The Buckeye Stamp Quest 2010: Alpha & Omega (or James A. Garfield and William Howard Taft NPS Sites)

On June 5, 2010, I was in Mentor, Ohio for the funeral of my friend's mother.  I grew up in Painesville Township, Ohio, just east of Mentor on Route 20, and I toured Lawnview, the home of President James A. Garfield, with my grade school class from Clyde C. Hadden Elementry School.  As a 12 year old, I was thrilled by the story of Brigadier General Garfield riding through the Confederate Army of Tennessee to stand tall with "Pap" Thomas on Snodgrass Hill, where Thomas earned his sobriquet "The Rock of Chickamauga."  [SIDE NOTE: The Civil War monument on the Town Square in Painesville is an obelisk with names of four battles, including Chickamauga, so apparently some Painesville boys were there with Garfield. In fact, Garfield gave a speech at the dedication of the monument].  When I found out that the bearded, staid Garfield also went by the nickname "Jamie" in the 19th century, I knew I had found a guy I could look up to.  On the other hand, the 12 year old Jamie was less than thrilled to walk through room after boring room in an old house that looked like my Grandmother decorated it. 
Lawnview was not a NPS site when I visited in 1972, so I didn't feel entitled to get a stamp until I took the time to tour the site again.  Therefore, I got up early on the morning of the funeral service and toured the site, which was less than a mile from the Brunner Funeral Home (which also held the funerals of both of my parents). The Park Service has gathered several monuments, busts and plaques regarding Garfield to line a walkway leading up to a museum that has been built in a barn-like structure behind the house. This is where you get your stamp (see below). 

The museum covered all phases of Garfield's life, from his birth in a log cabin in Geauga County, Ohio (the last President so born), to his hard scrabble education, to his meteoric rise to the top of the newly-formed Republican party in the late 1850's, to his Civil War service, post-war economic success (which allowed him to acquire the stately home), his long tenure in the House of Representatives and finally his ill-fated presidency.  There were a number of cool relics related to his assasination and long, lingering march to death, including the last letter he wrote to his mother, telling her that he was feeling better every day. The museum also had a great diorama of Snodgrass Hill, and the NPS ranger on site (a young woman) was able to answer correctly a number of Quiz Bowl questions from me about Garfield's service that day (she did not buy into any romanticized tripe about Garfield courageously riding through volleys of lead while his commander, Major General William Starke Rosecrans, cowardly headed for the rear).

After the great tour of the museum, I joined a guided tour of the house and found out that the 50 year old was not so different from the 12 year old.  The tour was fine, but nothing special; perhaps I had seen all there was to see in 1972!

After touring Lawnview, I atteneded the memorial service and reception at the Assemblies of God Church in Mentor-on-the-Lake, where the Reverend James Porostosky is the Pastor. Jim is the cousin of my great friend Scott Kalman, whose mother's (Margaret Porostosky Kalman)  life we were celebrating.  When the reception drew to a close, it was about 3:00 pm, and I headed home for Columbus.  Since I was so close to Lake Erie, I grabbed the Shoreway (Route 2) and headed toward downtown Cleveland, intending to get Route 71 there.  As I headed west, my thoughts drifted over the comforting word's from Pastor Jim's eulogy about his beloved aunt, and the sad & tragic death of Garfield, and I suddenly realized that I would be driving close to Garfield's final resting place in Lake View Cemetery.  This place, hard by the campus of Case-Western Reserve University and the sprawling mega-complex of the Cleveland Clinic on the east side of Cleveland, is simply stunning.  If anyone doubts that Cleveland was once one of the wealthiest places in the United States, they will be silenced after a few minutes among the glories of Lake View.  The most famous monument is the 180 foot tall mausoleum holding the remains of President Garfield, his wife, daughter and son-in-law (see picture).  I got to the monument just as it closed for the day, so I was not able to tour the interior (but I will do so again soon!).  I spent a little time wandering to the burial plots of John D. Rockefeller, Charles Brush, John Hay  and other Cleveland royalty before the drizzle turned into a rain that sent me back into my car, heading east on Mayfield Road to Route 271 and a trip back to the friendly confines of Westerville, Ohio.

The trip to Lawnview and the Garfield Monument made me start a quest to get all the NPS stamps in Ohio during 2010.  I have stamps from Alaska, Arizona and Utah, but I didn't have all the Ohio stamps.  It simply was time to get down to business and enjoy the sites the Buckeye State had to offer.  Many of the posts in this blog leading up to today's entry have dealt with Buckeye Quest 2010.  I made the final entry today because I was able to tour the final site, the William Howard Taft NPS site in Cincinnati, over the Thanksgiving break because we decided to celebrate the holiday with my sister-in-law's family in the Queen City.

On November 26, the Friday after Thanksgiving, we woke up in Cincinnati to a thin coating of snow on the ground, dazzling white in the sun of a cloudless, cold day that only results from a Canadian high pressure cell diving down below the Great Lakes.  I hustled the family out of bed and on to breakfast, and then sent my wife home with her mother and my son. I took the other car (my wife's 2006 Ford Expedition), my 22 year old daughter Molly and her boyfriend Charlie Geer, and drove from the far east side of Cincinnati (Clermont County actually), down into Kentucky and back across the Ohio River into downtown Cincinnati. Molly navigated on her I Phone (flawlessly, I might add, which is a big difference from many of my Stamp Guy-aided trips), and we soon were winding up a steep street to Mount Auburn and the NPS site.  The site has a recently built (1999) visitors center and a small parking lot next to the Taft family home.  We went into the VC, got my stamp (see below), and bought the obligatory hat pins (one for me and one for Brian Hall) and refrigerator magnets. I also bought a neat (recreation) campaign button from Taft's (succesful) 1908 campaign, and got park brochures and stamped them for Pete and Brian. 

We watched a 15 minute film, which was informative and interesting in a nerdy NPS-insider type of way. Anyone who goes to NPS sites quickly discovers that the Park Service is a monotheistic religion, and the all-powerful god is Theodore Roosevelt, the Creator (i.e founder of the Park Service).   TR is lauded with prominent photos at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, panegyrics at Mesa Verde, an unbelievably overstaffed house for his birthplace in New York City, and a site for his swearing-in as President in Buffalo, New York,  not to mention the many NPS sites I haven't yet visited (like Theodore Roosevelt National Park).

Anyway, suffice it to say that TR gets great publicity throughout the NPS sites. The Taft site has an interesting conundurm: how to handle TR's Greek Tragedy-like relationship with Taft, where Taft went from TR's Secretary of War and hand-picked successor as POTUS to TR's hated enemy and primary opponent in 1912 (and then his general election opponent when TR refused to accept the decision of the Republican Party to run Taft for re-election in 1912, and formed his Bull Moose Party and split the vote, giving us eight years of the Dunce from Princeton). The film plays up the sunny side of the relationship, and then treats the dark side with a "boys will be boys" dismissiveness.   Nary a negative word about the Creator.

After viewing the film, we left the VC with a Ranger and headed over to the house, which was handsomely decorated for the Christmas holiday season (see picture below).  The Ranger (a young man who couldn't be much more than 28) was very well informed about the history of Taft, the Taft family (the house actually belonged to Taft's father--it was the boyhood home of the future President and Chief Justice), 19th Century Cincinnati and related topics.  The house has few Taft family pieces because the family sold the house in 1946 and the NPS did not get it until 1967 (after it was broken up into an apartment building).  There is a neat letter from Yale University to Taft's dad, pointing out the William Howard had been tardy 16 times in one semester. 

The site does a nice job of conveying Taft's amazing life (Ohio common pleas judge by 28, Solicitor General of the U.S. by 30, Governor General of the Phillipines before the age of 40, Secretary of War, President at 51 and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the only man to head two branches of the federal government). His life seems like something out of a Flashman novel.  My daughter was bemused by my quest, and her boyfriend Charlie was patient and respectful (and I can only imagine how bored he really was!).  We left slightly before noon, and drove home to Columbus on a brilliantly sunny day.