Exactly 43 days after finishing an exhausting whirlwind trip to Washington D.C. and Baltimore, we were on the road again. That early September trip was slated to be a short two-day venture to southern Ohio where we would spend most of the first day in and around Cincinnati and on the second day we would target the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. Once again, Bob Moldenhauer made the trip with my photographer and me; but this time the trip was made in Tom’s black Avenger. We hit the road at our usual time – 4:30am on Saturday September 6, 2014. Although it was my fifth Presidential trip of the year, I was pumped to be back in action.
We were three hours into the ride to Point Pleasant, Ohio when Tom and Bob decided to make a stop in Wapakoneta to see a couple of sites associated with American astronaut Neil Armstrong. Mongo is one of the biggest space enthusiasts in the country and has met most of America’s astronauts – including Armstrong five or six times. It was too early to visit the Armstrong Air and Space Museum that was located a short distance from I-75, but that time of day didn’t stop those two from making a quick visit to Armstrong’s boyhood home. I was good with the stop; but then again, I really didn’t have much of a choice.
After the quick visit in Wapakoneta to Neil Armstrong’s boyhood home and Blume High School where he had graduated in 1947, we made the five-mile drive south to the birthplace of the First Man on the Moon. The address for Neil Armstrong’s grandparents’ farm was not published anywhere, but Bob had been to the farmhouse on a previous trip and had remembered the location on Washington Pike Road. Since the farm was not open to the public, we parked along the road and walked into the yard. As usual, I tagged along inside the camera case.
The white two-story wooden farmhouse looked old, but it seemed fairly well maintained for its age – at least from what I could see from my position in the protective case. There were indications that people currently lived in the dwelling; as patio furniture could be seen behind the house and the landscaping looked well-kept. But during the ten minutes that we strolled around the yard, not a single person came outside; nor did they open any of the curtains. Later we learned that June Armstrong, Neil’s aunt, lived there.
Just before we departed, however, a police car slowly went past the house; then the authorities turned their patrol car around about a half-mile down the road and slowly went by the farm again. It was likely that a cautious neighbor had become nervous over our visit and called the cops; or perhaps June had called the fuzz. While there were no signs or historical markers that stated the farm was where Neil Armstrong was born; it was lucky for us that there weren’t any ‘No Trespassing’ signs as well. That likely wasn’t going to be the last time that Tom and Bob would take the liberty to venture onto someone’s historic property without permission; whether it would be for a photo or for Tom to place me on the historic site. It was when I saw the cops that I had a great idea: those two guys should put some cash into the camera case so I can bail them out of jail.
The entire Neil Armstrong Wapakoneta excursion took about an hour to complete and by 8:30am we were back on the expressway headed for southern Ohio. We arrived at the Ulysses S. Grant birthplace, located in Point Pleasant, Ohio, at exactly 10:30am and I was excited to tour the small one-story, one-room house where our 18th President was born. The house was built in 1817 and consisted of one room. That single room served as the living room, dining room, and bedroom. Four years after the construction of that fine establishment, Jesse and Hannah Grant moved in – they paid $2 per month rent. On April 27, 1822 Hiram Ulysses Grant was born in the small dwelling.
Inside the small house, I was placed on the wooden floor with a bed and small wooden crib behind me. Standing there was exciting for me because I knew that the floor was authentic to the house; compared to the bed and crib which were only antiques. I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it: “If I wanted to see period pieces, I would visit an antique store.”
Located behind the birthplace house was another building that served as a small museum to Grant. I was taken inside the museum, but our visit was short-lived as there was an annoying guy who immediately began to ask Bob and Tom a lot of questions; and some of those questions were extremely brainless and not centered on Grant. I had known that my photographer was afflicted with COBS (Crabby Old Bastard Syndrome) disease, but at that moment I realized that Mongo had it too.
At 11:30am we headed for our next Presidential site that was located 20 miles east of Point Pleasant; it was the boyhood home of Ulysses Grant in Georgetown, Ohio. After our noon arrival, exterior photos of the house were taken first; mostly because there was no one else in the vicinity. However, both Bob and Tom worried that the annoying guy we saw at the birthplace would show up at any minute.
Timing is everything and we were lucky because the interior of the home had opened at 12 noon. Once we stepped foot inside the building, it was as though we were transported back to the 1830’s. If I listened closely, I could almost hear the Grant boys, Hiram and Simpson, as they played in the house. Some of the furniture inside the home was authentic to when the Grant’s lived there; while other pieces were antiques of the period. The piece that fascinated me the most, however, was an old wooden crib that was fitted with a pair of rockers on the bottom. The crib came from Sarah Grant’s side of the family and when young Hiram visited his grandmother Simpson, he was placed in that relic and was rocked to sleep.
Once we were finished inside Grant’s boyhood home, I was carried across the street to a two-story white brick structure that was once Jesse Grant’s tannery. In the mid-1820’s, Jesse would produce leather goods from that building. Young Hiram spent a fair amount of time in the tannery; although he did not like being inside there because the blood-caked hides nauseated him. I wasn’t able to venture inside the tannery to smell it for myself as it was not open to the public on that day, but I thought it likely smelled better than the Grant’s outhouse.
One final Grant site that I wanted to visit in Georgetown was the schoolhouse that young Hiram attended from 1829 to 1835. It was only a five-block drive to the school from Grant’s boyhood home. The one-room schoolhouse (although a second room was added and used as a small gift shop) was renovated with pieces of school furniture from Grant’s era. I could see a handful wooden planks that were affixed to the walls that were intended to be used as desks. There were some books and writing instruments that were situated on the desks; all of which were similar to the items that would’ve been available during Grant’s time there. Located below each of the wooden planks was a bench that was fashioned from sliced sections of trees. To the left of the fireplace, there was a desk and bench that was reportedly used by Grant when he was a student at the school. I was placed onto the rough wooden bench for a photo; but I wasn’t convinced that Grant actually sat there back in the 1830’s.
We were finished in Georgetown and it was time to head for the northern section of Cincinnati to find the birthplace of William Howard Taft. Around 2:30pm, we arrived at the Mount Auburn Historic District of Cincinnati and Tom parked the Avenger in the designated area behind the Taft museum that was near the birth house. Because of the time, we decided to tour the house before we captured images of the exterior – the museum and house closed at 4:00pm and we didn’t want to cut our stay short. Once inside the historic home, it didn’t take long for us to realize that almost every stick of furniture in the building was a period piece. There may have been a cabinet or a desk that was original to the Taft house, but that was it.
We were finished with the interior of the house in about 40 minutes and I was carried directly into the museum that was located a short distance from the house. Once inside, I was hoping to see the customized White House bathtub that was built for Taft to accommodate his “lardness”; but unfortunately the tub wasn’t in the museum. My cameraman asked the museum concierge of the where-a-bouts of the famous bathtub, but he was told that it had disappeared years ago and no one seemed to know if the tub had survived or not.
The small museum was okay, but I found only one artifact that intrigued me enough to be considered photograph-worthy. Under a glass case was the Bible that Taft used when he took the Presidential Oath of Office on March 4, 1909. I stood on the case with the Holy Book right below me and posed for the picture. The entire time that I was above the Bible I thought of Taft with his left hand on the opened page as he recited the oath.
Our final task at the Taft birthplace site was for me to pose for exterior shots of the house. The two-story Greek Revival house was built in the early 1840’s. Alphonso Taft, William’s father, bought the home for $10,000 and moved his family into it on June 13, 1851. The future 27th President lived in the house from his birth in 1857 until he left for Yale in 1874.
At roughly 3:45pm we had finished our photos at the Taft birthplace and it was time to head down the street to find another Taft home named “The Quarry”. Unaware of exactly how far away “The Quarry” was from the birth home, I was packed up into my case and placed on the back seat of the Avenger. It turned out, once we found it, that the second Taft house was over two miles from the birth site.
Upon our arrival, I was pulled out of the case and I could easily see that the three-story wooden house looked as though it had seen its better days. The wooden structure was painted a gaudy purple color and it appeared that additions to the dwelling were added willy-nilly with no rhyme or reason. There were unusual angles that jutted out in strange places; multiple pitches to the roof; and another section of the house that was supported by wooden columns or stilts. Following his marriage to Helen Herron, William Taft had the house built shortly after his honeymoon in 1886. It looked as though the building sat on a ridge that overlooked Cincinnati and in the early days the house likely afforded the occupants an amazing view of the city. But today, the view was obscured by trees.
After we captured a handful of photos in front of the house, we ventured to the backyard for a few more shots – only to discover that it was a dumping ground for trash that had been discarded down the steep incline of the property. If my mouth could open, my jaw would’ve dropped in complete disbelief. How could someone own a home that once belonged to a President of the United States and let it look the way it did?
My photographer and Bob finished their photoshoot at Taft’s former digs and we bid farewell to the “Purple People Sleeper”. Next on our agenda were the final two scheduled stops of the day; both of which were located in North Bend, Ohio. Our first stop was the birth site of Benjamin Harrison; and then we would visit the tomb of William Henry Harrison.
At roughly 5:00pm, we finished the 19-mile drive from Taft’s house to the corner of Symmes and Washington Avenues in North Bend where we found a historical marker situated in front of a small yellow aluminum-sided house. On that site, or somewhere close to where the small house sat, was once located the farmhouse where William Henry Harrison lived shortly after the War of 1812. It was at that farmhouse where Harrison made the decision to run for President in 1840 and where his grandson, Benjamin, was born on August 20, 1833. Benjamin Harrison went on to become our nation’s 23rd President.
I thought it was unfortunate that the original Harrison farmhouse had burned to the ground in 1858; I did my best, however, to get into the spirit of the Harrison’s while I was on the property. After all, they have been the only grandfather – grandson Presidential duo in history. We stayed at the Harrison farm location for about 20 minutes before we departed for our last Presidential site of the day; the tomb of our ninth President William Henry Harrison.
It was a short half-mile drive to the William Henry Harrison Memorial and as luck would have it, the three of us were the only ones there. I was excited because it was my 15th Presidential grave that I had visited; which meant that I was getting close to the halfway point of dead president gravesites.
Our ninth President, William Henry Harrison, died in the White House on April 4, 1841 after serving only one month in office. Doctors at the scene determined the cause of death was from a cold that turned into pneumonia of his right lung. It was believed that Harrison’s record-setting inaugural speech on March 4, 1841, which was 8,445 words long and took nearly two hours to read, led to his demise because the weather in Washington was cold and wet that day. However, modern day doctors examined the death reports and determined that the ninth President likely died of septic shock due to enteric fever which was due to the White House water supply being downstream of public sewage.
Originally entombed in a temporary vault in Washington’s Congressional Cemetery, Harrison’s body was reinterred at the Harrison Family Tomb in North Bend, Ohio on July 7, 1841.
After posing for a handful of exterior photos of the tomb, it was time to venture inside the structure for additional pictures. I was clutched tightly in the hand of my photographer who carefully slid me through the bars of the inner gate. At one point, I almost slipped out of his hand; which would have spelled certain disaster. Not only was the floor fashioned out of concrete and I would’ve been smashed into a thousand pieces; had I been dropped, I’m not sure how he would’ve retrieved me from behind the locked gate. Thankfully for me the photoshoot went as planned.
From my vantage point inside the stone and brick burial chamber, I got a great look at the crypts of William Henry Harrison and his wife Anna Symmes Harrison. Located to the left of the Presidential couple’s crypt was the burial site of John Scott Harrison; the ninth President’s son. I found it interesting that John Scott Harrison was the only person in American history who was the son of one President and the father of another.
The Harrison tomb was the 15th Presidential gravesite that I had visited and it was definitely one of the creepiest. For me, it ranked up there with the tomb of James Garfield on the scary scale. As I was pulled back through the iron bars, I wondered if I would lose my head like I did during my visit with ol’ James in Cleveland.
Although the early evening temperature was in the mid-60s, the sky had turned overcast and there seemed to be a threat of rain in the air. That was okay because we had planned on heading north towards Dayton where we would spend the night. That proximity would also put us in prime position for an early morning tour of the Presidential aircraft hangar at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. I was back in my protective case for the 60-plus mile drive to the motel near Dayton. From the cussing I had heard from the front seat, I assumed the late-day traffic in the Cincinnati area wasn’t very good. It took a little more than an hour before we reached our destination – the Quality Inn in Miamisburg. It was 7:20pm when we checked in and before I knew it, I was standing on the entertainment center just above the room’s refrigerator.
Our location was perfect; we were only nine miles from Woodland Cemetery in Dayton where the Wright Brothers were buried and about 16 miles from the National Museum of the U.S.A.F. at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Throughout the night, my sole focus was centered on a single airplane in the Air Force museum – the Boeing VC-137C; otherwise known as SAM26000 Air Force One. I couldn’t wait to be carried onboard the plane that took John F. Kennedy to Dallas in 1963; and returned his body to Washington after his assassination. I also wondered if we would run into any dead aliens at the Air Force Base.
