At precisely 6:00am on the morning of August 9, 2026, my photographer’s alarm rang in our room at the historic Amsterdam Castle, and another ambitious day of sightseeing was about to begin. As my two companions got ready to take on the day, I heard Tom mention to his wife Vicki that we were in for some incredible and special sites – most of which were smaller, off-the-radar Presidential sites. My photographer said there were a couple of Titanic victim’s graves thrown in for good measure, which would also coincide with our trip’s theme as well. My only concern was whether or not the ‘Curse of the Titanic’ would rear its ugly head and throw a wrench into Tom’s well-laid plans.
With Vicki once again behind the wheel of the Jeep, the three of us left our castle in Amsterdam and were headed for Rotterdam, a small town twenty miles away and one that butts up against the larger Schenectady, New York. Even though we were on the road by 8:15am, the temperature was already in the low 70s, and the humidity could be cut with a butter knife. But thankfully, the weather outlook for the day was for no rain, which was music to my resin ears.
A little less than a half hour on the road, Vicki navigated our vehicle through an industrial area of Rotterdam until we finally arrived at our first destination of the day – and upon first glance, the place didn’t appear overly impressive. In fact, as soon as my photographer’s wife drove onto the Maple Pine Manor’s property, I heard Vicki say to her husband, “This looks like a low-income housing complex – it’s sketchy as hell and I don’t feel very safe. Are you trying to get us robbed or killed?”
“Relax. It’s daylight and all the criminals are still sleeping from a long night on the job,” Tom replied sarcastically. “This is a very important Presidential site to me. It’s where Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter lived for a year in the early 1950s while Jimmy was in the Navy.”
While Vicki stayed inside the Jeep with the doors locked, Tom carried me to the front of Building 471, which was where Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter lived for a year beginning in October 1952. Carter was stationed in the area for the U.S. Navy’s nuclear submarine program. The future President studied nuclear physics in graduate courses at nearby Union College in Schenectady, while at the same time, he trained Navy personnel. During his time living in the area, however, Jimmy’s father passed away, which eventually led him to make the pivotal decision to leave the Navy, return to Georgia, and take over his family’s peanut farm.
Even though the entire complex appeared to be a stereotypical low-income community, and that was because we saw trash and other signs of neglect on the grounds, it turned out Maple Pine Manor is not currently a government subsidized housing project. One thing was for certain, however, Vicki was extremely happy when the two of us returned to the Jeep unscathed and she was driving the Jeep towards our next destination – which was less than four miles away.
Roughly ten minutes after we left Jimmy Carter’s military digs behind, we arrived at Union College where Jimmy was enrolled in early 1953 while he took non-credit graduate-level courses in nuclear physics and reactor technology. His time at the college was short-lived, however. When the future President’s father, James Earl Carter, Sr., died on July 22, 1953, Jimmy made the life-altering decision to leave the Navy and return to his family’s peanut business in Plains, Georgia.
But our visit to Union College wasn’t because of Jimmy Carter’s enrollment there. We were there because President Chester Arthur attended Union College and graduated in 1848 in the top third of his class.
Chet, as he was called when he entered the college as a sophomore at age 16, became a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, and as a senior he was President of the debate society and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. During Arthur’s time at Union College, he was known as a popular, and fashionably conscious student who was arguably more active in political rallies and lighthearted campus mischief than heavy academic study.
When Vicki drove our vehicle onto the campus of Union College, Tom used a small map to guide his wife as close as possible to the area he had his sights set on – a statue of our 21st President Chester Arthur, which was located in the Chester Arthur Courtyard alongside the Feigenbaum Center for Visual Arts building. Unfortunately for my chunky photographer, a man who does his best to limit his hiking activities, the roadway leading to the statue was closed to the public. That meant if we were going to see Chester Arthur, Tom was going on a hike.
Once my photographer’s wife found a legal parking spot on the near-vacant campus, the three of us took off on foot to find the Arthur statue. While Tom used his primitive map as a guide, he also knew the statue was located fairly close to the 110-foot-tall Nott Memorial, which was constructed ten years after Chester Arthur had graduated. It turned out Nott Memorial was located in the center of the campus, and only a stone’s throw from the Chester Arthur Courtyard.
During the entire ten-minute hike from our Jeep to the Chester Arthur Courtyard, I wondered if we were walking in the footsteps of Chet or Jimmy – even though Carter spent roughly six months on campus while Arthur attended Union College for three years.
We had spent roughly ten minutes or so at the Chester Arthur Courtyard where I stood on the statue of our 21st President and posed for a photo; plus, I also got a good look at the Nott Memorial in the distance. While that memorial was erected about a decade after Arthur had graduated in 1848, there’s no doubt Jimmy Carter would have seen it during his brief six-month enrollment at the college in early 1953.
When Tom plucked me like a chicken from the statue and the three of us made our way back to the Jeep, the dashboard clock had reached 10am and it was time to make our way to the next Presidential site, which was only 20 miles away in the Capital City of Albany, New York.
No, we weren’t making a return visit to the New York State Capitol Building – we already toured the Capitol in 2023. Instead, our goal was to pay a visit to the historic Schuyler Mansion, which was located roughly a half-mile South of the Capitol. Unfortunately for Tom and me, we weren’t scheduled to take a tour of the mansion as the first two tours of the day had already been filled and my photographer refused to accept a guided tour at 2pm or later. For both of us, that meant two things – I would be forced to pose near the exterior of the mansion only, and the two of us would need to make a return trip to Albany sometime in the future to tour the interior.
The funny thing was: the mansion’s Grand Parlor was the one room that piqued our interest and was the primary reason for our visit – even though George and Martha Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison had all been guests at the Schuyler Mansion in the past. In fact, Hamilton married Philip Schuyler’s daughter, Elizabeth, in that very parlor on December 14, 1780.
But 78 years later, another wedding ceremony was conducted inside the Grand Parlor at Schuyler Mansion. The bride was Caroline Carmichael McIntosh, a wealthy widow whose first husband Ezekial was the President of the Schenectady and Troy Railroad and together they owned the mansion before his death. And the groom? It was none other than our 13th President Millard Fillmore, whose first wife, Abigail, died on March 30 1853 at the age of 55.
When Vicki pulled our Jeep into the parking lot located behind the historic mansion, the three of us proceeded to walk up a brick sidewalk towards the front of Schuyler Mansion. Due to the steepness of the front lawn, which sloped on an incredible angle towards the iron fence alongside the public sidewalk below, Tom was forced to tread cautiously while he photographed me at various locations near the exterior of the two-story brick structure. At one point, as I posed on the front steps of Schuyler Mansion, I waited with bated breath and wondered if my photographer would fall ass-over-teakettle to the fence below. Luckily, and with the agility of a neutered pole cat, the chunky camera-toting lummox managed to capture all of his images and leave the mansion with me in hand unscathed. The two of us had escaped the ‘Curse of the Titanic’, at least for the time being.
It would have been an awesome experience had Tom been able to talk the Schuyler Mansion staff into letting us sneak onto an early tour so we could see the Grand Parlor where Fillmore was married, but the two of us made the best out of the hand we were dealt. I have little doubt that during our next trip to the East Coast, Albany will be on our agenda, and my photographer will have reservations for a mansion tour secured well in advance of our visit.
Thus far on this trip, we had visited two sites associated with Chester Arthur. The first site came two days earlier when we stopped in Perry, New York to see the boyhood home of our 21st President. And about an hour earlier on that Sunday, we had spent a few minutes on the campus of Union College where Arthur had graduated in 1848. Now it was time to make the seven-mile drive to the North and visit the final resting place of Chester Arthur, located on the grounds of the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York.
The morning temperature had already climbed to 83 degrees by the time we made the ten-minute journey to the 400-acre burial ground which had opened in 1844 and now plays host to over 135,000 graves. But the one gravesite that piqued our interest was located along a series of winding roads and was almost in the center of the large cemetery.
Less than ten minutes after Vicki had driven the Jeep onto the grounds of Albany Rural Cemetery, I found myself standing on the ornate final resting place of our 21st President Chester Arthur. This visit marked my third trip to see Arthur’s grave – the first two times came on July 8, 2017, and again nearly six years later on June 5, 2023.
Then, as he had done two days earlier in Buffalo, Tom insisted I spend some time on the grave of the President’s wife. Ellen ‘Nell’ Arthur, whom Chester had married in 1859, had died unexpectedly from pneumonia at the age of 42 on January 12, 1880, which was almost one year before her husband was sworn-in as Vice President in the James Garfield administration.
After I had posed for a few images alongside President Arthur’s grave, Tom carried me over to the ornate white marble monument which marked the final resting place of Nell Arthur, who unfortunately never had the opportunity to serve as First Lady. When Chester assumed the Presidency following James Garfield’s death on September 19, 1881, the President’s sister, Mary Arthur McElroy, served as hostess and unofficial First Lady during Arthur’s time in the White House.
For our photos at Ellen’s grave, Tom had me carefully balanced on the ornate sword which adorned the top of the Italian white marble burial box. While I stood there smiling for the camera, a sudden gust of wind hit me just right and I fell awkwardly backwards and was headed for the marble grave marker below. It was a helpless feeling as I fell, almost as though in slow motion, and I figured my Presidential sightseeing career was most likely over.
But just before I fell off the ledge and onto the hard grave marker below, I came to a sudden stop with my head dangling over the edge of the marble box. Tom snapped a few more pictures, then ran over to my rescue. Seconds after he snatched me up from my precarious position, the two of us laughed as we knew this was the ‘Curse of the Titanic’, but once again I managed to escape certain disaster unscathed.
Our twenty-minute visit with the 21st President and his family had started off very peaceful but ended with a near-catastrophic incident that nearly sent me back to the surgical table had things gone a bit differently. With all of the rain and unfortunate incidents we endured in the state of New York, I for one was happy we were headed out of the Empire State and hopefully to greener pastures in Massachusetts and Vermont.
Even though the three of us were slated to spend a few days in Massachusetts in a little over a week, Tom had penciled us in for two stops in the far Northeastern corner of the Bay State while we were in the area. Those two destinations, which were both Presidential sites, were located in the towns of Adams and Williamstown.
It was a couple of minutes before 12 noon when Vicki drove our Jeep across the border and into Massachusetts, but unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a direct route to downtown Adams. While our Siri GPS system worked perfectly, it seemed to take us on a wild goose chase along some very interesting and curvy roads. Finally, at roughly 12:45pm, we were on the grounds of the Adams Free Library, even though the building wasn’t open to the public on that Sunday afternoon.
The fact the library was closed didn’t matter one iota to my photographer as his interest was centered on the building’s cornerstone that was laid by President William McKinley on September 25, 1897. Had the library been open, however, Tom could’ve asked a staff member about the precise location of the historic cornerstone, and it would have saved him and his wife a great deal of guesswork and leg work.
While I posed for a handful of photos near the exterior of the buff-colored brick structure, Vicki set out on foot to find the actual cornerstone, which Tom mentioned would likely feature the engraved date of 1897. But after Vicki’s search took her to all four corners of the building, my photographer’s wife came up emptyhanded, and the historic stone associated with our 25th President was never identified during our visit.
When Tom had finished taking his final image of me as I posed on the statue of William McKinley, we closed the book on the Adams Free Library where the 25th President laid the building’s cornerstone nearly 129 years earlier. Now, it was on to a new chapter – a chapter that featured another visit to a college campus; this time where our 20th President’s intellectual life was shaped.
Located roughly eleven miles to the Northwest from Adams was the small town of Williamstown, Massachusetts, which has a population of about 7,500 people. Small as it may seem, Williamstown can boast about several famous folks from its past – including actors Christopher Reeve, Matthew Perry, and former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. But in 1854, a young man from Northern Ohio came to town and enrolled at Williams College as a junior. That 23-year-old man was James Abram Garfield, and Williams College was about to make a huge impression on his life.
At Williams, Garfield blossomed intellectually. When the future President heard a speech by Ralph Waldo Emerson, James was instantly astounded and dedicated his life to study and self-improvement. Although Garfield didn’t do well in chemistry, he excelled in all of his other subjects at Williams. As the oldest student on campus, Garfield was respected and admired by others; which led him to becoming the school’s debating champion, the president of both the Philologian Society and the Mills Theological Society, and editor of the Williams Quarterly newspaper.
James Garfield graduated with honors from Williams in the Class of 1856, and at the commencement ceremony, he delivered the Metaphysical Oration, choosing for his subject “Matter and Spirit”. At the time of his graduation, Garfield considered taking up the ministry but decided to become an educator instead.
It was twenty minutes past one o’clock when we followed in James Garfield’s footsteps and arrived at Williams College. Instead of trying to find some of the lecture halls where Garfield was educated in the early 1850s, Tom opted to take me to the two buildings where the future 20th President lived during his two years at Williams.
While Vicki stayed in the Jeep and checked out some of her favorite influencer’s posts on Instagram, my photographer carried me onto the Berkshire Quad where we saw a handful of students tossing around a Frisbee in the warm afternoon air. Once onto the Quad, the two of us had a great unobstructed look at the pair of dorms where James Garfield had resided while he was a student at Williams College.
After I posed for several images near the exterior of East College where Garfield lived in Room 23, Tom took me for a short walk over to Fayerweather Hall, which was known as South College during Garfield’s time at the college. While living at South College, James resided in Room 16.
During our twenty-minute visit on the campus grounds, I thought perhaps my photographer would try to take me inside both buildings and attempt to find the two rooms where Garfield had lived, but he decided to have me pose near the exterior instead. That decision was likely made because at nearly 70 years of age, Tom would have had difficulty blending in as a student.
Twenty-five years after James Garfield graduated with honors from Williams College, he walked through the front doors of the White House as our 20th President. While Garfield is widely considered as the tenth smartest President in our history, he never had the opportunity to lead our nation with his brilliance as his life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet just a few months after taking office in 1881.
When Tom carried me back to the Jeep where Vicki patiently waited for us, I took one last look at the two dormitories where James Garfield had lived at Williams College. Garfield’s life was changed dramatically at the liberal arts college, and following his graduation in 1856, he was on a collision course with destiny. Years later, likely just before he became President of the United States, Garfield spoke highly of Williams College President Mark Hopkins, saying, “The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.”
For the three of us, it was time to “log-out” at Williamstown and head for Calvin Coolidge territory in his brave little state of Vermont, which was only three miles to the North. Not too long after we had crossed the border at 1:45pm, we arrived at our first destination in the Green Mountain State – which my photographer said was a Calvin Coolidge Presidential site located almost in the center of downtown Bennington, Vermont.
As soon as Vicki had the Jeep parked in a public lot, Tom removed me from the camera case where he planned to have me pose at the Presidential site. But when my painted eyes had adjusted to the light of day, all I saw was a large skatepark filled with kids on their roller blades, skateboards, and bicycles. Immediately, I wondered if President Coolidge was a Bennington ‘skater dude’ in the early 1900s.
But instead of carrying me towards the skatepark, the two of us headed for another building where a locomotive boxcar sat on a section of dilapidated railroad tracks. As it turned out, it was at this site on September 21, 1928 when President Coolidge arrived by train at the Bennington Station depot and delivered an impromptu speech during his tour of the state where he personally assessed the damage and progressive recovery following the catastrophic 1927 flood. Nicknamed “Silent Cal,” the President demonstrated unusual emotion in delivering his unrehearsed response to the human suffering and loss he had witnessed.
When my photographer placed me on the coupler at the end of the boxcar where I posed for some photos, it seemed as though Coolidge’s heartfelt words were still echoing off the depot. While the first half of the President’s ‘Brave Little State of Vermont‘ speech described the areas he had traveled through and the ongoing recovery efforts from the devastation, it was the last part of his oration that touched me the most.
President Coolidge said in his rural New England accent, “Vermont is a state I love. I could not look upon the peaks of Ascutney, Killington, Mansfield, and Equinox, without being moved in a way that no other scene could move me. It was here that I first saw the light of day; here I received my bride, here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of our everlasting hills.”
The President continued, “I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”
But posing on the railcar wasn’t good enough for my photographer. For one final creative image, Tom carefully placed me on one of the steel rails near the depot so I could be immersed in the spirit of President Calvin Coolidge. And it worked. In my mind’s eye, I saw the slender built, sandy haired man as he stood on the back of the railcar alongside his wife Grace. It was easy for me to see the five-foot, nine-inch-tall President’s narrow, pointed nose and cleft chin as he spoke to the gathered crowd.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, an unexpected gust of wind hit me just as I heard Coolidge recite the words, “Without being moved in a way that no other scene could move me.” At that precise moment, I fell face first into the gravel between the railroad ties. Thankfully, I hadn’t fallen from a greater height as the rail was only about six inches off the ground.
Tom quickly snatched me up from my precarious position between the tracks and he carefully inspected my body for any injuries. When I realized I hadn’t sustained any serious wounds, I decided to change a few words from Coolidge’s line “Here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of our everlasting hills.” My version was converted to, “Here I lie dead pillowed on the steel tracks while fulfilling my photographer’s everlasting thrills.”
For the second time that day, a sudden gust of wind came out of nowhere and forced me to lose my balance. The first was when I stood on Ellen Arthur’s tombstone at Albany Rural Cemetery, and the second time came at the Bennington Depot. And the strange thing was, at least in my resin mind, it wasn’t windy at either place. Once again, the ‘Curse of the Titanic’ had made its presence known, which concerned me as our next stop in Bennington was scheduled to be the final resting place of a victim of the ill-fated passenger liner. Sarcastically, I couldn’t wait to stand on that tombstone.
It was less than a one-mile drive from the Bennington Depot to the Bennington Centre Cemetery where Titanic victim Charles Cresson Jones was buried in 1912. We found the burial ground with ease, but locating the grave of Jones would prove to be a huge challenge – especially since we couldn’t drive into the six-acre cemetery.
As soon as the three of us entered the cemetery on foot, my photographer realized the map on his Find a Grave app was useless – it didn’t pinpoint where Jones was buried, it simply showed where the cemetery was located in the town of Bennington.
Armed with only a photo of Charles Jones’ headstone, which was a three-tiered white marble rectangular-shaped marker that appeared to be about four-feet tall, we began our search amongst the 2,600 other graves located within the grounds of the cemetery. It turned out one of those other graves was where poet Robert Frost was buried following his death in 1963, but we had bigger fish to fry that afternoon.
To maximize their efforts, Tom and Vicki spread out as they visually scanned every white tombstone they walked past. I did my best to keep my painted eyes on the target as well, but I couldn’t see very well from the opening in the camera case. Back and forth we traveled as my companions walked deeper and deeper into the graveyard, but still without any luck after nearly twenty minutes of searching.
Then, just when I was about to give up hope as we got close to the back of the cemetery, I heard Tom yell out to his wife, “Tombstone straight ahead.” And sure as heck fire, standing there like a white iceberg in the middle of a sea of other grave markers, I saw the elusive final resting place of the Titanic victim from Bennington.
In 1912, Charles Cresson Jones was a 46-year-old farmer, and he worked as a superintendent at the 4,000-acre Fillmore Farms, owned by James C. Colgate – the heir to the renowned Colgate family fortune and the founders of Colgate toothpaste. In the Spring of 1912, Jones had traveled to England to purchase sheep from a farmer named James Foot in Dorset. On April 5th, Charles attended an estate sale of livestock at a place called Puddletrenthide, which was the property of Edmund Barkworth, the brother of Algernon Barkworth who was also traveling aboard Titanic and survived the sinking.
When it was time for his return to America, Charles Jones boarded the Titanic at Southampton as a First-Class passenger with ticket number 694. Shortly after Titanic left port, Jones went to his room and wrote a letter to thank James Foot for his hospitality. At either Cherbourg, France or Queenstown, Ireland where Titanic had docked to pick up more passengers, Jones’ letter, which was penned on Titanic stationary, left the ship and was mailed to Foot.
For the voyage home, Jones was accompanied by Elizabeth Mellinger and her 13-year-old daughter Violet Madeline. The pair of ladies had Second Class tickets with their room on E-Deck. It turned out they were also headed back to the Colgate Estate in Bennington, but to work as housekeepers.
The barriers between First and Second Class did not stop Charles from visiting the girls, and when he did, Jones helped warm them up to their potential new hometown of Bennington by showing Elizabeth and Violet pictures of Fillmore Farms where they had planned to work.
By the time the great ship had made it to the open ocean, Jones had also made acquaintances with several other First-Class passengers, including Englishmen Arthur Gee and Algernon Henry Barkworth, with whom he spent much of his time with. In fact, on Sunday night April 14th, the three men were in the Smoking Room where Barkworth discussed the science of good road building, which he was deeply interested in.
Only hours later, however, Titanic struck the iceberg and began to sink. At 1:15am, Elizabeth and Violet managed to find spots on the last lifeboat, number 14, and were lowered into the dark ocean waters. Forty-five minutes later, and with all of the lifeboats gone, the three First-Class friends, including Charles Jones, stood at the railing with their arms folded and dressed in their dinner jackets as they watched the boats row away into the abyss. While Jones and Gee seemed calm and had likely accepted their fate in Titanic’s final moments, Barkworth did not. In an effort to save himself, Barkworth put on his fur coat over his life vest, threw his briefcase overboard, and jumped into the icy water. The Englishman quickly found his coat, life vest, and briefcase buoyed him, and he eventually swam to the overturned Collapsable B. Once there, someone warned him that if he came aboard, he would swamp the boat. Eventually, however, he was able to drag himself aboard the boat and was saved.
Several days after the sinking, the body of Charles Cresson Jones was recovered by the crew of the CS Mackay-Bennett where it was brought to Halifax on May 1, 1912. Jones’ remains were then transported back to Bennington, Vermont where he was laid to rest in the grave in front of me.
As I stood in solemn silence in front of Charles Jones’ marble tombstone, I couldn’t help but think of the final moments each of the Titanic victims had endured. This wasn’t a Hollywood movie – this was a real-life tragedy of epic proportion where over 1,500 innocent men, women, and children died a horrible death in near-complete darkness.
Then I saw them – four words etched onto the headstone just below ‘Died April 15th, 1912 in the wreck of the SS Titanic’. My broken resin heart was instantly filled with warmth, and a calmness replenished my entire body. In my mind, it seemed as though I was standing alongside Charles Jones at the railing on Titanic’s deck in the ship’s final moments. What were those four words? ‘ The Road leads Home’. Charles Cresson Jones was most certainly home – his home in the Brave Little State of Vermont.
It had been a long and laborious hike from the cemetery’s front entrance to the gravesite of Charles Jones, and I knew my photographer wasn’t looking forward to the return trip on foot. Then out of nowhere, Vicki had a brainstorm. “Do you see that road right next to us?” she said. “You stay here with TJ and I’ll walk back, get the Jeep, and drive it to this area. It’ll save you several thousand steps, as well as wear and tear on your knees. I’ll meet the two of you over there in a few minutes.” And off she went.
Roughly ten minutes after Vicki left the two of us alone at the Titanic victim’s grave, Tom and I saw the Jeep as it came around the bend on West Main Street. Suddenly, a vision popped into my hallow head. For a brief and fleeting moment, I knew how Elizabeth and Violet Madeline Mellinger must’ve felt as they sat in lifeboat #14 and watched the RMS Carpathia approach their position in the North Atlantic at dawn on April 15, 1912. They had been rescued from likely death, and so were the two of us.
Back on the road, the three of us had one final site to visit before we headed for our reserved lodging place for the night. Following a 26-mile drive through the beautiful countryside of the Green Mountain National Forest, Vicki drove our Jeep through the angel-guarded gates of Dellwood Cemetery at roughly 3:45pm. Since we about a mile South of Manchester, Vermont, Tom was unable to get a reliable signal on his cell phone, which meant he wouldn’t be able to use the Find a Grave app to help us locate the final resting place of Titanic victim Anne Eliza Isham.
In reality, however, Dellwood Cemetery did not host Anne’s final resting place as her body, if recovered following the disaster, was never identified. But there was a monument, however, located in the Isham family plot, and it was my photographer’s goal to find it.
Luck was on our side as Tom not only had a photograph of Anne Isham’s headstone, but he also had a printed map on his agenda that pin-pointed the potential location of the woman’s cenotaph. But even with those tools, the three of us drove around the cemetery for over twenty minutes without any luck.
Tom seemed perplexed – he used his crude map to guide us to the spot where he thought the cenotaph was located and he still couldn’t see it. Finally, Vicki stopped the Jeep so her husband could get his bearings straight, when out of nowhere, I heard my photographer’s wife axe, “Did you say the woman’s last name was Isham? If that’s it, I see the name ‘Isham’ on that huge monument right over there. I can’t believe we missed it!”
Sure enough, rising up above some of the smaller graves that were closer to the narrow roadway, Tom and I saw a large granite monument with the name ‘ISHAM’ emblazoned in huge, raised letters across the side. And just to the left of the large monument was the memorial dedicated to the memory of Anne Isham. We had found it; or should I say, Vicki found it.
Not a lot is known about Anne Isham’s time aboard Titanic. By 1912, the 50-year-old Anne had been living in Paris with her sister Frances for the past nine years. Anne’s brother, Edward, sent a request for his sister to spend the Summer of 1912 with him at his place in New York City. On April 10th, Anne boarded the Titanic as a First-Class passenger when the ship stopped in Cherbourg, France – she stayed in cabin C-49.
When the luxury passenger liner sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean at 2:20am on April 15, 1912, Anne Eliza Isham was not safely aboard one of the lifeboats. Instead, Isham was one of only four First-Class women to perish in the disaster. The other three victims were Ida Straus, Edith Evans, and Bess Allison. In fact, Evans was only 36 years old but gave up her seat in a lifeboat so another woman with children at home could take her place. Since Anne Isham was a 50-year-old single woman, it’s highly likely she may have followed in Edith Evans’ footsteps and perished so someone else could live on.
Following the disaster, a total of 337 bodies were pulled from the icy water. Of those, roughly 220 victims were officially identified. Unfortunately for the Isham family, the body of Anne Isham was either never recovered; or if recovered, she was never officially identified. Lost at sea, Anne was memorialized with a cenotaph that was placed between her parent’s large tombstone and the gravesite of her brother, Pierpont Isham. Pierpont was one of Anne’s younger brothers, who passed away at the age of 40 on May 19, 1906.
On foot, the three of us made the short walk from the Jeep to the Isham family plot. When Tom carefully placed me on top of the cenotaph dedicated to Anne Isham’s memory, it was easy for me to see an identical headstone to my right, which was where Pierpont Isham was buried. And to my left and on the other side of their parent’s grave marker, I noticed a large granite cross which had been placed over the grave of Anne’s other brother, Edward, who died at the age of 59 on May 14, 1927. Edward was the reason Anne sailed on the ill-fated Titanic and was the unintentional cause of her death.
We spent roughly 15 minutes visiting the Isham family plot, and during our time there, I had wondered whether or not Anne’s brother Edward, who was buried nearby, felt guilty over his sister’s death caused by the Titanic disaster. Had Edward not summoned her to visit him in New York City in April 1912, Anne would have never boarded the ill-fated ship and likely would have lived another twenty years or more. Instead, Anne Eliza Isham and her incredible spirit were lost at sea forever.
The clock was striking four o’clock in the afternoon when the three of us left Dellwood Cemetery and were headed North towards Killington, Vermont where we had reservations to stay at the Mountain Sports Inn. I knew Tom was looking forward to the return visit to that ski lodge as my photographer and I had stayed there in 2023 with our friend Bob Moldenhauer. During that visit three years ago, Tom, Bob, and I saw a black bear scrounging for breakfast behind the lodge.
It was a few minutes before five o’clock when Vicki drove the Jeep into the parking lot of the ski lodge. While she registered in the lobby, Tom unpacked the vehicle for our night’s stay. Once in our room, my companions spent time trying to decide on a place to have dinner. In 2023, Tom, Bob, and I dined at a place called Charity’s 1887 Saloon. But on this adventure, my two travel mates decided to eat pizza at a place called Domenic’s Pizzeria, which was located only a short distance down the road from Charity’s.
Once we were seated inside Domenic’s, Tom and Vicki ordered a large pizza with ham, green pepper and onions from our server Tia, who was one of the coolest servers I’ve ever met. My companions also ordered some of their “famous” breadsticks. Then out of nowhere, while the three of us waited for our food to arrive, Tom felt the urge to play a song from his phone. You guessed it – my photographer played ‘Dominique’ by the Singing Nun; all the while Vicki sat there and rolled her eyes in disgust. As for me, I thought Tom’s timing was impeccable.
Sometimes, pizza can be a crapshoot as to whether it’s good or not. But as Tom and Vick ate the first couple of slices, along with the breadsticks, both said it was the best pizza and sticks they had ever eaten. One thing was for certain; it smelled great when Tom forced me to pose alongside the pizza for a photo.
My companions had full bellies when the three of us arrived back at the Mountain Sports Inn at a couple of minutes before seven o’clock. Tom placed me near the television set while we watched an inning or two of the San Diego Padres game with the Houston Astros. At roughly 8:45pm, my photographer turned off the TV and extinguished the lights in the room.
Alone with my thoughts, I stood in the darkness of the room where flashbacks of my two near catastrophes filled my head. Once again, the ‘Curse of the Titanic’ had reared its ugly head that day, but we managed to get through it unscathed. But that all changed about 90 minutes later.
At precisely 10:17pm, I saw my photographer slip out from beneath his covers as he headed for the bathroom. A minute or two later, he returned. Suddenly, as Tom attempted to pull the covers up over his large carcass, I watched in horror as his right hand slipped and hit the nightstand alongside the bed with a loud ‘smack’ – yes, the same nightstand where my photographer had placed his cell phone and eyeglasses.
After I heard one or two cuss words, my camera guy’s wife woke up from a sound sleep to find out what was causing the commotion in our room. When Tom said he thought he may have broken his glasses, but didn’t know where they had flown, Vicki turned on the light, got on her hands and knees, and begun an earnest search for the missing spectacles.
From there, the sh*t show got worse – and it seemed as though I was watching an episode of The Three Stooges unfold before my eyes. The moment my photographer’s wife held up the broken frames of Tom’s glasses with one lens missing, she yelled out in pain, “Ouch! Oh no, I think I just pulled a muscle in my rib cage.” The poor elderly gal was in obvious pain!
When the smoke cleared and things had calmed down a bit, Tom placed his broken frames and separate blue lens back on the table as his wife hobbled gingerly back into bed while supporting the right side of her upper torso. As for me, I was more concerned that our ‘Trip of Dreams’ was in serious jeopardy.
Would Tom be able to fix his broken glasses with his trusty bobble head repair kit that he brought with us? If not, how would my “blind as a bat” photographer be able to see well enough to finish the trip? After all, we still had two-and-a-half weeks of travel left. And poor Vicki – she appeared to be in agony, and there was nothing in the repair kit that would help her situation. In my mind, her best solution was to pop some Advil and hope the pain subsides in a few days.
Once again, the ‘Curse of the Titanic’ was very evident – this time at the Mountain Sports Inn. On that Sunday night, August 9th, our trip was headed directly towards a huge iceberg in the darkness of night, and time wasn’t on our side. Our trip’s captain had seen warning signs about ‘The Curse’ since the trip began four days earlier, but Tom chose to ignore those warnings. My photographer simply threw caution to the wind, knowing in his mind that ending our ‘Trip of Dreams’ early was unthinkable. In 1912, Captain Edward John Smith ignored warnings as well and threw caution to the wind because his luxury liner, Titanic, was “unsinkable”. History has a funny way of repeating itself.
Did we swerve in time to avoid certain disaster? One thing was for certain – by the time the next morning’s sun rises over the Green Mountains in Vermont, the three of us, along with you, will know the outcome.
