Through the window of the Courtyard by Marriott motel, I saw the weather looked perfect as my photographer and his wife packed up their belongings for the last time on the trip. It had been an amazing adventure, and I was happy that my left leg that had broken open at FDR’s house on Campobello Island never got worse. From my perch atop the TV stand, I noticed that Vicki must’ve been anxious to get home as she was packed and ready to go by 7:30am; even though my photographer had set an 8:00am departure-time.
Because of our earlier-than-projected start to the day, and due to the lack of traffic on Saturday morning July 22, 2017, we made the 70-mile journey into James Buchanan territory in a little over an hour. Since the Visitor Center at Wheatland didn’t open until 9:30am, my photographer decided that we would go to Woodward Hill Cemetery in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and visit the grave of 15th President James Buchanan before going to his home.
The first thing I heard my photographer say as we made our way into Woodward Hill Cemetery was: “Look at how long the grass is here. It looks like the grass hasn’t been cut in weeks.” However, by the time we made our way to Buchanan’s gravesite, we not only saw workers feverishly trying to get the landscaping back to normal, the President’s plot was manicured to perfection. As a matter of fact, there was a city worker at the gravesite who welcomed us and said he would get out of our way during our visit. As I was carried from the car to the large, grey marble stone that marked the grave of James Buchanan, I was thrilled because it was a milestone visit for me – it was my 30th Presidential gravesite that I saw in just four years.
Once I was placed on top of the three-and-a-half-foot tall marble monument, I could easily see the meticulous landscaped plot that featured a grassy area that was shaped like a key-hole. There were flowers and small bushes on both sides of the grassy keyhole, but there were no other headstones in the large plot. The absence of family graves was likely due to the fact the James Buchanan never married and he never had any children. Buchanan’s niece, Harriet Lane, served as First Lady during his administration and when she died in 1903, she was buried in Baltimore.
When we were finished at Buchanan’s gravesite, my photographer placed me back into the camera case and he thanked the city worker for the work he did manicuring the President’s plot. With Vicki once again at the wheel, we made the 2.4-mile drive to the home of James Buchanan – a mansion known as ‘Wheatland’. Much to my cameraman’s delight, when we pulled into the parking lot near the Visitor Center at 9:14am, we were the only ones there; which gave him time to photograph me with the exterior of the historic mansion. Even though the early morning sun angle wasn’t the greatest for full-frontal images of Wheatland, the lack of other tourists was a good trade-off for my photographer.
We spent some time in the Visitor Center that was near the President’s mansion as we waited for our 10:00am tour to begin. Once our tour guide arrived, we made the short walk to the home and went inside. Our tour guide was a young lady who was dressed in period clothes. It didn’t take long before my photographer and I realized that we had hit a gold mine – the young guide was always the first one out of a room which left me alone to pose on some historic furniture; including James Buchanan’s Presidential desk that he used in the White House. In the dining room, I posed for a photo on the table where Buchanan’s White House china was laid out. After touring the entire first floor, I was carried upstairs where we visited the President’s bedroom. It was in that room, on June 1, 1868, where James Buchanan died from respiratory failure. At first I wanted to stand on the bed, until we found out that it was not Buchanan’s deathbed. It turned out that following Buchanan’s death, the new owners of the house had a duplicate bed made and that’s the one that we saw in the Master Bedroom.
The entire tour of the mansion lasted about 45 minutes and the young tour guide did an amazing job of painting a picture of Buchanan’s life in Wheatland; she even briefly discussed the rumors of his ‘bromance’ with William Rufus King. It was fact that James Buchanan was the first bachelor President and he was the first President from Pennsylvania. But it’s been only speculation that Buchanan was the first gay President; even though Andrew Jackson mockingly called King and Buchanan “Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy”. The tour guide mentioned that William Rufus King died of tuberculosis shortly after becoming Franklin Pierce’s Vice President in 1853. She said that immediately following his death, most of King’s letters with Buchanan were destroyed; as were Buchanan’s letters from King after his demise in 1868. It was one of the best tours of a Presidential home that I had ever been on and the best part of all: the tour guide didn’t keep a very close eye on me!
Back in the camera case and onto the rear seat of the Avenger, I knew it would be a long ride home. We left Wheatland at 11:10am and headed west through southern Pennsylvania; into Ohio; and finally, into our home state of Michigan where I could immediately feel the rough roads as soon as we hit the border. It was nearly 570 miles from Wheatland and we made the trip in one straight shot – only stopping for gas and fast food for my photographer and his wife. Our 16-day journey ended at 9:10pm when we arrived home after picking up Abigail, the family dog. It was an exciting and successful trip for me – I had visited 11 Presidential gravesites and one additional grave that I had seen before.
Once the Avenger was unpacked, I was placed back onto the wall shelf in our house where I awaited my photographer to make repairs to my damaged left leg. Although he had 25 days to complete the surgery, Tom never touched me until it was time to hit the road on August 16th. While that mid-August trip was slated to be a short five-day journey, it would prove to burn images into my mind’s eye that I will never forget.
