The alarm clock went off at 6:00am on Friday July 21, 2017 and my photographer and his wife had a lot of work to do before they headed towards Long Island. Cassie Diehm’s Studio was in the perfect location and the rates per night couldn’t be beat. If there was one downside to staying at Cassie’s place it’s having to find street parking; which can be terrible with the street cleaning ordinance. When Tom and Vicki had to move the Avenger on Thursday morning, they got lucky and found a place about two blocks from the brownstone; which was closer than where they had originally parked on Tuesday. After two trips to the car with the luggage and their belongings, including me, we were on our way to Cove Neck, New York.
It took about an hour to make the 38-mile drive to the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. The home of our 26th President Theodore Roosevelt was located on a small peninsula known as Cove Neck, which was roughly two miles northeast of Oyster Bay, New York. When we arrived at the Visitor Center, my photographer had some difficulty locating Sue Sarna – the curator who agreed to let Tom shoot some photos of me inside Roosevelt’s home. A few weeks prior to our trip, my photographer had talked with Sue on the telephone after he discovered that photography was prohibited inside Sagamore Hill. Sarna loved our Presidential quest and she promised to meet us at 9:30am; at which time she would take us into a few important rooms of the house for a private photoshoot. After a few hikes back and forth between the Center and the home, we finally met up with Sue and she guided my photographer and I into Roosevelt’s beloved Sagamore Hill.
My photographer had asked Sue to take us to Roosevelt’s bedroom where he died and perhaps the President’s favorite room in the house, but the exuberant curator took us to four rooms in all. During our fifteen-minute private tour, Sarna kept us away from the other groups so those people didn’t see us taking pictures. The first room we saw was on the third floor of the house. It was called the Gun Room and Roosevelt used it as a place where he could find solitude; he also used it as a quiet place to read and write. Sue led us down a set of steps to the second floor where we saw a small bedroom that was adjacent to Roosevelt’s Master Bedroom. It turned out that the room was used as a “sick room” for their kids; but it was also the room where Theodore Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919 at the age of 60. I would’ve loved to have stood on TR’s deathbed, but that wasn’t going to happen with the curator standing next to us. As I stood in the room, however, it was as though I could see the “Rough Rider” lying in that bed as he struggled to speak to the family servant: “Please put out that light, James.” A few hours later former President Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep. Woodrow Wilson’s Vice President, Thomas R. Marshall, said upon learning of Roosevelt’s demise: “Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”
The two of us followed Sue Sarna down the winding staircase to the first floor where we entered Roosevelt’s library and main study. Not only did TR come to Sagamore Hill while President, he used his home as his Summer White House from 1902 to 1908. The library was his office and since it was outfitted with a telephone, he could effectively run the country from that room. The wall above the book case was called his “Wall of Heroes” and there were five framed portraits of men who Roosevelt looked up to from his desk and well as in life. The five men were Abraham Lincoln, his father Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., Ulysses S. Grant, Justice John Marshall, and George Washington.
The final room that Sarna led us into was the North Room, or TR’s trophy room. The North Room was two-stories tall and decorated with numerous wild game heads, horns, skins and any other part of the animal that one could imagine. Roosevelt hung one of his Rough Riders hats, as well as his sabre, on the antlers of an elk. As much as I admired Theodore Roosevelt for his conservation of our natural resources and his leadership as President, I despised his killing of innocent animals for trophies. Shooting an animal with a high-powered rifle to make into a rug or to mount its head from the wall to prove your manhood is disgusting, to say the least. When he died, Roosevelt’s head shouldn’t have been carved onto Mount Rushmore. Instead, it should have been stuffed and mounted above the fireplace in the North Room.
Besides seeing the unnecessary carnage of dead animals throughout the interior of Sagamore Hill, it was a privilege for me to visit Theodore Roosevelt’s beloved home. The historic house was a time capsule; my photographer and I saw how Roosevelt lived as well as where he drew his last breath. Tom thanked Sue Sarna for her hospitality and we were led back outside where we found Vicki looking at her phone in the shade. For the next twenty minutes or so, my photographer had me pose at various spots around the exterior of Sagamore Hill; and in a couple of spots, I was able to stand in Theodore Roosevelt’s footprints.
It was 10:20am and we had one more stop to make in the Oyster Bay area before we began our journey westward towards home. After his death on January 6, 1919, President Theodore Roosevelt was laid to rest in Young’s Memorial Cemetery that was located less than two miles south of Sagamore Hill. When we arrived at the cemetery’s parking lot, Vicki took one look at the steep set of steps that led up to Roosevelt’s plot and she decided to stay in the comfortable air conditioning of the Avenger. With his two cameras in hand, my photographer lugged me up along the pathway and then up another 26 steps to the wrought-iron fence that surrounded our 26th President’s final resting place. Even though the gate to the plot was locked (my photographer did check), I was able to get somewhat close for a posed photo with TR’s headstone.
It was 10:45am when my photographer placed me into the camera case and then onto the backseat of the Avenger. It was 86 miles to our next Presidential sites that were in Princeton, New Jersey and it took nearly two hours to get there. We retraced our path from Long Island where we drove through three of the five New York City boroughs – Queens, Brooklyn and then onto Staten Island. From the opening in the case, I was able to get one final look at the Brooklyn Bridge as we went past; as well as a couple of glimpses of the Statue of Liberty.
It took some good navigating by my photographer and even better driving by his wife to get us out of New York and into New Jersey; especially with all of the traffic and toll booths. When we finally arrived in the prestigious college town of Princeton, New Jersey, it was a few minutes before 2:00pm. Tom had mapped-out six Presidential sites to see in Princeton and he had planned on visiting all of them in less than 90 minutes. Time was crucial as my cameraman wanted to find a place to stay somewhere between Philadelphia and Lancaster by dinner time.
Tom wanted to visit the most secluded of the six sites first, partially because he didn’t have an exact address nor could he pinpoint the site on his GPS. Vicki drove the three of us onto the campus of Princeton University where we looked for Prospect House, which once served as the home of the university’s president. When Woodrow Wilson served as the 13th President of Princeton University, he lived in Prospect House from 1902 to 1910. As soon as we got to a location where my photographer thought we were close enough to walk to the mansion, we were stopped by campus security and were told that we needed to secure a pass to visit Wilson’s former house. Not wanting to take the time to get a permission slip, Tom disappointedly made the decision to head for Princeton Cemetery that was just north of the college.
Once Vicki parked the Avenger just outside of the 1757 burial ground, the three of us wandered into the large cemetery where we found a nine-foot tall granite marker that resembled a large trophy. As my photographer was about to place me onto Cleveland’s tombstone, we both noticed numerous trinkets that people had left on the stonework. There were coins, beads, stones, shells, necklaces – the only thing missing was a bobble head. The first thing that came out of my photographer’s mouth when he saw the knickknacks was: “That crap is an eyesore and I need to move it before I set Jefferson up there. Why people think they need to disgrace a Presidential grave with junk is beyond me.” When my cameraman’s wife saw him removing the mementos, she said: “Don’t take that stuff off there, it doesn’t belong to you. Just move it around to the side.” As I stood near the top of Grover Cleveland’s tombstone and looked to my left at his wife’s grave, I thought to myself: “That Grover was such a stud. He was a 49-year old chunky bachelor who married Frances Folsom; a good-looking 21-year old girl who became the youngest First Lady in history; not to mention one of the most popular as well.” After I posed for a handful of photos on the President’s grave marker, I was placed onto the headstone of Grover’s daughter Ruth Cleveland. When Baby Ruth was born between Cleveland’s two terms as President, she became a national sensation. But at the age of 12, young Ruth contracted diphtheria and died on January 7, 1904; just five days after diagnosis. Urban legend has claimed that the Baby Ruth candy bar was named after the first daughter of President Cleveland, but others have stated that the candy bar was actually named after baseball slugger Babe Ruth and the story was made up so the manufacturer didn’t have to pay royalties to the Yankees’ star player.
After we spent roughly 15 minutes at President Cleveland’s grave, which was the 29th Presidential gravesite of my touring career, my photographer spent an additional few minutes in search of the final resting place of Aaron Burr. It’s not that Aaron Burr was one of Tom’s favorite historical figures, because he’s not; but my camera guy had given Burr a personal ‘liquid’ salute in 1991 and he wanted to revisit the ‘scene of the crime’ one more time. With his internal clock ticking inside the large burial ground, however, Tom gave up the search and the three of us headed back towards the Avenger.
From Princeton Cemetery we headed a few blocks West until we were in front of a very nice mansion known as Westland. The large and impressive house was built in 1856 by Robert Stockton, who was a grandson of Richard Stockton; a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Grover Cleveland bought the house after his second term as President in 1896 and lived in the mansion from 1897 until his death. As a matter of fact, Cleveland was inside the home when he suffered a heart attack and died on June 24, 1908. Frances Folsom Cleveland, who had remarried in 1913, resided in the home for many years after the President’s death. When I was carried from the car to the sidewalk in front of the mansion, trees obscured a good portion of the home. Not wanting to miss an opportunity for a great photo of the house, and not seeing any ‘No Trespassing’ signs, my photographer carried me up the driveway to an area directly in front of the historic home where I posed for an unobstructed image of Westland.
As I stood about one hundred feet in front of Westland, I thought to myself: “Dang, my photographer is pretty ‘ballsy’ to walk up the driveway of this historic home and stand defiantly in the open to get his images. I’m impressed, but I bet his wife is shaking her head out in the car.” It turned out that when we returned to the Avenger, Vicki was looking at her cell phone and had no idea what we had done. That was probably a good thing!
Even though we had missed out on a Woodrow Wilson house when we first arrived in Princeton, the last three scheduled sites were all residences once used and lived-in by our 28th President. Two of the houses were ones he lived in while he lectured as a professor at Princeton; and the last home was where he stayed while serving as New Jersey’s governor.
The first of the three Wilson sites we visited was a two-and-one-half-story house that was built in 1836 and luckily for us it was constructed very close to the sidewalk; which gave us easy access with no obstructions for pictures. Professor Woodrow Wilson bought the home in 1889 and lived there until he moved into Prospect House as university president beginning in 1902.
Two doors north along Library Place we found the house that Woodrow Wilson lived in when he first became a professor at Princeton in 1885; which was officially called The College of New Jersey when he lectured there. That house was also two-and-one-half-stories tall, but it sat back from the sidewalk and there were several trees that hid part of the building. Even though there was a vehicle parked near the house and it appeared the owners were home, my photographer carried me halfway up the semi-circular driveway to capture an image of me posing with the historic building. Once again I was impressed by Tom’s unwavering nerve to invite himself onto the private property to get what he needed. As I posed for the photos in front of the house, I thought to myself: “Mongo would be proud of us right now!”
Our last stop in Princeton was at a gaudy-looking place with an exterior design that reminded my photographer of a black and white version of the Partridge Family bus. For two years, from 1911 until he moved into the White House as our 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson lived in that Swiss chalet-designed house as the 13th Governor of New Jersey. From the road, the historic house was hard to see due to the trees, foliage and fence that was concealing the façade. But luckily for my photographer and me, the front gate was slightly open, and Tom invited the two of us in for a quick photo. During the 20 seconds that I posed in front of Governor Wilson’s former home, I thought about him living there and coming up with the idea of running for President in 1912. And maybe, just maybe, Wilson belted out a few lines of “Come on, get happy” in his best Keith Partridge voice.
Our Princeton visit was over and we accomplished our mission in exactly 54 minutes; well, almost our entire mission as we didn’t see Prospect House. There was no doubt in my mind, however, that the next time we were in Princeton, my photographer would get me in front of that famous house – come hell or high water.
The Friday afternoon traffic was heavier than expected as we travelled north of Trenton and into eastern Pennsylvania. My photographer’s plan was to get close to Lancaster and James Buchanan’s Wheatland, but Tom’s wife was frustrated with the congested roads and wanted to find a motel sooner. Price is always a factor with my cheap photographer and he found a Courtyard by Marriott in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania for around eighty bucks. We were around 70 miles from Wheatland, but that only meant that we had to hit the road earlier in the morning. My camera guy figured the early Saturday morning traffic should be better than we had just experienced coming from Princeton.
As I stood on the entertainment center next to the television for the night, I was excited for our next day’s tour of James Buchanan’s home ‘Wheatland’. I was also looking forward to our visit of my 30th Presidential gravesite – the final resting place of President Buchanan. But at the same time that I was thinking about the Buchanan sites, I was also sad. Sad that we were headed into the 16th and final day of the trip. My photographer’s plan was to visit ‘Wheatland’ when it opened at 9:30am and take a tour of the house. When our tour was finished, he wanted to photograph Buchanan’s gravesite in Woodward Hill Cemetery in Lancaster before we embarked on the long journey home.
