When my photographer’s alarm went off at 6:00am on August 7, 2026, the first full day of our ‘Trip of Dreams’ was underway – and I couldn’t wait to get started. Vicki, on the other hand, wasn’t as excited as I was because she knew this would be the most ambitious day of the entire trip with over 15 sites on our agenda scattered across three major cities in New York State. The three of us were slated to begin the day in Buffalo; visit Rochester in the late morning and early afternoon; and end our day in the Syracuse area.
My companions had the Jeep loaded at the LaQuinta Inn near the Buffalo airport by 7:45am and we were on the road a few minutes later. The good news: We were fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. The bad news: It was raining in Western New York with no end in sight.
The short 12-mile drive along the backstreets on the North-side of Buffalo took us to our first stop of the morning – a destination which was no stranger to the three of us. At a few minutes before eight o’clock, we arrived at Forest Lawn Cemetery, which I had visited four times on previous trips to see the final resting place of our 13th President Millard Fillmore. But as soon as we were through the gates and onto the hallowed-but-soggy grounds of Forest Lawn, I knew we were headed to a different site other than Fillmore’s grave. And I was right – Tom had his sights set on finding the final resting place of Titanic victim Edward Austin Kent.
With over 165,000 gravesites scattered within the hilly burial ground, and with its winding roadways all over the place, Tom used the app Find a Grave to pinpoint the exact location Edward Kent’s burial place. With my photographer’s verbal instructions, Vicki navigated the Jeep through the drizzle until we reached the area where Kent was laid to rest 114 years ago.
In 1912, Edward Kent was a 58-year-old architect who had travelled to Europe for a two-month vacation to France and Egypt. Kent planned on retiring upon his return to the Buffalo area, but Edward delayed his return trip so he could sail on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. After boarding the White Star Line’s luxurious liner on April 10th in Cherbourg, France with his First-Class ticket, Kent occupied cabin B-37 and mingled with a handful of other socialites – including Archibald Gracie and Helen Churchill Candee.
On the night of April 14th, shortly after the ship’s collision with the iceberg, Candee was dashing upstairs to the boat deck when she ran into Kent, who was on his way topside as well. As panic ensued, Helen persuaded Edward to hold onto an ivory cameo miniature of her mother, as the 54-year-old woman figured he would have a better chance to survive the sinking than she had. Kent placed the antique cameo into his coat pocket and proceeded to help women and children, including Candee, into the lifeboats, totally disregarding his own safety.
With all of the lifeboats gone, Edward Kent was last seen on Titanic’s nearly submerged deck, making no attempt to save himself before the frigid waters swept him into the ocean. Several days later, Kent’s lifeless body was recovered by the CS Mackay-Bennett and was listed as victim #258. The ivory cameo given to him just prior to the sinking was still in Kent’s pocket and was eventually returned to Helen Candee.
From the roadway where Vicki parked the Jeep, Tom carried me up a slight hill to the final resting place of the brave Titanic passenger where he placed me in front of the small, granite marker. As I stood and posed on the grave of Edward Kent, I was left very emotional when I read the epitaph etched onto the tombstone – “GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS, THAT A MAN LAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS”.
During our visit to Kent’s gravesite, the drizzle had slowed to a slight sprinkle and became a non-issue during the short time we were there – which caused me to believe the ‘Curse of the Titanic’ was only in my head. In fact, as soon as my photographer and I returned to the Jeep where Vicki waited for us, the three of us saw a pair of young deer walking through the burial ground fairly close to the Titanic victim’s gravesite. In my mind, it was a sign from Edward Austin Kent signifying he was okay and at peace.
Although our main goal was to visit the grave of Titanic victim Edward Kent at Forest Lawn Cemetery, there was no way Tom was going to miss the opportunity to visit a Presidential gravesite – even though it started to rain more heavily as we made our way through the cemetery to the Fillmore plot. My photographer also had another reason – the Fillmore grave was the first of five spots on the trip where one of our blog readers could win $25 by showing up and saying out loud, ‘Hey, it’s the bobble head guy!’
The rain fell steadily when Vicki parked the Jeep within close proximity of Fillmore’s fenced-in burial site. So much so, in fact, my photographer’s wife insisted she hold an umbrella over us to keep Tom’s camera from getting drenched. She didn’t care if he or I got soaked. Vicki didn’t want to see her husband’s $2000 camera get ruined.
Since this was my fifth visit to the gravesite of Millard Fillmore, there wasn’t much about the site that had changed from my previous visits in 2014, 2017, 2020, and 2023. The unsightly hedges that once surrounded the grave, which were removed in 2020, were still gone – and that was a good thing.
While I usually spend my time at a Presidential gravesite focused primarily on the President himself, this time I took a moment or two to pose on the final resting place of First Lady Abigail Fillmore. It turned out being First Lady was one of Abigail’s final things she did in her life.
As a well-educated woman who pursued a career as a teacher, Abigail Fillmore was unexpectedly thrust into the role of First Lady when President James Garfield was assassinated. While she hosted many social events at the White House, Mrs. Fillmore considered most of her husband’s guests “cave dwellers” and found they had little interest in her intellectual pursuits.
Abigail and her husband had come from poverty, which caused her to decorate the White House in the style of a middle-class home. But the one thing she noticed about her new home was the lack of a library – and that all changed during Millard’s Presidency. In 1850, Abigail Fillmore created the first White House Library when she reorganized the second-floor Yellow Oval Room and filled it with books and invited celebrated writers of the era to speak there.
But just 26 days after she attended the Inauguration of Grover Cleveland, Abigail became ill. While residing at Washington’s Willard Hotel, her chest cold became bronchitis that turned into pneumonia – and when doctors were summoned, their primitive techniques likely worsened her condition. On March 30, 1853, former First Lady Abigail Fillmore died in her room at the Willard Hotel at 55 years of age.
We had spent roughly 20 minutes at Fillmore’s gravesite, and the rain never let up. Moments after Tom and I posed together next to the 22-foot-tall pink granite obelisk that marked the President’s gravesite, I heard him say to his wife, “Well, once again no one showed up to claim my money. It must be because of the rain, or maybe because my biggest fanbase is located in China and Singapore and it’s too far for those folks to travel for twenty-five bucks.”
My resin clothes, as well as Tom’s hat, shirt, and pants, were quite damp because of the rain – even though Vicki did her best to keep the two of us sheltered with her umbrella. In the thirteen-plus years I’ve been travelling to Presidential gravesites with my photographer, this was one of the only times I had experienced rain during our visit. The only other instance where we got wet visiting a final resting place of a President came on July 8, 2017 in Kinderhook, New York at the grave of Martin Van Buren. But even then, the rain stopped halfway through our visit, and we didn’t get nearly as wet as we did at Forest Lawn. Was this the ‘Curse of the Titanic’? In my mind, and I think in the mind of my photographer as well, there was no doubt about it. All we could do, however, was push on to the next site – which was located roughly 60 miles to the Southeast.
Less than twenty miles from the cemetery, we had driven out of the rain, and the sun had popped through the remaining cloud cover. That was a great sign, although the humidity was still high and the morning temperature was getting close to the 80-degree mark. It appeared as though Tom and I were finished getting soaked for the day.
One hour and fifteen minutes after leaving Forest Lawn and Millard Fillmore behind, the three of us arrived in the small village of 3,600 inhabitants known as Perry, New York. As Vicki navigated the streets of the middle-class village, Tom axed his Siri GPS system to guide us to one home in particular – a two-story wooden home located at 7 Elm Street on the North side of town.
After Vicki had the Jeep parked along the South side of Elm Street, Tom carried me across the street where I posed in front of the historic house. At first, I was stunned by the overall appearance of the home – it was in definite need of some renovation and TLC. But in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really matter to me as this was the boyhood home of President Chester Arthur.
In 1835, when Chester was only five years old, the Arthur’s left Vermont and moved to Perry after his father, the Reverend William Arthur, took a pastoral position in the area. The family lived at the house in front of me for about two and a half years.
There was no historical marker near the house, and because it was a private residence whose occupants appeared to be inside, Tom stayed on the public sidewalk and didn’t attempt to place me anywhere on the dwelling itself. And that was okay with me. After all, since this trip was allegedly cursed, the last thing we needed was to get shot or for my fat photographer to fall through the home’s dilapidated porch.
Roughly ten minutes after we arrived at the Arthur house in Perry, we were back on the road headed for downtown Rochester, New York, which was a little over 40 miles to the Northeast. Tom had a cemetery, a monument, and a restaurant all scheduled for us to see thanks to his well-choreographed agenda – two of which were Presidential sites in what’s known as the Flower City. But the closer we got to the fourth-most populous city in New York, the more congested the traffic became. And off in the distance, the sky was growing darker, and it appeared as though it might rain again.
Our first stop, which was Mount Hope Cemetery, was located on the South-side of Rochester and plays host to over 350,000 gravesites. My photographer’s goal was to find only four of them – Titanic disaster victim Stanley Harrington Fox, General Washington’s Revolutionary drummer boy Alexander Millener, women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
For us on that day, the most important grave was the one where Stanley Fox had been laid to rest in 1912 following the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Once again, Tom used the Find a Grave app, which led us to the approximate location of Fox’s grave. From there, the three of us headed out on foot and quickly located the grave in the freshly mown burial ground. For the next five or six minutes, I posed on the gravesite and stood alongside a ‘Titanic’ bell a visitor had left in remembrance of the disaster.
In early April of 1912, Stanley Harrington Fox was sent to Birmingham, England to negotiate sales of Gleason-made machinery to the automobile industry. Gleason Works was a large auto company that was located in Rochester and Fox was one of its primary salesmen.
When it was time to return to the United States, Fox purchased a Second-Class ticket and boarded the RMS Titanic in Southampton on April 10, 1912. Stanley was excited for two reasons – not only was he about to travel home on Titanic’s maiden voyage, but he was also going to celebrate his 38th birthday on April 13th while at sea. Life doesn’t get much better than that!
On the night of April 14th, Fox and three other acquaintances were smoking and playing cards in the Second-Class Smoking Room when they felt the tremor of the ship hitting the iceberg. The foursome hurried to the deck where they saw the iceberg, huge and white against the dark blue sea, go whizzing past on the starboard side of the ship, just clear of the stern. Not too worried, the four men returned to the smoking room where they finished their card game. It didn’t take long before Fox and friends heard voices on the deck, and they went out again – this time they learned what had happened. Although the luxury liner had struck an iceberg, Titanic officers told passengers there was no danger, and no reason to worry in the least. It didn’t take much longer, however, before those same officers instructed all of the passengers to put on their life jackets and head to the lifeboats – with women and children boarding first.
Although one of Stanley Fox’s friends from the smoking room, Charles Whilems, survived the sinking by boarding lifeboat #9, the young man who had just celebrated his 38th birthday the previous day did not. A few days later, Fox’s lifeless, frozen body was found floating in the Atlantic, still bound by his lifejacket. The CS Mackay-Bennett brought back Fox’s remains and belongings to Halifax as victim #236.
Stanley Fox’s funeral was conducted on May 6, 1912 in Rochester and he was laid to rest in the grave in front of me. On October 22, 1941, Stanley’s widow, Cora, passed away and was buried alongside her husband – she never re-married following the Titanic disaster.
I listened as Tom rang the Titanic bell three times – once each for the three Titanic victims we had visited thus far on the trip. He set the bell back onto Fox’s headstone and the two of us returned to the Jeep – both deeply affected by the experience.
As the threat of rain grew closer, we still had three more gravesites to visit at Mount Hope Cemetery. The first of those three was easy to find – the large gravestone of Alexander Millener was located roughly 50 yards from Fox’s gravesite.
Alexander Millener enlisted in the Revolutionary War in September 1780. Because of Alexander’s alleged age, Millener was delegated to serve as a drummer rather than a soldier in the war. Not only did the young boy get to know Martha and George Washington during the Revolution, but he once reported to the General’s headquarters where he was ordered to play a tune on the drums for Washington. Alexander did so well, it was said General Washington gave the lad three dollars as a reward. From that point on, Millener interacted with Washington on a regular basis between 1780 and the end of the war, and whenever George saw him, he patted him on the head and called Alexander his boy.
General Washington’s drummer boy lived a long life before passing away at the age of 104 on March 13, 1865 – just one day shy of his 105th birthday. When Tom placed me on Millener’s ornate grave marker, I wondered how much of Alexander’s story was accurate, because some of the dates and facts didn’t quite add up – at least in my resin mind.
The original story Tom had read was young Alex was a ten-year-old drummer boy for George Washington in the Revolutionary War – and that could’ve been possible had he been born in 1770. But had he been born in that year, Millener would’ve been only 94 when he passed away. Then, when I read the inscription on his tombstone, it stated Alexander was 103 years old at the time of his death – so I wasn’t quite sure which facts were accurate.
In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really matter; the story of Alexander Millener was still pretty cool – perhaps tainted slightly by an old man’s tales that grew taller with each passing year in the mid-1800s. I believe Millener did serve in the Revolutionary War and was a drummer who was at least 19 years old. And I’m confident Alexander may have even crossed paths with General George Washington and his wife Martha a time or two. No matter what, Alexander Millener served in the military and helped our nation break free from the British empire’s control – and that was good enough for me.
Two down and two to go – and Tom saved the most recognizable pair for last. That’s right, we were headed for the final resting places of two familiar names in our history – Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. Oh, I realize their names might not be as catchy as Sonny and Cher, or Travis and Taylor, but when it comes to bravery and fighting for the rights of the deprived, Frederick and Susan were second to none.
Tom once again used the Find a Grave app on his phone to help navigate the three of us to Susan B. Anthony’s grave, which was located on the far Northern side of the huge cemetery. After we made it to the area, my photographer carried me along a well-marked, up-hill path for roughly 75 yards before we finally arrived at the Anthony family plot. Immediately, Tom placed me onto Susan’s small, white marble headstone where I posed for several photos and wondered to myself what the ‘B’ in her name stood for. In my mind, it was likely “Ballbuster”!
Susan Brownell Anthony was arguably the most famous suffragette in the 19th century, tirelessly travelling around the nation for 60 years as she canvassed for women’s right to vote. At the same time, Anthony also advocated for the abolition of slavery, women’s rights to their own property and earnings, and the right to organize and belong to women’s labor organizations.
Before her death at the age of 86 on March 13, 1906, Susan met with two Presidents at the White House – William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. The visit with McKinley in February 1900 was primarily to help celebrate Anthony’s 80th birthday during the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Washington, D.C. The meeting was purely ceremonial as McKinley wasn’t going to touch women’s right to vote with a ten-foot cattle prod, which I think is a damned shame. Don’t get me wrong, I like William McKinley, but he was a status-quo President who didn’t like to rock the boat.
Theodore Roosevelt, on the other hand, was a lot bolder than his predecessor and had invited Anthony to the White House in February 1905 to discuss submitting a women’s suffrage constitutional amendment to Congress. TR also hosted suffragette gatherings at Sagamore Hill where Roosevelt stood on his porch and delivered powerful speeches in support of women’s voting rights. In fact, it’s highly likely that had Roosevelt decided to run for a third term as President, women would’ve been voting a decade earlier.
Although the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution wasn’t ratified until August 18, 1920, which was over 14 years after Anthony passed away and a year after President Roosevelt had died, their historic meeting at the White House in 1905 had laid the foundation that allowed women in America the right to vote.
After I had finished posing for photos at the grave of Susan B. Anthony, Tom carefully placed me back in the camera case as he made the hike back to the Jeep. The drive from the Northern section of Mount Hope Cemetery to the far Eastern side where Frederick Douglass was laid to rest was a short one. But once we had arrived, Vicki quickly discovered there was nowhere to park in close proximity to the gravesite. In fact, there was only a lengthy, paved pathway for visitors to use if they wanted to visit the Human Rights Leader’s final resting place.
From the comfort of my padded camera case, I listened as my photographer huffed and puffed his way along the pathway while Vicki parked the vehicle several hundred yards down the roadway from the path. Once he made it to the site, however, I was astounded by what my painted eyes saw. Out of the four graves we had visited in Mount Hope Cemetery, Frederick Douglass’ was the most impressive. So much for “White Privilege”!
Born into slavery in 1818 as Frederick AugustusWashington Bailey, he successful escaped the bondage that haunted him and thousands like him on September 3, 1838 when Frederick was roughly 20 years old. From that point on, after he changed his surname from Bailey to Johnson, then to Douglass to avoid capture by slave hunters, Frederick went on a mission to preach the gospel and to help others escape slavery. And thanks to his oratorical and literary brilliance, Frederick Douglass was transformed into the country’s leader in the abolitionist movement.
During his 77 years of life, Douglass met with seven Presidents to converse and discuss the rights, or lack of, for Black Americans. His first encounter with the Chief Executive at the White House came on August 10, 1863 when Doughlass visited President Lincoln to advocate for equal pay and treatment for Black Union soldiers during the Civil War. During the next two-plus decades following Lincoln’s death, Frederick met with Presidents Andrew Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison – all in an effort to gain Civil Rights for Black citizens, even though slavery had been abolished.
On February 3, 1870, during President Grant’s administration, Congress ratified the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which granted Black American males the right to vote. The fact was, however, Southern states continued to disenfranchise Black voters through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, threats of physical harm, etc. Therefore, the promise of the 15th Amendment was not fully realized until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, almost a century later, during the Lyndon Johnson administration.
When Frederick Douglass died from a heart attack on February 20, 1895, he was known as “the most important leader of the movement for African American Civil Rights in the 19th century”. And some 131 years later, it was an honor for me to stand on Douglass’ large, rectangular grave marker where I paid my personal tribute to one brave and heroic son of a gun.
But as I stood on the marker in solemn silence, looking at the graves of his family members, I wanted to jump up and shout, “Frederick Douglass was an American – period. Stop using the phrase African American to describe any person of color. Total equality will come the day when society stops using ethnic origins or skin color to describe a person. Legal citizens of the United States are Americans.”
After I had used Frederick Douglass’ grave marker as a platform for my silent rant, the sky opened up and it began to rain again – almost as though I was being punished for airing my thoughts. At the same time, Vicki ran up the pathway as she wanted to bring the Jeep closer for my fat photographer who did his best to keep his camera equipment dry beneath the canopy of nearby trees.
Once the two of us had made it into the dry and friendly confines of the Grand Cherokee, Vicki drove the Jeep out of Mount Hope Cemetery in an intense rainstorm. Tom and I had hoped the rain would stop before we made it to our next site, which was located a little over two miles away to the North in downtown Rochester.
Unfortunately for my rotund friend and me, that never happened. By the time my photographer’s wife had the Jeep parked along the Western edge of Washington Park shortly after 12 noon, the sky had grown darker, and the rain pelted our vehicle’s windshield like never before. Through the rain-speckled passenger window, Tom and I could see our intended target in the center of the park – the 42-foot-tall Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument that was dedicated by President Benjamin Harrison on May 30, 1892.
During President Harrison’s 1,023-word dedication address, which was attended by New York Governor Roswell P. Flower and Human Rights Leader Frederick Douglass, the Chief Executive’s speech emphasized unity and reconciliation, referencing the North and South’s “mutual respect” and “common country.” Harrison praised “Southern hearts” for their renewed “love of the old flag.” At no point during the address, however, did the President mention slavery or abolition – even in the presence of the person who fought against slavery and was the country’s leading abolitionist for most of his adult life.
Tom and I waited patiently for over five minutes until it seemed as though the rain had lightened from a downpour to a slight drizzle. Even though Vicki had offered to hold an umbrella for the two of us, my photographer said he could avoid most of the rain by staying beneath the canopy of the trees within the park. I laughed to myself and knew that decision would be a huge mistake.
Without much hesitation or concern for his equipment, Tom carried me into Washington Park where he placed me on a section of the huge monument. My photographer chose the backside of the monument as it matched the historical photo he had found on the internet. As I stood in the falling rain posing for Tom’s photos, it was as though I could hear President Harrison’s words as he dedicated the monument on May 30, 1892.
“Fellow citizens – Every external condition, and some internal conditions affecting my strength, admonish me that I should speak to you with brevity. I have enjoyed greatly the exercises which are now being consummated in this beautiful city. You have met a great occasion greatly. I have never seen anywhere a more magnificent expression of patriotism than I have witnessed here.”
My painted resin coat and breeches glistened from the moisture as Tom carried me back to the Jeep where Vicki waited for us. My photographer’s tee shirt and pants were very damp as well; but that didn’t faze my chunky friend one iota. In fact, when his wife axed him how wet his clothes were, Tom replied, “I’m not going to let a little rain, or the Curse of the Titanic, stop me. I’m just happy my camera didn’t get too wet.” I was stunned he didn’t mention me getting soaked – after all, the last thing I needed was for my transplanted neck spring to get rusty.
Our final stop in Rochester was located in the Park Avenue section of town, which was less than two miles East of Washington Park. Traffic was heavy during the short drive, and once we arrived in the area, parking was even worse. Suddenly, out of the blue, a great spot opened up along Park Avenue, and we were within walking distance of the trendy cafe known as Magnolia’s Deli & Cafe. Thankfully for the two of us, the raindrops had quit falling by then.
On August 22, 2013, during his second term as President, Barack Obama made a surprise lunch stop at the restaurant while traveling between Buffalo and Syracuse on his higher education bus tour. The visit was the brainchild of Senator Chuck Schumer, who suggested Obama visit Rochester to discuss college affordability with students and former students over lunch. During his time at Magnolia’s, the President ate a half-grilled cheese sandwich and tomato artichoke soup.
At times, my photographer likes to eat where the Presidents once dined, and he contemplated whether or not to have lunch with Vicki at Magnolia’s on that afternoon. But after I had posed for a few photos near the exterior of the diner, Tom carried me inside where the two of us discovered having lunch was not going to be an option. The place was packed – and there was a 45-minute wait to get a table.
Then, the strangest coincidence happened. Tom explained to the hostess he was a Presidential historian and that he wanted to take a couple of photos of me in the dining room – possibly near the spot where President Obama had sat in 2013. The young girl smiled, pointed at three wooden chairs in the foyer, and said, “You don’t have to go in the dining room for that. Do you see that chair in the middle with the plaque on it? That’s the exact chair President Obama sat on during his visit here.”
Even though the waiting area was packed with patrons, my photographer wasted no time in setting me on the historic wooden chair where I posed for a few photos. Usually, I stand in the footsteps of the Presidents, but on that afternoon in Rochester, New York, I stood in the butt prints of a President – and I couldn’t have been prouder. A handful of the nearby waiting customers watched in wonderment as Tom and I did our thing with the chair, and unfortunately when my photographer mentioned Barack Obama had once sat in that very chair, no one seemed overly interested. As for the two of us, we had a bounce in our steps and smiles on our faces as Tom carried me out of Magnolia’s and back to the Jeep. That chair turned out to be one of those unexpected diamonds in the rough my photographer and Bob Moldenhauer have talked about in the past.
Back on the road at one o’clock and headed out of Rochester, it didn’t take long before the sky opened up once again. Tom had hoped we would drive out of the weather system before we reached our next destination that was nearly 70 miles away in Skaneateles, a small resort town located on the Northern shore of one of New York’s Finger Lakes.
I laughed to myself when I heard Tom mention to his wife that we were headed for one of the Finger Lakes, and I wondered if it was the middle Finger Lake. After all, it seemed as though the state of New York had been giving us the middle finger weatherwise the entire day. In the 13 years of traveling with my photographer for nearly 90,000 miles all around the country, I’ve never experienced as much rain at different sites than we had endured so far that day – with no end in sight.
I knew one thing was for certain – our ‘Trip of Dreams’ was rapidly becoming the ‘Trip of Wet Dreams’!
