My photographer’s wife was behind the wheel of our Jeep Grand Cherokee, and I was inside the padded camera case in the back seat alongside Tom’s granddaughter, Reese Fiscelli, when we left the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in the rearview mirror. Timewise, we were a little bit behind schedule, but that was perfectly fine because the extra time we spent at Lawnfield with Reese was worth it. The ten-year-old absolutely loved the Garfield’s ‘Mentor Farm’ and it was priceless to see the enthusiasm on her face.
It was just about 12:30pm on Saturday November 16, 2024 and we had one final stop left on our ‘Life of Garfield Tour’ – we were headed to the James A. Garfield Memorial in Lake View Cemetery. And while I absolutely love visiting Presidential gravesites, I admit, that tomb gives me the heebie-jeebies. And for good reason – Tom has taken me to the Garfield Memorial five times over the years, and each time something mysterious or unexplained has happened to me, including me getting decapitated in 2013 by an unknown someone or something.
My sixth visit to Lake View Cemetery would have to wait, however, as Tom decided to make a quick detour to another burial ground that was just a little over two miles down the road from Lawnfield. When my photographer asked his wife to pull into the Mentor Municipal Cemetery, he told Vicki there was a special gravesite he wanted to visit with his granddaughter.
Once parked, Tom carried me on foot to a pair of rectangular shaped granite markers that were very low to the ground. When he placed me on one of the headstones, I saw it was the final resting place of James Garfield – James Rudolph Garfield, that is. As my photographer snapped a few images of me posing on the gravesite, he explained to Reese that James R. Garfield was the President’s son and the great-grandfather of Tim Garfield, whom she met the day before at Hiram College.
James R. Garfield was fifteen years old when he and his older brother, Harry, heard gunshots ring out at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station on July 2, 1881. Their father, the President of the United States, had just been shot as the boys waited for the train and their trip to Williams College in Massachusetts. Eighty days later, James and Harry, along with their three siblings, would become fatherless.
After passing the Ohio bar and establishing the Garfield and Garfield law firm in Cleveland, James R. was elected to the Ohio State Senate at the age of 31. A few years later, Garfield became a friend and huge supporter of President Theordore Roosevelt, and during TR’s second term in office, James accepted the position of Secretary of the Interior. Following Roosevelt’s second term, Garfield returned to his law practice; but campaigned heavily for Roosevelt during his bid for a third term in the 1912 Presidential election. When his friend lost the election to Woodrow Wilson, Garfield made an unsuccessful bid to be elected as Governor of Ohio in 1914. That defeat spelled the end of James’ political aspirations.
James R. Garfield lived to the age of 84 when he passed away in Cleveland on March 24, 1950. He was laid to rest alongside his wife of 40 years, Helen Newell Garfield, who died in 1930 from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.
Usually, my photographer and I do not go out of our way to visit the final-resting places of Presidential children, unless of course they are buried with their famous father. But in the case of James R. Garfield, I heard Tom tell Reese he felt a special bond to James Rudolph after spending most of the previous day with his great-grandson Tim Garfield. This visit was meant as our personal salute to Tim as much as it was to Tim’s great-grandfather.
When our fifteen-minute visit to Mentor Municipal Cemetery had ended, Reese picked up Mollie; my photographer grabbed me; and the four of us were back in the Jeep with Vicki for the 23-mile drive to Lake View Cemetery.
It was a few minutes after one o’clock in the afternoon when my photographer’s wife drove through the front gates of Lake View Cemetery, which had been founded in 1869. Because most of the leaves had fallen from the trees within the large burial ground, it didn’t take long before we saw the 180-foot-tall Garfield Memorial as it stood majestically above the barren trees in the distance. As soon as we were close enough for the impressive final-resting place of our 20th President to fill the entire windshield of our Jeep, I heard Reese say to her grandfather from the backseat, “That’s a gravesite? Oh my gosh, I can’t believe how big it is. Now I see why it’s your favorite, Papa.”
At that moment, as my photographer’s wife was parking the Jeep along the roadway near the backside of the memorial, I wondered if Tom would tell his granddaughter about all of our “weird encounters” we’ve experienced over the years at this site. But he didn’t, and I thought that was a good decision as the stories may have kept Reese from wanting to venture inside. And the more I thought about it, I was nervous to go back inside the tomb myself.
With a spring in her step, a gleam in her eyes, and a toy squirrel in her hands, the young ten-year-old bounced up the twenty steps of the memorial where she patiently waited for her grandparents and me by the twin black steel doors at the entrance. Both Tom and Vic ascended the steps slowly, with their bad knees and achy joints reminding the pair they weren’t children anymore. And due to my cracked, glued, puttied, and wrapped legs, I was thankful I got to ride along in my photographer’s camera bag.
The steel doors were closed, but when Reese knocked on one of them, the echo made it seem like we were in the scene from the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when Dorothy and her friends first arrived at the Emerald City. Suddenly, the large metallic door slowly opened, and we were welcomed into the memorial. Reese and Mollie played the part of Dorothy and Toto, Vicki was the Cowardly Lion, Tom was cast in the role of the brainless Scarecrow, and I was stuck portraying the heartless tin guy. The five of us had arrived to visit the Wizard of Mentor Farm.
Inside, Reese was Immediately awestruck when she saw the twelve-foot-tall white Carrara marble statue of Congressman James A. Garfield, which was positioned in the center of the memorial beneath a circular chandelier and surrounded by 14 stained-glass windows. In my mind, had the statue been able to speak, it would likely say, “I am James, the great and powerful. Now bring me the broomstick of the wicked Guiteau and I will grant your requests.”
While the statue of the Wizard of Mentor Farm was impressive, and the interior of the memorial was architecturally stunning, I couldn’t help but wonder what lied in store for us down in the lower crypt room. I also wondered whether or not Reese would be hesitant to venture down the marble spiral staircase as the lower level is not overly well-lit.
Without a care in the world, the ten-year-old bounced down the winding marble steps and into the abyss. The rest of us followed her, but with a little more caution – the last thing my photographer needed was to slip and fall; or worse yet, drop me to my death.
The crypt room was dimly lit, eerily quiet, and it featured eight barred openings which allowed us to see the caskets of James and Lucretia Garfield, as well as the urns containing the cremated ashes of Mollie Garfield and her husband Joseph Stanley-Brown. Tom positioned me at several of the openings where I once again posed for photos, like I had done during our previous five visits.
But on that Saturday afternoon, something felt different. A calmness filled the room, and gone was the trepidation I’ve experienced in the past. Perhaps the spirits were finally at peace, knowing our group had developed an amazing relationship with the slain President’s great-great-grandson. As a matter of fact, Tim Garfield was scheduled to deliver a speech at the memorial on November 19th during a military wreath laying ceremony in honor of the President Garfield’s 193rd birthday.
Reese was surprised when she learned the Garfield’s were the only President and First Lady whose caskets were in full view – as if lying in state for eternity. At one point, the youngster stood in silence with her toy Mollie and gazed in tribute at the casket of Lucretia Garfield and the urn of daughter Mollie Garfield Stanley-Brown. For little Reese, as well as for the rest of us, our ‘Life of Garfield Tour’ had come full circle. And even though we were never able to obtain the broomstick, our wish for eternal peace for James A. Garfield had seemingly been granted.
When our visit to the James A. Garfield Memorial ended at a few minutes before two o’clock, I figured it was time to hit the road back to Michigan. My straw-filled, brainless photographer had other ideas – he wanted his granddaughter to see the mausoleum where the President’s remains were protected while the permanent memorial was being constructed. Even though I knew Vicki was afraid the extra stop in the cemetery would cause us to get home later than her 6:30pm deadline, I didn’t have the heart to say she was probably right.
The last two times Tom and I tried to find the Levi Schofield mausoleum, my photographer took us on a wild goose chase all around Lake View Cemetery before we found it. But since the clock was not on our side, my camera guy finally used his brain and let GPS technology guide us directly to the site, which was in the older section of the 285-acre burial ground.
Vicki remained in the Jeep while Tom, Reese, Mollie, and I walked through the leaf-strewn lawn towards the Schofield mausoleum. Even though there was still plenty of daylight, the overcast sky made the burial vault look extremely creepy. The facade of the mausoleum, which butted up against a hill, resembled an old castle with the letters SCHOFIELD emblazoned in stone above the steel doors. At one point, I heard my photographer ask Reese to try and open the doors to the crypt as he wanted to take me inside. I thought to myself, “I’ll have monkey’s flying out of my resin butt before I go inside that scary vault.” Luckily for me, the doors were locked shut; but for some strange reason, I think Reese was disappointed she couldn’t participate in one of Tom’s “illegal activities”.
After Tom propped me up on one of the granite columns alongside the doors, I envisioned the casket of our 20th President as it was carried to that mausoleum on September 26, 1881. For nearly nine years, Garfield’s remains stayed within the walls of that vault until they were moved to the permanent memorial on May 19, 1890. In my mind, the Schofield mausoleum reminded me of a wicked witch’s castle. In reality, however, it was a Presidential site; the not-so-final resting place of James A. Garfield.
Tom placed me back in the camera bag and Reese clutched Mollie in her hand as the four of us made our way back to the Jeep. The youngster asked her grandfather how long it would take to get home. My smart-aleck photographer replied, “Unless a woman in a pink bubble appears and asks you click your heels together three times, it’ll take about three-and-a-half hours for us to get home.” With no ruby slippers on “Dorothy’s” feet, Vicki navigated our vehicle out of Lake View Cemetery for the 225-mile journey to Reese’s house where her mother anxiously awaited the ten-year-old’s arrival.
The mind-numbing ride along the Ohio Turnpike gave me time to reflect on the incredible sites we had visited, as well as the amazing people we had met in the past two days. But the star of the show, and the person who was the center of our universe for two entire days, was James Abram Garfield.
It’s difficult to imagine and even harder to know for sure what impact President Garfield would’ve had on our nation had he not been shot within his first four months in office. There’s little doubt the President was an advocate for the less fortunate, the downtrodden, which may have been spawned by his own humble beginnings. One of his initiatives from the moment he stepped foot in the White House was to promote for better education for former slaves, which would’ve been a huge step in improving their lives. But when Garfield’s life and Presidency was cut short, that initiative fell by the wayside – and it would take nearly eight decades before Civil Rights in our nation would be once again at the forefront.
It was exactly 6:38pm when we arrived at Reese’s home; we had twenty-two minutes to spare. The four of us had logged 557 miles during our two-day adventure, which put me at 78,236 miles of travel since July 2013. While both Tom and I would’ve loved to have witnessed Tim Garfield’s speech during the wreath laying ceremony at the Garfield Memorial on November 19th, there was no way that was going to happen this year. But in my resin mind, there was always 2025 – and I’d love for the two of us, and Reese, to get an invitation from Tim himself.
Reese looked tired when she walked into her house with Mollie in one hand and the gift bag Mr. Garfield had given her in the other hand. The ten-year-old hugged her mother and sister, then she said to her grandparents in a solemn voice, “I loved going on that trip with you, but I’m also glad to be back. Oh Nana, there’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
