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Bill Clevlen's latest book was inspired by empty ChapStick tubes and some wires.
Clevlen is a former radio host turned travel writer, and his eight books include "100 Things to Do in America Before You Die" and "The Ultimate American Music Bucket List."
His latest is "Presidential Road Trips: 100 Places to Explore and Experience the History of American Presidents," and he will talk about the book at noon Saturday at one of the locations featured in it --- the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial & Museum in Niles.
"Had I known how popular presidential trivia and history was, I would have written all of my books on Presidents, because I cannot even believe how popular it's been and how great the crowds have been at pretty much all the places I've spoken," Clevlen said during a telephone interview as he was driving through rural Indiana after seeing the basketball gymnasium where the movie "Hoosiers" was filmed.
Clevlen switched from radio to travel writing in 2013, and one of the early destinations for the St. Louis-based author was the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Among its many artifacts were tools used in the Watergate break-in, which led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation and Ford's pardon of him. The tools were those tubes and wires.
"I remember looking at those things and going, 'Who the heck is saving this kind of stuff?' It started me to thinking," Clevlen said. "What do the other presidential libraries and sites have like that? What are they saving? What are the random things that they might have on display or in their collections? From that random experience, I started stopping at all of the Presidential sites and museums over the course of the next 13 years, and I decided to do one of my travel-themed books on Presidential road trips."
Those travels included a visit last year to the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial & Museum, one of his final destinations before the book was published. Clevlen did a video interview with Museum Director Belinda Weiss that he's been using as part of his speaking tour.
"I've been promoting the McKinley birthplace at every single event that I've been to because it's part of the presentation," he said.
President Harry S. Truman is one of the Presidents who grew in Clevlen's estimation after visiting his sites, from his modest home in Independence, Missouri, to his Presidential Library, where Truman himself frequently greeted visitors until his death in 1972.
But visiting the locations provided a different perspective on all of the Presidents.
"You start to view these Presidents as human beings," he said. "When you're standing in the person's living room or their bedroom, and you're hearing stories about how they spent time with their families or what they liked to do with the kids, their little hobbies or things they would do around the house, you start to realize these were actual human beings that just had very important and high-profile jobs. Even presidents that maybe I didn't agree with personally, when you're in their home and you're hearing these stories from the tour guides, you see some of them with a different perspective, and hopefully other people have that experience too."
Clevlen's talk will focus on some of his favorite sites and mix video footage with his anecdotes.
"The video parts are really fun because I kind of transport you to some of these places. It's not a heavy presentation. Even if you're not a history buff, you're still going to enjoy it because everybody loves a good story. People have really loved the topic, and they love that it's fun and it's lighthearted and it's not political."
Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the program, and it also is available through online retailers.