By Edwin Cooney
Since I’ve never been much of a scholar, my interest in the
American presidency has been almost as much a fascination about the men who’ve
occupied that office as it has been about the institution, its powers, or the
history it has created. So, on
this day (popularly known as Presidents Day -- although it’s still officially
Washington’s Birthday), I thought I’d offer you a glimpse of some of our
presidents as people rather than as politicians, leaders, or statesmen.
Baby notes—-Although
William Howard Taft was our heaviest president at 330 pounds while in office,
I’ve found no president heavier as a baby than Richard Nixon, born Thursday,
January 9th, 1913. (Nor
have I found any mention of President Taft’s birth weight.) Baby Richard, described by Hannah
Nixon’s midwife nurse Henrietta Shockney as a “roly-poly, good-natured baby,”
weighed in at a healthy eleven pounds. Lyndon Baines Johnson (born Thursday, August 27th,
1908) went unnamed for the first three months of his life. Rebecca Baines Johnson named her eldest
son after W. C. Linden, a lawyer and family friend. She altered the spelling of Linden’s name "L I N D E
N" to "L Y N D O N" and gave Baby Lyndon her maiden name for his
middle name. Warren Gamaliel Harding (born Thursday, November 2nd,
1865) was named after Warren Gamaliel Bancroft, a Methodist chaplain in the
Wisconsin State Prison. Phoebe
Harding wanted to name her son Winfield but deferred to George Harding’s wishes
in the matter. However, she often
called Warren "Winnie" as a child. Ulysses S. Grant (born Saturday, April 27th,
1822) was named Hiram Ulysses Grant by his mother Hannah Simpson Grant. His name was accidentally written as
"Ulysses Simpson Grant" by the congressman who recommended him to
West Point. However, his initials,
H. U. G., which were printed on his trunk that arrived at West Point,
embarrassed young Grant even more.
Hence, he took his mother’s maiden name for his middle name and called
himself U.S. Grant. U.S. soon
became “Uncle Sam” and many of his friends from then on often referred to him
simply as Sam. Gerald Rudolph Ford
was born Leslie R. King, Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska on Monday, July 14th,
1913 to Leslie and Dorothy King.
Within a year, Dorothy took little Leslie back to her native Grand
Rapids, Michigan from where she divorced King for abuse and cruelty. Around 1916, she married Gerald R.
Ford, who owned a paint store. Jerry Ford, Sr. legally adopted young Leslie and
renamed him Gerald R. Ford, Jr.
Jerry and Dorothy Ford told the lad of his paternity when he was about
12 years old and he was once visited by Leslie King while working at a
restaurant in Grand Rapids.
Boyhood and education—FDR
(born Monday, January 30th, 1882) was the only child of James and
Sarah (Sally) Delano Roosevelt.
Young Franklin was pampered by his parents throughout his boyhood. For the first six years of his life, he
was dressed in dresses and kilts and wore his hair in long blonde locks. Andrew Johnson (born Thursday, December
29th, 1808) became fatherless at age three. At age fourteen, he was
apprenticed by his mother Mary McDonough Johnson to James Selby, a tailor.
Eventually, he and his older brother William ran away from Selby who put an ad
in a local newspaper offering a reward of ten dollars to anyone who would
return both brothers or only Andrew.
Andrew eventually returned to Raleigh, North Carolina and drove his
mother and stepfather to Greeneville, Tennessee where, at seventeen, he opened
a successful tailor business. If
the boyhoods of Franklin Roosevelt and Andrew Johnson could be labeled
pampered, the boyhood of James K. Polk was downright brutal. A sickly child who dwelt amidst the raw
discomforts of rural Tennessee, Polk suffered from gallstones. The pain was so
great that they had to be removed.
At age seventeen, Polk was sent to Danville, Kentucky where Dr. Ephraim
McDowell, a doctor who had performed the first successful ovariotomy only a few
years earlier, removed young Polk’s gallstones. This was before the discovery of the need for sterilized
instruments and the use of ether.
The only anesthetic available was liquor to dull the immense pain young
Polk would invariably suffer. The
slender frail lad obviously survived the operation to become president, but
died at age 53 just three months and eleven days after leaving the presidency
in 1849.
Comparative ages—Theodore
Roosevelt was the youngest president inaugurated, succeeding to the presidency
upon the death of William McKinley on Saturday, September 14th,
1901. He was only 42 years, 322
days old. John F. Kennedy was the
youngest elected president to be inaugurated. He was 43 years, 236 days when he was inaugurated on Friday,
January 20th, 1961. The
oldest president inaugurated was Ronald Wilson Reagan. He was 69 years, 349 days old on
Tuesday, January 20th, 1981, his inauguration day.
Education—Nine
presidents, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry
Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland
and Harry Truman, had no college education. By way of comparison, tally up the number of presidents who
attended Harvard: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore
Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush and Barack
Obama. Surprisingly, the
non-scholars win by a score of 9 to 8!
Extramarital affairs—James
A. Garfield, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy,
Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton were known to have been involved in
extramarital activities.
Handsome presidents—"Handsome"
relies totally on perception, but it’s generally agreed that the following ten
men were the most handsome chief executives: Warren Harding, Franklin Pierce,
Millard Fillmore, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, James
Garfield, Chester Arthur, George H. W. Bush, and Gerald Ford who posed as a
model for a men’s magazine in 1941. Queen Victoria, after getting a good look
at Millard Fillmore, declared that he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen.
Barbara Bush, who was of course perfectly objective, publicly insisted on
numerous occasions that her husband was the handsomest man she’d ever laid eyes
on.
Presidential pocket books—Our top three greatest presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Abraham
Lincoln and George Washington, were far from being paupers, but Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson died in debt. FDR’s estate was valued at around two
million dollars. Abraham Lincoln
left a
modest $111,000 estate. George Washington’s estate was valued at about
$500,000. Keep in mind, however,
that six figure sums were far more valuable in those years than they are today. For all his modesty, Harry Truman left
an estate of about $500,000. Calvin Coolidge, a man who lived very simply, died
leaving an estate worth about $700,000.
Even more remarkable is the fact that when the Coolidges left the White
House on Monday, March 4th, 1929, they moved into a duplex they’d
been renting since around 1904.
Silent Cal used to sit out on his porch every night with his wife Grace
as he puffed a big black cigar and read the newspaper. Finally, in 1931, the Coolidges moved
into a home they called "The Beaches" which gave them a little more
privacy.
Of course, you know as well as I do that the forty-three men
who’ve served as our president are people just like you and me. Their lives are filled with the same
hopes, fears, good and bad feelings, surprises, ironies, wonders, desires,
strengths and weaknesses with which we all live.
One of my least favorite presidents despite all his
accomplishments is Woodrow Wilson.
His apparent sense of moral superiority and his native racism are
ongoing irritants to me. However,
there is a delightful anecdote about him that almost makes me like him despite
myself. Wilson was a man of slight
build, but his face was long and bedecked on each side with rather prominent
ears. He had a long jaw which meant
a lot of space between his chin and his thin lips. “I have kind of a horse face,” he once observed. This limerick which he recited so often
that people assumed he had written, makes me want to love him:
“As for beauty I am not a star.
Others are more handsome by far.
But my face, I don’t mind it, for I am behind it.
It’s the people down in front that I jar!”
This President’s Day offering is less about information and
more about entertainment. However,
if these comparisons and stories, in some small way, humanize the world’s most
awesome and powerful office, my mission is complete.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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