The Beginning

To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born…

No, wait, that was David Copperfield! What I’m talking about is the beginning of the “Dead Presidents” thing. It all started back in the 1990’s with a trip to New York (although I didn’t realize I was starting anything at the time). We were just doing the New York tourist thing and stopped by Grant’s Tomb.

Although the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885) was fraught with controversy and scandal I’ve always had a soft spot for the man who was a great general (mostly against his wishes) and a fairly laid back guy – he was just no politician and not a very good businessman. He also obviously cared for his family:

After retiring from the Presidency, Grant became a partner in a financial firm, which went bankrupt. About that time he learned that he had cancer of the throat. He started writing his recollections to pay off his debts and provide for his family, racing against death to produce a memoir that ultimately earned nearly $450,000. Soon after completing the last page, in 1885, he died. (from Grant's whitehouse.gov biography)

Although a native of Ohio, Grant died in New York, and was such a national hero, his tomb was erected there to much fanfare:

Approximately 90,000 people from around the country and the world donated a total of over $600,000 towards construction of his tomb, the largest public fundraising effort ever at that time. Designed by architect John Duncan, the granite and marble structure was completed in 1897 and remains the largest mausoleum in North America. Over one million people attended the parade and dedication ceremony of Grant's Tomb, on April 27, 1897. (from Grant's Tomb National Park website)

That settles it as to which president has the most ostentatious memorial…

I guess it would only be fair if I revisited this, my first dead president’s monument, but since I still have others to see, it’s not top on my list (but any excuse to visit New York is always welcome).

And to answer the age old question: “Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?” No one. Both Grant and his wife, Julia, are entombed there - their caskets are above ground in granite sarcophagi (from Montello, WI).

Lake View Cemetery, continued...

Quite a few other famous Americans are buried in Lake View Cemetery.

Eliot Ness (1903-1957) has a very unassuming stone near a lake in the cemetery. I almost missed it – again I didn’t do any advance research on others to find, but as I was driving around slowly I was struck by the stone sitting alone by itself, the name is of course a unique one, known to all who have heard anything about Al Capone – and if you live in Chicago, you have. Although he lived in Pennsylvania when he died, Ness wanted to be buried at Lake View Cemetery. Actually the stone is just a memorial, his ashes were sprinkled in one of the cemetery's ponds by the Cleveland Police Department, as part of Ness' final requests.

Raymond Johnson Chapman is a sad story – he was killed playing baseball for the Cleveland Indians. While playing the New York Yankees in New York on August 16, 1920, Chapman was hit in the head with a ball thrown by pitcher, Carl Mays, and died 12 hours later. Chapman is the only major league baseball player to die due to an injury during a game. Dedicating the season in memory of "Chappie", the Indians won the league and world championship for the first time. His stone is decorated by Indians team gear left over the years - a poignant reminder of how much he is still remembered almost 90 years after his death.

John Hay’s (1838 - 1905) grave I noticed because of the artistry of the statuary, not because I recognized his name. He was an important and (formerly) famous American, serving as Secretary of State under presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt and as US Ambassador to England. The statuary caught my eye not so much because of the size, but because of the style, and come to find out; it was designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a sculptor I’m quite familiar with (more on him later, probably - he did several large sculptures now in Chicago). The sculpture was executed by James Earle Fraser (a Saint-Gaudens apprentice), and erected in 1916.

From the New York Times, July 6, 1905:

The body of John Hay rests to-night in his family burying ground in a corner of Lakeview Cemetery. Five hundred feet to the west of his grave is the great memorial of James A. Garfield; 200 feet to the north rises the monolith of the Rockefeller family; closer are the graves of the Otises and the Rusts.

Most of these men were buried with funeral services far more elaborate than that of John Hay, certainly none of them could have been interred with ceremony more simple.

The day of the funeral was one of bright sunshine, whose warmth was tempered by floating clouds, and the wind that seems to blow forever over Euclid Heights. From the arrival of President Roosevelt in the morning until his departure in the afternoon brought the official day to its end, not a single untoward incident was in evidence. (NY Times, 7/6/1906, p. 9)

This was obviously written before the installation of the Saint-Gaudens statue, which is anything but simple and understated.

James Garfield

Continuing my May 2005 Midwest jaunt looking for dead presidents:

James Garfield’s monument is in the Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. He gets points for having one of the more ostentatious monuments (right up there with Lincoln, but not quite on par with Grant).

Another not so famous president, Garfield was in office for only a few months before he was shot by Charles Guiteau at a Washington train station on July 2nd, 1881. He held on for three months later and died on September 19, 1881, from infection as a result of his wounds. Basically, he is famous for being assassinated.

Like the Lincoln and Grant tombs, Garfield and his wife are in side by side caskets deep inside. There’s a huge statue of him in the rotunda as well as beautiful mosaics of events from his life.

Lately on my dead presidents quest I’ve been traveling with a companion. Bud (I call him Buddy) accompanied the drivers for the first ever US cross continental drive by car . I got the stuffed dog (on sale) at the Smithsonian after an exhibit about the drive closed – my original intention was to give him to my niece, but I kept him instead and he comes on all my road trips. When there is no on else around, and I feel it isn’t disrespectful, Bud gets to pose with the dead presidents. To the left he's posing on the top terrace of James Garfield's monument (I actually hung around a while up there until I was alone up there and could take the picture of Buddy without embarrassment - including being helpful to another group by taking their picture with the Cleveland skyline as a backdrop).

Benjamin Harrison

In May 2005, I took a road trip through a couple of states in the Midwest and visited a number of dead presidents. Illinois is great base of operations for this since it is so centrally located and because there are five presidents buried in Ohio, one in Indiana, one in Illinois and one in Iowa. (Actually visiting Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield the year before gave me the idea to make the “dead presidents” a quest – this was prior to my owning a digital camera so I’m not sure I have much evidence left of that visit.)

Benjamin Harrison is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. Crown Hill is one of those neat old cemeteries (it was dedicated in 1864) with a lot of history and a lot to look at. Crown Hill is the burial site of such famous people as: Colonel Eli Lilly, 11 Indiana Governors, 1 Kentucky Governor, 14 Indiana Mayors, 13 Civil War Generals, poet James Whitcomb Riley, author Booth Tarkington, automobile manufacturer Frederick Duesenberg, and the infamous bank robber John Dillinger. Sadly, I hadn’t done my homework before visiting Crown Hill, so I only thought to look for Harrison.

Benjamin Harrison’s gravesite isn’t as ostentatious as some I visited (Lincoln is definitely high on that list), but it’s more than a simple headstone, and is well marked as being a presidential gravesite. He’s another one of those presidents that few Americans could name and even fewer could list anything he did as president.

Museum of Modern Ice

“Paintings Below Zero” by Gordon Halloran are on display in Chicago’s Millennium Park until sometime this spring. The art fixture consists of sheets of ice with pigments on aluminum tubes with liquid glycol to keep them cool. They are worked on throughout the exhibit to change the textures and colors of the pieces.

The ice sheets are on display in the park behind “Cloudgate” aka “The Bean.” They’re cool and all (no pun intended) but not what I expected. I expected them to be freestanding blocks of different sizes and shapes rather than panels rigged up in a metal superstructure (the above link to his website really implies that). I especially like, though, how the city of Chicago keeps coming up with reasons for people to be out and about in the city, especially during the winter. Gotta love Chicago!

(By the way, New Yorkers, the reason you have a reputation for being obnoxious is because you do things like coming to Chicago in February and complaining about it being cold. I know for a fact it gets cold in New York, too (today for instance it’s a balmy 24 degrees) so quit your bitch'n or stay home!)

Spirit of Radio

Another reason I enjoy wandering through cemeteries taking pictures (besides the peace of them and the great statuary you can photograph) is the unexpected history that you often encounter.

To the right is a picture of “The Spirit of Radio” a statue on the Grunow monument in Forest Home cemetery outside Chicago (see this post for some words about the Martyrs’ monument in the same cemetery). The statue caught my eye and reading the caption with the name intrigued me even more. On the other side of the mausoleum is the statue below: “The Spirit of Commerce.”

Why would these classical looking statues with classical symbolic elements (the palm leaf and shield held by “Radio” and the winged sandals, helmet and caduceus of “Commerce”) be in a cemetery? After very briefly looking into the name of Grunow, I found out William C. Grunow (1893 – 1951) was co-owner of the Grigsby-Grunow (Majestic) radio company in the 1930’s. Makes sense, but unless you were an avid collector of old radios you probably wouldn’t have made the connection between the man’s name and a statue of “The Spirit of Radio” on his tomb.

Franklin Pierce

Franklin Pierce
Originally uploaded by Hapaxes

Another interest I have – basically it’s an excuse to travel around the US taking pictures – is visiting all the graves of the former (dead, obviously) presidents. To date I’ve made it to 21 of the 38, with photographs of all but a couple (I chickened out taking a flash picture in the tomb of the 2 Adams).

I start with one I visited before I had a digital camera in 2005 (I was slow to adapt, being a photography purist and all): Franklin Pierce (1804-1869).

Franklin Pierce has one of most unassuming monuments (I’ve been surprised by the extremes I’ve seen in terms of simplicity and ostentation) – basically it’s a large obelisk that you’d see in any cemetery. The cemetery itself is quite small, located pretty much downtown Concord, New Hampshire. There is a plaque outside the cemetery noting he’s buried there (as I’ve found most presidential cemeteries have) but once inside, it took some looking to find his monument (it’s inside an enclosure that itself is not marked as having anything to do with him.

Pierce was not a remarkable president; he served a single term and apparently didn’t have much enthusiasm for the job. If you travel around New Hampshire, however, you’ll see his name all over the place, including a highway, a college and a law center named after him.

This is one of the first dead presidents I visited with my family. At first I think they were amused by my quest and a little disturbed at my interest in cemeteries. They’ve realized, I think, that it really isn’t that macabre and a person could learn a lot about our presidents and American history by making these pilgrimages.

Haymarket

Haymarket
Originally uploaded by Hapaxes

I’ll start out with an interesting echo in my life (gotta be deep and meaningful for the first shot out of the gate). I went to college in New England and studied a lot about American industrial history. Place like the Lowell Mills (Massachusetts) were close by and had long and important history in terms of our industrial past as well as revealing the roles of women in early industry. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire (Manhattan, 1911) was pivotal incident in the study of women in American industry as well.

I read about and knew about the Haymarket Riot (Chicago, 1886), but because I had never been to Chicago, it never solidified as much as those events whose locations I could visit in their current incarnation. Until I came to Chicago.

By the time I moved to Chicago I had forgotten a lot about Haymarket, and where it actually happened (map) until I wandered into the monument (this picture was taken in October 2005, but I’d visited it before – just without a digital camera). The Haymarket Martyrs' Monument was erected in 1893 Forest Home (formerly German Waldheim) Cemetery just outside Chicago. The artist was Albert Weinert.

I explore cemeteries and love to learn obscure bits of history from the monuments erected there. It is amazing that things we don’t know or hear about today were at one point so important to someone they spent a good deal of time and money to erect a monument in a place people seldom visit voluntarily.

It was also interesting to learn that the monument erected for the police that were killed in the riot was vandalized with explosives as recently as 1970. Chicago is truly an industrial town and they will not soon forget. The Haymarket Martyrs' Monument for the union dead has had a much more peaceful history and continues to have wreaths laid upon it. (Note the anarchy "A" marked on the plaque to the left.)