Director of Hayes Center to retire

Thomas Culberston, 63, considers his legacy to be the $1.2 million restoration of the Hayes Presidential Center’s first floor. Enlarge

FREMONT — After 24 years on the staff of the Hayes Presidential Center, Thomas Culbertson announced Friday he intends to retire July 31.

His departure was timed, he said, to coincide with completion of an extensive restoration of the 19th president’s home and well in advance of the Hayes Center’s next big event.

“They have the 100th anniversary of the Hayes Center coming up in 2016, and I figured my successor needs time to get up to speed,” Mr. Culbertson said. “We’re going to wrap up the home renovation here in the next few months and sometime in July we’ll be having an open house celebration marking the end of restoration, so it seemed like good timing to do it.”

A national search for his successor is under way. The center’s board of trustees hopes to select an executive director prior to Aug. 1.

Mr. Culbertson, 63, said he considers his legacy to the presidential center to be the ambitious $1.2 million effort to restore the first floor of the Hayes home to as near as possible to how it looked when the president and his wife, Lucy, lived there.

“That’s been my baby,” he said.

Plans began in 1999 when a consultant was brought in to help develop plans for the restoration and a way to pay for it. With the help of the late U.S. Rep. Paul Gillmor (R., Tiffin), the Hayes Center landed a $400,000 Save America’s Treasures grant, received $500,000 in state capital funding, and raised $300,000 in donations to pay for the project, which included replicating wallpaper, carpets, and other features that had been altered over the years.

A former college librarian and stockbroker, Mr. Culbertson came to the center in 1988 as manuscripts curator. He was promoted to director of museum and education in 1995 and to executive director in 2005.

He has led the center through a difficult economic time punctuated by state funding cuts. Hours were reduced, admission fees were raised, and employees’ pay was cut.

“We have a great staff in place, so whoever takes my place will be coming into a good situation,” Mr. Culbertson said. “We’re not a sinking ship. Financially, we have recovered from the state cutbacks — not that we got the money back, but we’ve held our own.”

During his tenure, Mr. Culbertson developed two workshop series for educators. “History Links: A Partnership to Teach American History” helped 300 area schoolteachers implement state standards for social studies that focused more on American history.

The second series included three workshops for more than 200 community college faculty that focused on America’s Gilded Age.

Mr. Culbertson also led the effort to gain accreditation for the Hayes Museum from the American Museums Association in 2002.

Contact Jennifer Feehan at: jfeehan@theblade.com or 419-724-6129.