We did pay for the new sign when Virginia would not, and Dave and Kate worked with the state's historic signage office to compose the new text, but final editing and approval was left up to those government officials. Another case of passing the buck (or the blame) to someone else, I guess...