Passed Presidents - # 36 – Lyndon B. Johnson

I visited Lyndon Johnson’s grave on June 18, 2008.  His was the last grave visited on the Dead Presidents Quest.  Thirty nine last resting places were photographed in the ten years since the pursuit began with Harry Truman. 

Baby Lyndon

Taken through the glass at the Visitor Center at the

LBJ National Historical Park in Johnson City.

One can see where his famous ears started

but he was cute nonetheless

Lyndon Baines Johnson had energy and ego the size of Texas.  He met ‘Lady Bird’ at a party, asked her to breakfast the next morning and proposed to her by the end of the day.  He served six terms in the House before he was elected to the Senate.  After two years in the Senate, he was elected Minority Whip.  Two years later, he was minority leader and in 1954, at age 46, he was elected majority leader.  Many consider him to be one of the finest floor leaders in Senate history.

He campaigned for the presidency in 1960 but when the nomination went to John Kennedy, he accepted the running mate’s job.  Given the close vote, it was clear that Johnson won Texas and enough southern states to clinch it.  Then, a short three years later, he was taking the oath of office on Air Force One with Jackie in her blood-stained dress standing beside him.

LBJ, grandson Patrick Nugent and Yuki

Taken in 2011 at the Newseum exhibit of president’s pets,

where it was noted that Johnson and his

favorite mutt enjoyed howling together

In a lesson the GOP may soon learn again, Johnson trounced the uber-conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964 and used the popular mandate to launch the ‘Great Society’ programs.  In this era of gridlock, obstructionism and hyper-partisan nonsense, one might look back at this single term when so much was accomplished.  Laws were passed to aid education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development was created, Medicare gave health services to the elderly and the Voting Rights Act was passed.

Unfortunately, LBJ couldn’t do the right thing in Viet Nam.  We were still stuck in that Cold War, anti-Communist mindset and, by the end of his term, we had over 500,000 troops on the ground fighting a war we would never win.  Still, the nation was shocked when he announced he would not seek reelection.

The 60’s was a tumultuous decade and much was changing.  The damn war, race riots, the women’s movement, drugs, sex and rock and roll...it all energized the Boomers and made my parents’ generation crazy.  By the time LBJ left office, he was gaunt, gray and haggard.  The strain of the job showed on him more than any president I remember.  He died on this day in 1973 at age 64.

The Texas White House (18 June 2008)

The tour guide said Lady Bird would occasionally meet

with tour visitors and chat over her back fence.

Like the Founding Fathers who are buried on their plantations, LBJ rests in the Johnson Family Cemetery on the Johnson Ranch, which is now in the Lyndon Johnson State Park outside of Johnson City, Texas. 

This was a somewhat anticlimactic end to the Quest.  I had been able to get close to most of the presidents’ graves, read inscriptions and get decent shots of the spaces.  For LBJ, the only way one can get onto the property is to buy a tour bus ticket and no one is permitted inside the walls of the graveyard.  Fair enough, I suppose, since the ranch is still the family’s residence.

Lady Bird had died almost a year earlier and her daughters had not yet erected a marker next to the president’s.

 Lyndon Baines Johnson

36^th President; Served 1963-1969

Born: August 27, 1908, Stonewall, TX

Died: January 22, 1973, Johnson City, TX

Grave Location: LBJ Ranch, Johnson City, TX

Date Visited: 6/18/2008

Passed Presidents - # 10 – John Tyler

January has not been a good month for presidents’ longevity.  The day after # 19 R.B. Hayes bought the farm marks the 152^nd anniversary of the passing of John Tyler.  He now rests a stone’s throw from President Monroe in Richmond’s magnificent Hollywood Cemetery.  Hollywood is a vast, historic burial ground with a number of significant residents, including 18,000 Confederate veterans.

John Tyler’s Grave, Richmond, VA (28 June 2005)

Tyler occupies that span of, shall we say, ‘undistinguished’ presidents between Jackson and Lincoln.  Of course, a closer look can reveal something notable about anyone.  Our tenth president was the son of the governor of Virginia and an ardent supporter of states’ rights, slavery and procreation.  His first wife bore him eight children before she became the first president’s wife to die in the White House.  Two years later, he married a woman 30 years his junior and she delivered seven more.  The man had 15 children over a span of 45 years...a presidential record that will be difficult to beat.

John Tyler’s Grave, Richmond, VA (28 June 2005)

Apart from making babies, Tyler’s claim to fame is that he was the first vice president to become the Top Dog after the Top Dog we elected died on the job.  William Henry Harrison became the first Whig president after a long public and military career.  We still remember the campaign slogan from 1840 – “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”.  Tippecanoe was the battle in which Harrison defeated Native Americans led by Tecumseh in 1811. 

Anyway, no one thought much about the vice president until he became president.  Since the Constitution was vague on presidential succession [until the 25^th Amendment was passed in 1967!], there were many who didn’t agree that the job was entirely his.  This earned him the nickname “His Accidency”.  He then asserted himself by vetoing important banking bills.  That effrontery to the Whig Party platform had him expelled from the party.  Furthermore, his entire cabinet except for Daniel Webster, the Secretary of State, resigned in protest.  He completed his term with little cooperation from Congress.  Needless to say, The Whigs didn’t nominate him for another term and he retired to his plantation to oversee the slaves and make more babies.

He died during the Civil War.  As a leading secessionist and newly-elected Representative to the Confederate Congress, he was considered a traitor to the United States.  His passing was essentially ignored by the U.S. government.

John Tyler

10th President; Served 1841-1845

Born: March 29, 1790, Greenway, VA

Died: January 18, 1862, Richmond, VA

Grave Location: Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, VA

Date Visited: 6/28/2005

Passed Presidents - # 19 – Rutherford B. Hayes

Before this photo/travel/history Quest enabled me to know them better, my knowledge of presidential lineage was spotty at best.  I knew the Founding Fathers and the 20^th century guys but there are these two sizable time periods dominated by lesser lights.  Between Andrew Jackson and Lincoln [# 8-15] and between Grant and McKinley [# 19-24] are guys that have not inspired movies, imitators or action figures.

Here’s my chance to shed a little light on one rarely noted chief in that second group.  Rutherford B. Hayes died 121 years ago today.  He started the annual White House Easter Egg Roll and had the longest beard of any president.  That’s it.  I have nothing else.

Rutherford B. Hayes Grave, Fremont, OH [25 September 2005]

But seriously, of the five presidents who served in the Civil War, he was the only one wounded in battle...on five separate occasions.  His election ended Reconstruction and removed federal troops from the occupied South.  He was an honest man who had to overcome the stink of the Grant administration scandals.  He fired Chester Alan Arthur from his New York Customs House position and initiated efforts to reform the civil service system.  At the beginning of his term, he said he would not seek re-election.  When was the last time that happened?

After retirement allowed me to chase Dead Presidents in earnest, I joined a friend for a weekend drive through Ohio to visit four of their Native Sons.  Spiegel Grove in Fremont is the home of Rutherford and Lucy Hayes.  “Lemonade Lucy” was the first First Lady with a college degree and earned her nickname because no alcohol was served in the White House.  She died four years before ‘Rud’ and when their son donated the estate to Ohio, the nation’s first presidential library was established on the site and the couple was re-interred on the property.

The Hayes Home in Spiegel Grove, Fremont, OH [25 September 2006]

The presidential election of 1876 was the most disputed contest until Bush v. Gore in 2000.  This was only eleven years after the War Between the States.  Southern states were still run by Reconstruction governments and the Republicans feared that southern Democrats would work to undo the civil rights reforms brought on by the 14^th Amendment, ratified in 1868. 

Wrap your head around this one.  Democrats were the segregationists.  Hayes was another Republican who was an abolitionist before the war and civil rights advocate all his life.  He consistently fought for reforms and aid to schools, minorities, hospitals, prisons and the poor.  Contrast that to what the Grand Offal Party has become today, starting with their voter suppression laws and all the compassion they have shown to minorities and the disadvantaged.  That sound you hear is Lincoln spinning in his grave.

Rutherford and Lucy Hayes’ Grave, Fremont, OH [25 September 2005]

But I digress.  New York governor, Democrat Samuel Tilden actually out-polled Hayes by over 260,000 votes.  Charges of fraud and voter intimidation in the South left twenty electoral votes undecided.  Congress formed a commission that, by a one-vote margin, gave the votes to Hayes.  That won the presidency by the slimmest electoral margin possible...185-184.  A new nickname dogged him for his time in office – “His Fraudulency”. 

By all accounts, Hayes did a good job in office.  He was honest and provided stability at a time of scandal, partisanship and the simmering sectionalism that lingered after the Civil War.  And he was clearly ahead of his time in the area of race relations.

 Rutherford B. Hayes

19th President; Served 1877-1881

Born: October 4, 1822, Delaware, OH

Died: January 17, 1893, Fremont, OH

Grave Location: Hayes Presidential Center, Fremont, OH

Date Visited: 9/25/2006

Free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes - 1886

On the Passing of Robert Shields

I went to a funeral this weekend.  My favorite teacher and mentor died.  I spoke a few impromptu words of remembrance and appreciation to the gathered family and friends during the service in the funeral home.  Here is what I would have said if I had more time to think about it...and was better on my feet.

Bob Shields was a biology professor at The City College of New York.  He was recognized as the campus-wide Teacher of the Year the second year the award was given.  It was under Bob’s tutelage that my interest in biology found its place.  Bob was the guy who turned me on to invertebrates.  I took his invertebrate zoology and parasitology courses and would go on to teach both disciplines when I was in graduate school at UW-Milwaukee.  My life-long love of the spineless creatures began in Bob’s classes.

After his dear wife, Peg passed away, he indulged in history by becoming a docent at Pennsbury Manor, the old home of William Penn, the founder of the Pennsylvania colony.  He would dress in period clothes and lead tours.  When macular degeneration began to steal his eyesight, he would joke about hoping everything was where it was supposed to be since it would have been unfortunate to be describing some special object while pointing to the empty place where it used to be.

Bob as a Pennsbury Manor Docent

It’s difficult to imagine where I would be now if it weren’t for Bob.  My undergraduate record was far from stellar.  I was a good biology student but other courses brought my GPA down.  If it were not for his letter of recommendation [and the endorsement of a few others] and CCNY’s strong reputation, I would not have been admitted to grad school in Wisconsin.  I would not have met Becky.  The long roads of life would have taken many different turns.

In the Courtyard of Pat O’Briens, New Orleans, 1981

Left to right: Bob, Peg and me (with a mustache and more hair)

He and Peg came to my first wedding.  He encouraged me to apply to the Duke University Marine Lab for summer study and helped me earn a National Science Foundation fellowship for that experience.  In the 34 years since I graduated, we exchanged holiday updates, visited, did dinners out and caught up over football games.  After he retired to Newtown, PA, I would stop by when I drove north to stay overnight and catch up.  In the ten years since Peg died, he was not the same guy.  They were soul mates from the start and his loss was palpable.  I wish I could have seen him more often. 

I appreciate that he saw in me something I might not have recognized and encouraged me along.  I wanted to follow his example and pursue the academic life...get the terminal degree and teach as he did.  My life and career took other turns but we never lost touch.  I will always be grateful for his friendship.  Here’s to you, Bob.

Passed Presidents - # 26 – Theodore Roosevelt

2014 political realities can’t help but flavor this story.  Teddy Roosevelt went to his reward on this day, 95 years ago...another great Republican spinning in his grave because the Grand Old Party today would blow him off the stage for his evil ways.

We’ll have to remove his image from Mt. Rushmore because of his ‘Square Deal’ domestic policies...built on the ‘Three ‘C’s’ – conservation of natural resources, control of corporations and consumer protection.

He did so many un-Republican things like create the National Forest Service which designated 150 national forests.  He doubled the number of national parks and created numerous national monuments and wildlife refuges. 

J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller threw darts at his image because he actually enforced the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and broke up their monopolies.  He signed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 so we wouldn’t get poisoned by adulterated food and medicine.  He had the nerve to pass the Meat Inspection Act so the slaughterhouses had to clean up and stop passing rotten meat to consumers.  What was he thinking with all that radical, socialist, regulatory nonsense?

 

Sagamore Hill, the Roosevelt home in Oyster Bay, NY (26 August 2003)

The 26^th president was born to wealth and privilege.  His family had settled in the colonies in the mid-1600’s.  After earning his Harvard degree, he entered New York politics and married.  When his mother AND young wife passed away on the same day in 1884, he left the east for the life of an outdoorsman and rancher in the Dakota Territory.  That set the stage for many of the exploits he is known for.  He was a sickly child but vigorous exercise produced a fit and active adult.  He said, “I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life.”

The President and his St. Bernard, Rollo

(Photo taken at The Newseum exhibit of presidents’ pets; 15 May 2011)

An honest rich man he was.  President Harrison appointed him to the new U.S. Civil Service Commission where he vigorously fought to reform the spoils system and enforce civil service laws.  After that, he was the New York City Police Commissioner and again made a reputation as a fighter against corruption.  When he continued as a no-nonsense, reform governor of New York, the party bosses urged the McKinley campaign to take Teddy as the vice presidential candidate so they could be free to return to their corrupt ways. Six months after the inauguration, McKinley was dead and at 42 years old, Teddy became our youngest president to date.

Quentin Roosevelt’s Grave Marker

Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, NY (26 August 2003)

All four of Teddy’s sons enlisted in World War I. Quentin was the 

youngest and he was shot down in France in 1918 at age 20. 

He was buried in France and when his brother, Theodore died

 in France during WW II, they were buried together in the 

American Cemetery in Normandy. After that, Quentin’s 

original grave marker was moved to the family home.

He was the first American to win a Nobel Prize...the Peace Prize for his settlement of the Russo-Japanese War and he was the first president to travel outside the United States while in office.

My only visit to Teddy’s grave was in the pre-digital era.  We joined my sister for a few beach days in the Hamptons and stopped in Oyster Bay on the way home.  He lies behind a fence in Young’s Memorial Cemetery between the town and the Sagamore Hill estate.

 Theodore Roosevelt

26th President; Served 1901-1909

Born: October 27, 1858, New York, NY

Died: January 6, 1919, Oyster Bay, NY

Grave Location: Young’s Memorial Cemetery, Oyster Bay, NY

Date Visited: 8/26/2003

Passed Presidents - # 30 – Calvin Coolidge

“Cool’ Cal Coolidge, whose first name was really John, died 81 years ago today, January 5, 1933.  He is one of eight presidents buried in the place of their birth.  He is one of the eight vice presidents who assumed the top job upon the death of the Chief.  After Warren Harding was poisoned by his wife, er, passed away suddenly in San Francisco, Coolidge’s father, a Justice of the Peace and notary, administered the oath of office on August 3, 1923 at 2:47 in the morning.  I assume this was the only time a parent has done the honors.

Born in 1872, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, he was educated at Amherst and rose through Massachusetts politics to become that state’s governor before he was chosen as Harding’s running mate in the 1920 election. 

I guess because there were no wars or significant social changes during his time in office [not to mention his reputation for impersonating a corpse], we remember little of him.

However, this nation’s greatest natural disaster did happen on his watch.  The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 left hundreds of thousands homeless but the president did not lead the response.  His Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover managed the relief effort and went on to succeed Coolidge in the White House.

Poor ‘Silent Cal’.  A socialite made a bet with friends that she could get the president to say more than three words.  After a few tries, she told Coolidge that a wager was at stake.  His reply was, “You lose.” 

Calvin Coolidge in the Final Year of his Presidency

Portrait by Joseph E. Burgess

National Portrait Gallery (24 January 2008)

Coolidge admitted he had great difficulty meeting new people...not the best quality to have in politics.  Alice Roosevelt, Teddy’s famously outrageous daughter, said Coolidge looked as though he had been, “weaned on a pickle.” 

On the other hand, he was just what the country needed after the exposure of his predecessor’s corrupt administration.   Harding’s scandals were prosecuted and the government was being fixed...sort of.   The public appreciated Coolidge’s honesty and his stoic New England values...even if those values included forbidding the charming First Lady Grace from wearing trousers, driving, dancing or speaking to the press.  Can’t be too wild and crazy now, can we?

As a symbol of progress, he was the first president to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House.  He handily won the election in 1924 and presided over the heart of the ‘Roaring 20’s’, where business boomed and prosperity soared.  He was urged to run again in 1928 but declined and retired back to Massachusetts.  Unfortunately, good Republican that he was, his belief that business should be left to its own devices allowed them to flush our economy down the toilet in the Crash of 1929.  Fortunately for Cal, history hung that mess around Herbert Hoover’s neck.

Coolidge Family Graves

Plymouth Notch Cemetery, Plymouth Notch, VT (7 October 2009)

I visited the president’s grave on two occasions...after a Boston business meeting in 2004 [pre-digital era] and again during the glorious autumn New England State House Tour in 2009.  I was the only person anywhere near the cemetery on both occasions. 

When I lamented another autumn gone by without taking new fall color shots [See post 11/10/13], I noted that Plymouth Notch Cemetery is also the home of the “longest surviving Revolutionary War widow.”  Esther Damon died in 1906 (!) at age 93.  How could someone be connected to the war that ended 123 years before she died and 31 years before she was born in 1814?  Esther’s obit notes her marriage to Noah Damon in 1835 at age 21.  He was 75 at the time (Eeew!).  

Plymouth Notch Cemetery,

Plymouth Notch, VT (7 October 2009)

The last resting place of Calvin Coolidge is one of the simplest of the presidents’ graves...as one might expect from this taciturn New Englander.  In a line from his modest tombstone are the graves of Grace, who lived until 1957, and their two sons.  John lived 96 years but their younger son died during his second term at the age of 16.  He contracted blood poisoning from a foot blister following a tennis game.  The loss weighed heavily on the President for the remainder of his time in office.  He was only 60 when he died of heart failure less than four years later.

Calvin Coolidge

30th President; Served 1923-1929

Born: July 4, 1872, Plymouth, VT

Died: January 5, 1933, Northampton, MA

Grave Location: Plymouth Cemetery, Plymouth, VT

Dates Visited: 10/1/2004; 10/7/2009

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

John Calvin Coolidge