244: IN SEARCH OF THE SICKLY RAT-FACED MUCKER OF CHOATE

The three of us arrived in the town of Wallingford, Connecticut around 12:15pm on Friday June 9, 2023. Tom had made special arrangements with Nicole Thomas, the Communications Office Coordinator at Choate Rosemary Hall School, for a 1:30pm tour of the grounds, as well as any historic buildings associated with John Kennedy. The future 35th President attended the private, upscale, all-boys prep boarding school from 1931 until he graduated in 1935. Since we had arrived in the Wallingford area with extra time to spare, my photographer and Bob Moldenhauer found a Jersey Mike’s Subs shop within a few miles of the school where they ate lunch and discussed our upcoming visit. At some point during their 45-minute feed bag, however, the threat of a severe storm in the area had become imminent – our only hope was for Mother Nature to give us a break and send the storm around the Choate campus. However, just as Tom found a public parking lot behind Choate’s Hill House, we saw the flash of lightning and the crash of thunder. The storm was nearby – we had no time to waste.

Once we rendezvoused with Nicole, who introduced us to the Community Safety Officer Emmett Brayton, the five of us headed across the grounds to a historic building that had a George Washington connection. It turned out the building was known as the Squire Stanley House, which was built in the 1690s, and it’s the oldest building on the campus. During his trip to Cambridge in 1775, General George Washington purchased gun powder from a nearby store, then he spent the night in what the General described in his diary as “The big house on the hill.” Over one hundred years after our first President slept in that very building, the Choate School began with six boys attending the fall term there in 1896.

The lightning in the area grew more intense while I posed near the exterior of the Squire Stanley House. At one point, while I stood on a concrete barrier near the front of the historic structure, I felt a vibration following a loud burst of thunder. There was no doubt about it, the storm was upon us. Then, just as Tom captured his final image of “The big house on the hill”, the sky opened up and the rain came down in sheets. Thankfully, my companions had anticipated the potential of rain during our walking tour, so they packed a couple of umbrellas – and let me tell you, they came in handy. Although I admit, it was hilarious to see four adults and a bobble head huddled beneath two small umbrellas.

During the deluge, Nicole quickly led us across a small stretch of the grounds to the Archbold Building where the four of us congregated beneath the portico to stay dry. That impressive building, which was erected in 1928 and opened the following year, served as Choate’s infirmary, which at the time was the largest school infirmary in the entire country. For 45 years, sick students were treated in the Archbold Building before it was transformed into a girl’s dormitory in the 1970s once Choate had become a co-ed school. Just before the turn of the 21st century, Archbold was renovated and currently hosts administrative offices on the lower floors, including the office of Nicole Thomas – our tour guide.

As the rain let up a bit, Tom and I ventured out from beneath the portico where I posed for several photos in front of the historic building; all the while Emmett held an umbrella over the two of us. Mother Nature made it very difficult for my photographer to capture the images of me and the infirmary, but I knew the importance of the site and I wasn’t about to give up. After all, when John Kennedy was a student at Choate, he was very sickly and spent a lot of time in that very building. Young JFK suffered from a battery of illnesses, including chronic fatigue, numerous intestinal issues, allergies, urinary tract infections, jaundice, and bronchitis. In his third year at Choate, Kennedy spent time in the hospital because his doctors believed he had leukemia, although they later ruled that out. During JFK’s childhood, his siblings often joked about their brother’s chronic health issues, saying: “A mosquito took great risk in biting him – with some of his blood, the mosquito was almost sure to die!”  At that moment, I wondered if Kennedy ever caught pneumonia while standing in the rain outside the infirmary.

During John F. Kennedy’s prep years at Choate, from 1931 to 1935, he tried unsuccessfully to follow in the footsteps of his older brother, Joe – who graduated from Choate in the Class of 1933. While Joe excelled in all the sports he played and was considered an elite athlete, JFK was sickly, thin, and underweight. As a matter of fact, he was so scrawny, his classmates tagged him with the nickname “Rat Face” because of his appearance. Even though JFK wasn’t able to make a name for himself through athletics, he found another avenue that paved his way at Choate – and it wasn’t with his academic prowess. Don’t get me wrong, John Kennedy was a brilliant child, and he excelled in the subjects he was interested in, but he was more interested in playing pranks rather than studying. Because of his antics and rebellious demeanor, JFK became very popular at the school; especially after he blew up a toilet with a powerful firecracker. After the headmaster said the prank was carried out by “Muckers”, which was a derogatory term used to describe Irish immigrants who shoveled horse manure from the streets, Kennedy adopted the idiom for a club he formed with his friends to mock authority. “The Muckers Club”, which consisted of JFK as the leader and 12 of his most mischievous friends who served as his disciples, became notorious at Choate for wreaking havoc whenever they could. One of their cleverer schemes, which was thwarted by the headmaster before it came to fruition, was the plan to move a pile of horse manure into the school’s gymnasium. That hair-brain idea nearly got the entire group expelled from school; and who knows, it could’ve altered the course of American history.

Since her clothes had become wet during the intense rainstorm, Nicole returned to her office located in the Archbold Building, while Emmett Brayton escorted us to the next site. Before we parted ways with our original tour guide, Nicole shared a photo with my photographer that featured JFK with one of his friends goofing around at the school. When I looked Nicole’s image, the first thing that popped into my mind was: “Well, there’s no doubt they’re a couple of Muckers!” She said she believed the image was captured on the north side of the Andrew Mellon Library, which was where we headed next. Tom always tries his best to use historic photographs as a guide so he can place me in the precise spot where a President once stood. But when we reached the Library, which was several hundred feet south of the infirmary, that’s when we ran into problems. Not only did it start to rain hard again, but we had trouble finding the spot where Kennedy had been photographed.

Even though Emmett tried to share Bob’s umbrella, the Safety Officer decided it was time for the four of us to go inside the Library and wait until the rain subsided a bit. I figured Emmett wasn’t a Mucker, and it turned out he wasn’t a Mudder either – which wasn’t a bad thing. Getting inside the historic Library was an awesome experience, especially when I posed in front of a large portrait of Andrew Mellon, for whom the building was named after. I figured even though JFK was a slacker when it came to his studies at Choate, he likely spent some time in the Library – even if it was only to conjure-up another evil scheme for the Muckers Club.

The historic Library was built in 1924 as a gift from U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, whose name now graces the front of the building. It turned out Mellon was the only cabinet member to serve under three consecutive Presidents – Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. After the Great Depression engulfed Hoover’s administration, Mellon’s cabinet post ended at the same time FDR was inaugurated as President in 1933.

We had hunkered down for about ten minutes when the rain once again stopped. Tom, Bob, and I followed Emmett back outside where he led us to the spot where he believed the photo of JFK had been taken. But when we got there, the architecture of the building didn’t match the picture. For the next twenty minutes or so, we walked around the exterior of the Library as we searched for the original “JFK site”, but we couldn’t find it. What had been a potential exciting moment for me, which was to stand in a Mucker’s footsteps, turned out to be a disappointment; mainly because Tom and Bob were forced to give up our lengthy search in lieu of time.

Even with his on-campus exploits and his disdain for following the strict rules at Choate had caused him to butt heads with most of the faculty there, John F. Kennedy graduated in 1935. Most would think his extremely high IQ would help JFK graduate with honors and at the top of his class, but he didn’t. As a matter of fact, he finished 65th out of the 112 graduating students in his class. However, because of his clever wit and his individual way of looking at things, Kennedy was voted “Most likely to succeed” by his fellow classmates. I imagined some of his teachers voted him “Most likely to blow up a toilet in the White House!”

By the time Emmett led us back to the Explorer, it was nearly 2:40pm. Thankfully the rain had moved on and the sun once again tried to shine through the cloud cover. I was grateful to Nicole for making the arrangements with my photographer that got us onto the school’s property, but I left Choate Rosemary Hall with an unexplained empty feeling. In my resin mind, I figured there had to have been additional buildings on the campus that were once occupied by John F. Kennedy. And even if those other buildings had all been demolished in the past 88 years, there was still the unfinished business of finding the site where JFK was pictured goofing around with his buddy. At the end of the day, I didn’t blame our two escorts for cutting the tour short; the weather would’ve definitely dampened most everyone’s enthusiasm. Everyone, that is, except for my two companions and me.

Our school day wasn’t over when we left Choate Rosemary Hall and Wallingford behind. Located just 14 miles to the south, in the city of New Haven, Connecticut, was a larger school known as Yale University – and there were a handful of Presidential sites there. A total of five Presidents attended school at Yale, including William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and his son George W., and Bill Clinton.

Once we made it into town at a few minutes past three o’clock, we began our New Haven Presidential tour just off-campus first. Since the three of us knew that Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham met each other at Yale and their romance blossomed there as well, Tom figured we should start our late afternoon tour with a visit to Bill and Hill’s early 1970s “love nest”. That’s right, their first place together was a small apartment on Edgewood Avenue where they lived while attending law school at Yale. The couple lived on the ground floor and paid $75 per month rent, which got them a living room with a fireplace, one small bedroom, a third room they used as a study and dining area, a tiny bathroom, and a primitive kitchen. Even though they purchased their first furniture from Goodwill and a Salvation Army store, Hillary said she loved their first home – even though the floors were so uneven their plates would slide off the dining room table if they didn’t keep wooden blocks under the table legs to level them.

My photographer carried me up close to the Edgewood Avenue apartment building, which was when the two of us noticed the building had several different entrances for individual apartments. Since we had no way of knowing for sure which entrance led to Bill and Hillary’s first place, I posed close to all of them. As I stood next to the historic building, which appeared to have been recently renovated, I envisioned the long-haired, bearded, 25-year-old Clinton holding hands with Hillary as they walked down the sidewalk towards the nearby Elm Street Diner.

Following our visit to the place where a President first shacked-up with his girlfriend, the three of us headed south for about a half-mile where we found the place where a President took his first breath of air. Upon our arrival, Tom quickly discovered parking near the Yale New Haven Hospital was as scarce as grass around a hillbilly hog trough, unless my cheap companions wanted to pay to park in an expensive public parking garage. Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, my photographer found a spot along the street that was within walking distance of the hospital.

Jimmy Carter was the first President born in a hospital; Bill Clinton and every President after him were also born in hospitals as well. But only one saw his first light of day at Yale New Haven Hospital, and that was our 43rd President, George Walker Bush. Actually, when Bush was born on July 6, 1946, the hospital was known as Grace-New Haven Hospital, until its name was changed in 1965.

Although it had been nearly 77 years since that historic day when Barbara Bush gave birth to little Georgie, Tom and Bob knew there would be no reason to try to gain access to the room where the President was born. And since it was a working hospital with thousands of patients, my travel mates wouldn’t be allowed to go sightseeing inside the building anyway. The last time my photographer tried that stunt was in 2016 in the Kansas City Research Hospital where Truman died. During that memorable occasion, a large, and extremely mean nurse axed Tom to get out of her hospital “wiff all your camera equipment and take that bobble head wiff you before I call the po-leece.”

After a two-block hike, the three of us made it to the front of the Yale New Haven Hospital where we had the exterior to ourselves. Okay, there were dozens of people coming and going all the time, and always too soon – at least for me to pose without others in the image. But that’s expected at a huge hospital in the third largest city in Connecticut – people are virtually dying to get inside. As I stood near the front of the birthplace of our 43rd President, I said to myself: “This was where brilliance was born.” Then I realized we weren’t at Shadwell, so I shut my resin mouth and thought about the man they call ‘W’.

A few days following George W’s birth on August 6, 1946, his parents took him home to the converted mansion that was located next to the Yale President’s house. The George W childhood home is officially known as the Graves-Gilman House, as it was built in 1866 for Daniel Coit Gilman, a science professor at Yale University. In 1946, around the time of young George’s birth, Gilman’s mansion was converted into apartments for married Yale students. During the first two years of his life, ‘W’ lived in that house with his parents George and Barbara Bush, along with about 40 others who shared the kitchen and bathrooms. Today, the mansion is home to the Yale Department of Economics.

When we arrived at the Bush childhood home, the first thing I noticed was how tranquil and quiet the neighborhood was on Hillhouse Avenue. And why wouldn’t it be? After all, the President of Yale lives next door and the entire street appeared to be lined with huge mansions, each likely linked to the University. During my visit to the same home in 2017, my photographer had an awkward encounter with an Economics student near the front door of the building. The preppy and pompous student seemed to be put-off when he saw me posing near the front door. But that all changed on this second trip to W’s childhood home, we had the place to ourselves – and I liked that a lot.

The entire time I posed near the exterior of the Graves-Gilman House, I couldn’t help but think about the kinder and gentler George H.W. Bush, living in the mansion with his young wife Barbara, little W, and a thousand points of light that wouldn’t be prudent. Then, just as I was about to get squeamish over the thoughts of broccoli, Tom snatched me off the porch and we headed further onto Yale’s campus so I could stand in the footsteps of a long-haired hippy, who may have smoked pot, but didn’t inhale.

As the final day of classes wound down in the spring of 1971, Bill Clinton crossed paths with Hillary Rodham at the registrar’s office where the pair were signing up for the following semester’s classes. They talked with each other, then talked some more as the smitten pair went for a long walk that ended up at the Yale University Art Gallery. When they attempted to get inside the art gallery building because Hillary mentioned how she enjoyed the Mark Rothko exhibit there, the two discovered a labor dispute had closed the museum’s doors. But Slick Willie had a plan – he said if they volunteered to pick up litter in the gallery’s courtyard, they’d get inside and have the place virtually to themselves. And his plan worked to perfection, which impressed Hillary when she saw his persuasiveness in action. They walked around the gallery alone for a bit, just talking, before they ended up in the courtyard. Once there, Hillary performed her first lap dance for Bill. Well, she sat in the large lap of a bronze sculpture called the Draped Seated Woman, which was created by Henry Moore. According to Hillary, she sat in the lap of the sculpture and talked with Bill until dark. Not too long after that first date, Bill and Hill became inseparable.

When the three of us arrived at the Yale University Art Gallery at 4:35pm, I couldn’t wait to get inside. Not only had I never been inside an art gallery before, but I had never performed a lap dance either. There was no doubt in my mind Tom would set me in the lap of the Draped Seated Woman. We had no time to waste as the gallery closed at five o’clock; we needed to find that sculpture and find it fast. But moments after Tom and Bob attempted to find out where the Moore sculpture was located, my lap dance career ended before it began. The young man at the information desk said the statue was not currently on display, and he said the same for the Clinton’s other favorite works of art as well. The three of us headed back outside where I posed near the exterior of the art gallery. After all, that was the building where the magic all began for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

While I wasn’t able to stand in Bill Clinton’s footsteps at the art gallery, or on Hillary Rodham’s butt prints for that matter, there was a site several blocks away on Yale’s campus where I could pose on the spot where the future Power Couple once stood. As a matter of fact, one of the earliest known photos of Bill and Hillary together was captured on the site we were headed to next.

It was just a few minutes before five o’clock when my photographer found a parking spot along Tower Parkway and not too far from Yale’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium. After we made the short walk to the south side of the historic gym, Tom went to work as he tried to position me in the footsteps of the future President. One of the hardest aspects of duplicating the image was Clinton is 6′ 2″ tall and I stand at only eight inches in height. But after several minutes of confirming the precise spot with Bob, my perfectionist camera guy set me down on the sidewalk alongside the Payne Whitney Gym where Bill and Hillary had posed in January 1972. That’s when another issue arose – it was difficult to capture our photos without other people in the image. Not only did it become very frustrating due to the never-ending stream of pedestrians passing by the gym, but I was worried one of those careless people would step on me or accidentally kick me to the curb.

We returned to the Explorer after we dilly-dallied outside the Payne Whitney Gym for a while. The entire event took a lot longer than anticipated due to the endless stream of pedestrians who walked past us. And I was surprised – not one of those people recognized me as the most famous bobble head in the country, nor did they look at my photographer and say: “Hey, it’s that Bobble head guy!” Maybe someday we’ll be recognized.

The clock on the vehicle’s dashboard read 5:08pm when my companions decided to make the short drive over to Grove Street Cemetery, which was only a thousand feet from where we had parked. Although there were no Presidents of the United States buried in that historic cemetery, there was a very historic Patriot resting in peace there. And when I say, “Historic Patriot”, no other person in American history penned his signature onto all four of the great state papers of the United States. I’m referring to Roger Sherman, who signed the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. When Sherman died on July 23, 1793, he was originally laid to rest in New Haven Green. However, when that cemetery was relocated in 1821, the famous Signer’s remains were reinterred in Grove Street Cemetery.

Just as we arrived at the front gates of the cemetery, located along Grove Street (hence the name), the three of us were slapped in the face with a heavy dose of visual bad luck. There was a sign posted on the closed iron gates that read: ‘GATES ARE LOCKED 4:00pm DAILY’. I knew my companions believed the cemetery would be open until at least six o’clock, or perhaps even as late as dusk – like most every other cemetery we’ve visited in the past. Bob Moldenhauer was furious. And quite frankly, I was a bit upset myself. Had we known Grove Street Cemetery closed at four, we would have made it our first destination upon our arrival in New Haven at three o’clock. Then I heard Mongo verbally express his anger over the situation: “I can’t believe any cemetery would close its gates at four in the afternoon. Hell, even Arlington National Cemetery is open until five, and that’s the most famous cemetery in the entire country. If it wasn’t for those huge sharp spikes on the top of that fence, I’d climb over the damn thing and get to Sherman’s grave on foot.”

With no way of being able to pay our respects to the skull and bones of Roger Sherman buried in Grove Street Cemetery, the three of us did the next best thing – we headed to Yale’s infamous Skull and Bones headquarters, which was located just around the corner from the art gallery we had visited earlier.

I had to admit, when we were on our way to the headquarters building, I was a little nervous because of the macabre-sounding name of the society. But once we arrived, and I was carried to the front of the building, an eerie sensation filled my entire body. I was taken aback by the imposing dark brown sandstone building in front of me, which had no windows and was allegedly full of secrets. And some of those secrets included President William Howard Taft, whose father Alphonso helped form the society in 1832. But there were two other Presidents who were sworn to secrecy within the walls of that dark Yale Tomb as well – both George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush were Bonesmen.

As I stood in front of the door to the original section of the building, built in 1856 and known as The Tomb, I thought about the two Bush’s and Taft; all three were Bonesmen who walked through the same entrance behind me after they were “tapped” into the society during their junior years at Yale. Taft became a Bonesman in 1878, George H.W. Bush joined in 1948, and Baby W became a member of the secret society in 1968.

During our twenty-minute visit at the Skull and Bones headquarters, I couldn’t help but think about all of our nation’s influential people who once sworn allegiance to that secret society at Yale. Besides the three men who went on to the White House, there have been a variety of media leaders, Presidential cabinet members, congressmen, finance industry captains, university presidents, and Supreme Court justices – who were all initiated in The Tomb. Perhaps the strangest tale to emerge from the darkness of the Skull and Bones society was a claim that Bonesmen stole the skull and several bones of Apache leader Geronimo in the early 1900s, and those sacred relics still reside within the walls of The Tomb today. And who was one of the six perpetrators who allegedly desecrated Geronimo’s final resting place at Fort Sill and stole his bones? It was none other than Prescott Bush, a Bonesman since 1916, and the father and grandfather of the two Bush Presidents.

Prior to us leaving the headquarters, Bob attempted to open the front door of The Tomb. I was very thankful when Mongo discovered the door was locked. What would we have done had the door been mysteriously left unlocked? That’s a silly question – we would’ve walked inside The Tomb until we were asked to leave. Or until a Bonesman decided he wanted to perform a ceremonial sacrifice that included a bobble head.

It was roughly 5:30pm when we finished our visit at all the Presidential sites on our agenda in New Haven, Connecticut. As we headed westward along the Connecticut Turnpike, I began to wonder why Bill Clinton was never “tapped” to join the Skull and Bones society during his time at Yale. Perhaps it was due to one of the club’s sacred rituals where new members must divulge intimate personal details, including their full sexual histories, before they’re inducted into the society. Since none of the established members had enough time to hear all of Bill’s escapades, even the ones involving cigars, he was likely blackballed from Skull and Bones.

We arrived at the Amsterdam Hotel in Stamford, Connecticut at 7:15pm. Bob went inside the six-story hotel to register, while Tom got the Explorer unpacked and our gear hauled up to the room. Even though it was still relatively early, my two companions didn’t feel the need to find a local restaurant for dinner. After all, they ate a huge breakfast at Chet’s Diner in Northborough, Massachusetts, and they each devoured a Jersey Mike’s sub in Wallingford, Connecticut for a late lunch. So, instead of a full-blown meal for dinner, Tom and Bob stayed in the room where they dined on the fine cuisine they had packed for the trip. My photographer heated a batch of Ramen noodles in the microwave, while Bob finished the second half of the Jersey Mike’s sub he had saved from earlier in the day.

Like most evenings in the hotel, Tom placed me alongside the television set where I planned to spend the night. After I had the pleasure of watching Vanna White turn the letters on ‘Wheel of Fortune’, my companions extinguished the lights in the room at nine o’clock. It had been a long and exhausting day that began when Tom’s alarm rang at 4am, but it was a memorable day – especially during our visit with Jessica Fidrych at Chet’s Diner.

I spent the first few hours of solitude in the Amsterdam dreaming of Vanna White, but soon my resin mind filled with scary visions of the Skull and Bones society at Yale. I envisioned Bob opening the door to The Tomb and the three of us walked inside. The door suddenly slammed shut behind us, leaving my companions and me in near-total darkness, with only the light from a distant lantern to help guide our way. With each terrifying step we took deeper and deeper into The Tomb, I heard the faint sound of a drum. Thug, thug. Thug, thug. It reminded me of a human heartbeat. Suddenly, as if summoned by the spirit world, the flames of several more lanterns illuminated the entire rear of the original Tomb. I let out a scream in terror when I saw a human skull sitting atop two large bones that were crossed in the shape of an ‘X’. But my nightmare didn’t end there – I heard a voice, a man’s voice that sounded like it was originating from the skull. The voice said in broken English: “The skull of the Apache warrior Geronimo, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by Prescott Bush … is now safe inside this tomb, and bone together with his well-worn femurs, bit and saddle horn. Now go, before you’re borne the same fate.”

** THIS POST IS DEDICATED TO NICOLE THOMAS AND EMMETT BRAYTON FOR BRAVING THE ELEMENTS WITH US DURING OUR TOUR OF CHOATE **