Have you ever wondered why McDonald’s fast food restaurants aren’t called Kroc’s?
Isn’t Ray Kroc the brains behind those burgers? Didn’t Kroc start this conveyor belt of dining, this new way to view dinner in America? Didn’t Michael Keaton star as Kroc in a movie last year, and didn’t that movie tell the story of the man whose Happy Meal continues to thrill millions of kids?
I’ve got news for you: McDonald’s was founded by Maurice and Richard McDonald, and the brothers, I learned after a trip to the Millyard Museum in Manchester, were born and raised in the Queen City.
I learned a lot this week, after also visiting the Aviation Museum in Londonderry and the Wright Museum of World War II in Wolfeboro. They are three of 16 museums belonging to the New Hampshire Heritage Trail Museums. They’re either open or opening soon, and I’m a lot smarter after spending a day at each last week exercising my mind.
“In a couple of years I feel like we’ve reinvigorated the place,” said John Clayton, the Millyard’s executive director. “We’ve made an attempt to re-energize it.”
It worked. The Millyard, which presents a history of Manchester, attracted more than 10,000 visitors in 2016 for the first time in its 16-year history. Clayton is the face now, after writing columns for the Union Leader for more than 20 years. He knew his stuff when he wrote about the city, and he resembled a walking encyclopedia during our recent tour.
Clayton told me about the McDonald boys, whose pictures are on a wall of fame as you enter the museum, and who sold the company to Kroc in 1961. In fact, Richard McDonald, the first cook the fast-food chain ever had – and not to be confused with Ronald McDonald – was served a ceremonial burger in 1984 at the Grand Hyatt hotel in New York City.
The significance? It marked the one-billionth burger sold in the empire’s history.
On that same wall, you’ll see comedian Sarah Silverman, NFL football coach Chip Kelly, big league pitcher Mike Flanagan and lots of others, many of whom did something big that I bet you didn’t know.
Ralph Baer, for example, is known as the “Godfather of Video Games.” Patricia Racette is a world famous opera singer. Fay McKay was a comedic singer who opened for pianist Liberace in Las Vegas for 40 years.
All lived in Manchester. So did Margaret Knight, who invented the flat-bottom paper bag you use each day to carry your lunch.
Elsewhere, I learned human remains dating back 11,000 years were found under a Manchester mansion during an excavation in 1968.
I learned the Merrimack River helped power turbines, making Manchester the first planned industrial city in America. I learned the mills, part of a river-side manufacturing empire that served as a model for the country, created the denim first used for Levi Jeans, made steam fire engines used during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and featured loom factories that made uniforms for soldiers during World War I.
All this stuff is on display.
Workers were recruited from Belgium, Germany, Scotland, Quebec and Montreal, lured to Manchester by the promise of improved working conditions, clean housing and medical care.
“The objective was to create a utopian industrial city for workers who would want to come here to live and work,” Clayton said. “They had seen England and did not want to re-create that squalor here. They wanted clean water, housing, parks, playgrounds, dental hygiene clinics. The health of the worker was important.”
Already proud of the Granite State from this experience, I went to the Aviation Museum in Londonderry and was greeted by Wendell Berthelsen, the director of operations, and Jessica Pappathan, the executive director.
I learned that Alan Shepard of Derry, the first American in space, rode his bicycle to that very building and swept the hangar floors in exchange for flying lessons. I sat in a cockpit from an old cargo plane, with the actual live flight tower chatter piped right in.
And I saw an original Japanese Prayer Flag, with its red circle and tattered look. Prayer flags were given to Japanese servicemen for luck during World War II, and this one was found in the belongings of Louis Frank, a decorated pilot from North Woodstock who died in 2011.
That’s a nice lead-in to the Wright Museum, dedicated to World War II, which raged from 1939 to ’41.
Mike Culver, the executive director, said, “(Wolfeboro) is a small town, but this is a big city museum. I don’t think the state realizes what a gem they’ve had for 23 years. Any state would love to have it.”
The tour begins with a look at the homefront during the war, which tells the story of national unity, never seen before or since, through President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats over the radio.
Through what Culver calls the Time Tunnel, each of the six years is represented in connecting rooms, with framed Life magazine covers and huge black-and-white photos telling the stories of the day. That means a smiling, glamorous Rita Hayworth on one wall, mixed with men preparing to storm Normandy Beach, some just seconds from dying, on another wall.
There’s a Sherman Tank, still operational, with a 90 millimeter gun that once blasted a shell 1,000 yards and penetrated seven inches of armor.
Culver noted the claustrophobic nature of this beast, saying, “There were five guys in those tanks. I’ve been in there, and I don’t know how they did it.”
There’s material on Rene Gagnon, the Manchester native and one of the flag raisers shown in the iconic Iwo Jima photo. Gagnon’s son, Rene Gagnon Jr., lives in Concord.
The Gagnon name will live forever because of the photo taken by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press. It shows six men raising the American flag during a battle against the Japanese in World War II.
The year was 1945. Gagnon was thousands of miles from home, where two brothers were building a fast-food empire.
A series of museums will tell you both stories, each a part of New Hampshire history.
And world history, as well.
(Ray Duckler can be reached at 369-3304, rduckler@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @rayduckler.)