Benefactor pays tribute to late wife
Wymbs’s gifts instrumental to Dixon Historic Center, Reagan home
DIXON – When Norman Wymbs bought the old South Central School building for $500, he told his friend Ronald Reagan, “you’re going to be my Mickey Mouse.”
The former U.S. president replied with a laugh: “I’ve been called a lot of things, but that’s a first.”
Wymbs envisioned Reagan’s boyhood school drawing visitors. Once he had them inside, he could tell the story of how Northwest Illinois settled, a story line shared by his wife Harriet’s family, who were among the first settlers in the area.
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