8

DEATH!

“BOYS, IF YOU EVER PRAY, PRAY FOR ME NOW.”

—One of Harry Truman’s first statements to the press after being sworn in as president following the death of FDR

“HELLO … MR. PRESIDENT?”

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes when the president dies? Here’s how James David Barber, in his book Presidential Character, reported on the transfer of presidential power to Harry Truman following FDR’s death:

The President’s death caught [Vice President] Truman entirely by surprise. On April 11, 1945, Harry was his usual ebullient self. When the Senate adjourned that day the reporters flocked around him; one called him “Mr. President,” as Senators address their presiding officer. Truman flashed a smile and said, “Boys, those are fighting words out in Missouri where I come from. You’d better smile when you say that! …”

The next day he whiled away the afternoon on the rostrum writing a newsy letter home, telling his folks to be sure to tune in when, tomorrow night, he would make a speech and introduce the President. At 5:10 he strolled over to Sam Rayburn’s “Board of Education” hideaway in the House end of the Capitol where Rayburn’s friends often gathered at the end of the day to open a bottle and “strike a blow for liberty.” Rayburn gave him the message to call the White House immediately. “Please come right over,” he was told, “and come in through the main Pennsylvania entrance.”

His face turned white. “Holy General Jackson!” he said, raced back to his office, found his chauffeur, and made it to the White House at 5:25, where he was immediately directed to Mrs. Roosevelt’s study.

“Harry,” Eleanor said, “the President is dead.”

Truman was stunned into silence. Finally he choked out, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Eleanor replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”

The next day, Truman’s first as president, was Friday the thirteenth of April.

“SO HELP ME GOD”

In his book Madmen and Geniuses, Sol Barzman sets the stage for the death of Warren G. Harding and the swearing in of Calvin Coolidge:

In late July he [Harding] suffered a collapse in Seattle and was moved to San Francisco, where he died in a few days, apparently of a heart attack. The date was August 2, 1923; Harding was fifty-five.

The vice president, in the meantime, had taken his family to his birthplace in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, for a summer vacation. They were staying at his father’s farmhouse, which had neither electricity nor a telephone.

It was not until midnight, when the Coolidges had already been asleep for some hours, that an excited messenger came chugging up in an ancient automobile with the news that the president was dead. While oil lamps were lit, and reporters and neighbors gathered, the vice president calmly dressed in a dark suit, came downstairs, and prepared to take the oath of office as the thirtieth president of the United States.

In a room with faded wallpaper, a threadbare rug, and an oil lamp for illumination, the elderly Coolidge, who was a notary public, became the first and only father ever to swear in his own son as president.

When the last phrase of the oath was spoken, the new president solemnly placed his hand on the Bible and spoke the final words with fitting sincerity:

“So help me God.”

A few minutes later, he returned upstairs, went back to bed, and fell asleep almost at once.

It’s interesting to note that Harding was soon to be up for reelection, and he had no intention of asking Calvin Coolidge to run again as his running mate.

“WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?”

According to Article II, Section I of the Constitution, when the president is no longer able to serve, the vice president shall inherit his job.

But should he?

This particular passage of the Constitution reads:

“In Case of Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President.”

John Tyler was the first vice president to gain the office of the presidency as a result of the death of the president when William Henry Harrison died a month after taking office. Unfortunately for Tyler, this also meant it was the first time the above passage of the Constitution was put to the test.

While some agreed with Tyler’s interpretation—that he should automatically assume the job of president—others (like John Quincy Adams) argued that the vice president should gain the “Powers and Duties” of the office but not the office itself.

The difference?

Just don’t accuse him of being a White House intern

* * *

Rumor has it that when a messenger arrived at Tyler’s house to tell him President Harrison had died, he was on his hands and knees on the floor playing marbles.

Tyler insisted he should become president, while his detractors insisted that he merely fulfill the duties of president without receiving the title. The problem arose over the wording of the Constitution, with Tyler interpreting the word “Same” to apply to the “same Office” while his detractors argued that “Same” referred only to the president’s “Powers and Duties.”

This controversy led to some interesting situations—one of which may have—who knows?—inspired the movie Miracle on 34th Street. Just as in the movie Santa’s existence is proven by the ability of the postal service to deliver mail to him, whenever mail was sent to the White House addressed to “Acting President” or some variation of that theme, Tyler would return it unopened.

Tyler’s detractors were many, for he was elected to the position of vice president as a Whig, inherited the presidency a month after taking office, and then so outraged the Whig Party with his policies that they actually kicked him out of the party—while he was still president!

Furthermore, those who disagreed with Tyler’s interpretation of the Constitution on the issue of the vice president’s succession to the presidency were sufficiently outraged with him to begin taking steps to rectify the situation.

Thus Tyler became not only the first vice president to succeed to the presidency but also the first to face possible impeachment. (The drive for impeachment didn’t have enough supporters in Congress, however, and no resolution to begin impeachment proceedings was ever passed.) As if all this wasn’t enough, as the sitting president Tyler suffered the ultimate humiliation of receiving no presidential nomination from either party in the election of 1844.

This vein of controversy followed Tyler to his grave. When he died there was no official recognition of his death or his service to his country by the federal government, a sharp contrast to how the government had treated the deaths of other former presidents. Although Tyler died in 1862, it wasn’t until 1911 that the federal government recognized his service by appropriating ten thousand dollars for the building of a memorial in his name. At the dedication of that memorial in 1915, only five senators and five members of the House of Representatives were in attendance.

At least he didn’t call it “Whitewater.”

* * *

While president, Tyler bought an estate in Charles City County, Virginia, called “Creek Plantation.” He changed the name of the estate to “Sherwood Forest” because, as he explained, he felt like a political outlaw.

“Here lies the body of my good horse ‘The

General.’ For twenty years he bore me around

the circuit of my practice and in all that time

he never made a blunder. Would that his master

could say the same.”

—The inscription on John Tyler’s horse’s grave

“I’M IN CHARGE NOW!”

— Secretary of State Alexander Haig, incorrectly assuming power of the United States government just moments after Ronald Reagan was shot

So let’s get this straight for General Haig and anyone else who is confused over who succeeds the president should he die or become unable to fulfill the duties of his job.

Actually, General Haig, You’ve Got It Wrong. The President’s Still in Charge.

“I hope you’re all Republicans.”

— Reagan’s quip to the surgeons who were about to operate on him after he was shot

It’s worth mentioning that Reagan kept a much cooler head after being shot than did his secretary of state Alexander Haig—while the general was putting his foot in his mouth, the wounded president was entertaining the troops with a string of one-liners.

“Honey, I forgot to duck!” was the first thing Reagan said to his wife, Nancy, after he was shot. What an actor! Is it possible he remembered, even under those circumstances, that this was the same thing boxer Jack Dempsey had said to his wife fifty-five years earlier after he was pulverized in the ring by Gene Tunney?

If the President Dies

The following order dictates who will serve as acting president until the end of the current term:

1. Vice president	2. Speaker of the House
3. President pro tempore of the Senate	4. Secretary of state
5. Secretary of the treasury	6. Secretary of defense
7. Attorney general	8. Secretary of the interior
9. Secretary of agriculture	10. Secretary of commerce
11. Secretary of labor	12. Secretary of health and human services

“NOPE. YOU’RE NOT INVITED.”

Every year, when the president delivers his State of the Union address, there is one member of his cabinet who is not invited.

Think about it: the president’s got to be there, obviously. And the vice president’s got to be there to show his support for his boss. And the prez, of course, wants the rest of his cabinet there to cheer him on …

But what if something happened? A devastating earthquake or a terrorist attack or a bomb? What if everyone in the room were killed? Who would lead the nation?

By law, therefore, at least one member of the president’s cabinet is required to stay away on the night of the State of the Union address in case such a disaster occurs.

And If the President is Disabled …

The vice president acts as president but does not assume the job itself.

The president can declare himself disabled and request that the vice president assume his duties. Additionally, the president can be declared disabled (should the president be unconscious, for instance) by a majority vote of the vice president and the members of the president’s cabinet. In either case, it is the president’s right to determine when he is able to assume the powers and duties of the office again.

If the vice president and members of the cabinet disagree with the president’s assessment of his own fitness, they can request that both houses of Congress put the matter to a vote. A two-thirds vote is required by both houses to overrule the president’s wish to return to power.

PRESIDENT … FOR A DAY

Only once has the country been under the leadership of someone other than the president or vice president.

Sort of.

It happened on March 4, 1849, when Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday and President-elect Zachary Taylor refused to be inaugurated on the Sabbath. This created a bit of a stir because, even though he refused to take his vow of office that day, the law still said that on March 4 at noon the current president and vice president would cease to be in power.

What to do? Well, according to the laws at the time, and if the position of vice president were ever vacant, it would be filled immediately by the president pro tem of the Senate. (If the position of president were ever vacant, it would be filled immediately by the vice president.) For all the reasons stated above, at noon on Sunday, March 4, 1849, the current president, James Polk, and his vice president, George Dallas, completed their terms in office, and David Rice Atchinson, president pro tem of the Senate, became vice president. And at twelve o’clock on the same day, acting Vice President David Rice Atchinson also stepped in to become president of the United States.

HOW TO BEAT AN ASSASSIN AT HIS OWN GAME

It wasn’t until 1901, when William McKinley was assassinated, that the president began receiving protection. Yet the first president to have an attempt made on his life was Andrew Jackson.

His would-be assassin was Richard Lawrence, a house painter who thought the president was the only thing standing between him and the British throne. Lawrence actually shot at the president twice, using two different guns.

But go figure the odds of this: both guns misfired—an event that statisticians say could only occur once in 125,000 tries.

Once Jackson got over the shock of being shot at, he chased after Lawrence with his walking stick.

“QUICK! CALL A LAWYER!”

President Dies of Malpractice

James Garfield didn’t die from gunshot wounds—he died of blood poisoning after doctors tried to fish a bullet out of his back with their dirty fingers and instruments. (Poor guy. He took the bullet in the back before doctors had a clue about infections, so they didn’t even bother washing their hands before they started poking around in his wound.)

If Garfield showed up at an emergency room today with the same wounds, the doctors in attendance probably would have left the bullet right where it was. And then they would have sent him home after a few days of observation and bed rest—instead of causing him to linger on in pain for eighty days before dying.

In fact, during his trial Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau, claimed he wasn’t the one that killed the president; that job, he claimed, had been done by his doctors.

“Go out and buy every pound of ice you can find! Hurry! This stifling air is killing the president!”

—FIRST LADY LUCRETIA GARFIELD

Unbeknown to most, the shooting of President Garfield provided the catalyst for the invention of the first air conditioner.

First, he was surrounded by blocks of ice while his wife and staffers waved fans to blow the cooler air over his body—but this had only the slightest impact on the heat.

Next, an inventor named R. S. Jennings and a group of military engineers tried to build a cooling system using ice water and an electric fan—which brought the temperature of the room down but made it so humid it was almost impossible to breathe.

Finally, after seventy-two hours of nonstop work, a system was developed that pumped cool air from three tons of ice into the president’s room while the moisture from the melting ice was channeled away via a series of Rube Goldberg-like tubes and ducts.

Air conditioning was born. But eighty days after he was shot, the president died. When it comes to the medical sciences, it’s amazing what a difference thirty years makes:

• Garfield was shot in 1881. • Doctors tried to remove Garfield’s bullet. • Garfield died eighty days after he was shot.

• Teddy Roosevelt was shot in 1912. • Doctors left Roosevelt’s bullet right where it landed. • Roosevelt lived for seven more years.

And to Add Insult to Injury

If his doctors had found the bullet, President Garfield might have had a good chance of living. However, since the doctors couldn’t find it they just kept poking around with their dirty hands and medical tools, thus making matters worse.

Interestingly, one method they used to try to find the bullet involved a brand-new invention by Alexander Graham Bell: a metal detector. And it might have helped too—if Garfield hadn’t been lying on a metal bed!

“I AM GOING TO ASK YOU TO BE VERY QUIET. IF YOU’LL DO THAT, I WILL DO THE BEST I CAN.”

—Teddy Roosevelt (How else do you begin a speech when the audience knows you’ve just been shot in the chest? Roosevelt talked for eighty minutes—then agreed to go to the hospital to be examined.)

During Teddy Roosevelt’s second run for the presidency he became the first former president to survive an assassination attempt.

He was shot while in Milwaukee to deliver a speech, and still delivered the speech with the bullet in his chest. Afterward, he was rushed to a hospital, where it was discovered that the bullet had nicked his glasses case, slowing its impact. Additionally, Roosevelt had written his speech by hand on single pieces of paper in large letters with wide spaces for easy reading, so the fifty-page speech (which he had folded in half and put in his left breast pocket) helped slow the speed of the bullet.

“No doubt about it,” commented Roosevelt’s doctor, Alexander Lamber. “His speech saved his life.”

“I don’t mind it any more than if it were in my waistcoat pocket.”

—TR, MAKING AN OBSERVATION ABOUT THE BULLET IN HIS CHEST MANY YEARS AFTER HE WAS SHOT

DEAD DUMB

• On July 4, 1850, in the fourth year of his presidency, Zachary Taylor attended a ceremony for the laying of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. While at the reception, he ate a huge amount of cold cherries and pickled cucumbers and drank a massive quantity of iced milk. Five days later he was dead of gastroenteritis.

• James Polk worked so hard at being president that he may have worked himself to death. For the full four years of his presidency, he worked twelve to fourteen hours a day; he hated to stop working even to eat. Three months after he left office, he was dead of exhaustion.

DEAD DOG

Warren Harding loved dogs.

In fact, he loved his own dog, Laddie Boy, so much that he arranged for him to be assigned Dog License #1 and threw him a birthday party at the White House, where he was served a cake made of layered dog biscuits covered with frosting.

Another time, Harding heard about a dog that had been brought into the country illegally and was going to be put to death by the order of a Pennsylvania judge. Harding was so moved by the story he wrote a letter to the governor of Pennsylvania requesting a pardon for the dog … which the governor granted.

When the newspaperman-turned-politician died, the Newsboys Association of America, of which Harding had also been president, decided to build a statue of Laddie Boy as a tribute to him. To raise money for the statue, the newsboy’s association asked each newspaper boy in America to donate a penny. One hundred and three pounds of pennies were collected and then melted down to provide the bronze for the statue.

The statue of Laddie Boy can still be seen today at the Smithsonian Institution.

DEATH DEFYING

Health. Fitness. It’s a national craze.

Here are a few odd things presidents have done to maintain their health, ward off illness, or otherwise tempt the hands of fate:

• Thomas Jefferson was convinced that if he soaked his feet in a bucket of cold water every day, he’d never get a cold.

• Sure to cure what ails ya’: Calvin Coolidge used to like having his head rubbed with petroleum jelly while he ate his breakfast in bed.

• After Woodrow Wilson’s first wife died, his doctor encouraged him to take up the game of golf to help him relax and get over her death. Wilson fell in love with the game and was soon playing every day before breakfast. He liked playing so much, in fact, that in winter he would paint his golf balls black so he could continue playing in the snow.

• Ulysses S. Grant had a pack-a-day habit—only it wasn’t twenty cigarettes he smoked every day, it was twenty cigars.

• Ronald and Nancy Reagan gave up smoking after their good friend Robert Taylor died of lung cancer. As the story goes, Reagan needed something to help him kick the habit, and his love of jellybeans was born.

• When Barack Obama took office in 2009, he was thought to be an infrequent smoker. But in 2013 he was quoted as saying: “I haven’t had a cigarette in six years … That’s because I’m scared of my wife.”

• No one liked a good toothpick more than Warren G. Harding. In fact, he had the White House staff stash them all around the house so he would never have to travel far to get one.

• Jimmy Carter had problems with his stomach and feet that made him think he’d never get into the navy. To cure his flat feet he would stand around on Coke bottles (being from Georgia, Pepsi just wouldn’t do) and roll them back and forth under his feet. The problem with his stomach was even more easily solved: he carried a bucket around the ship with him when it was his turn to stand watch.

“Since I came to the White House, I got two hearing aids, a colon operation, skin cancer, a prostate operation, and I was shot. The damn thing is I’ve never felt better in my life.”

—RONALD REAGAN IN 1987

Finally! The answer is here!!

* * *

Q: Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?

A: No one. No one is every buried in a tomb—tombs are always above ground.

“PSSSSSST! CATO, IS THAT YOU?”

Much like Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies, Teddy Roosevelt lived for his violent and relentless daily exercise. He fought with Japanese jujitsu experts and Chinese wrestlers in the East Room. He walked hard, running his friends down and challenging the Secret Service men who were there to protect him to keep up as he crossed rivers and streams, climbed up and down hills, and cut through the underbrush. He played tennis and rode horseback daily. He was also the first president to jog; he ran around the Washington Monument every day.

Once, while boxing with a young naval officer, he took a blow to the left eye that eventually caused him to lose the use of it (although Teddy kept this a secret for many years so the naval officer wouldn’t feel guilty).

“I do little boxing now because it seems rather absurd for a president to appear with a black eye or a swollen nose or a cut lip.”

—TEDDY ROOSEVELT

THIS KIND OF TALK CAN KILL YOU

The record for both the longest inauguration speech and the shortest presidency both belong to one man: William Henry Harrison. Harrison died after only thirty-one days in office, and it’s fair to say that he talked himself into his grave.

Here’s the longer version of the story:

Harrison’s inauguration was on a cold and wet day, yet Harrison refused to wear a hat, coat, or gloves and insisted on participating in all of the outdoor events. This included the presentation of his inauguration speech, which was 8,578 words long and lasted one hour and forty-five minutes.

One month later Harrison was dead from pneumonia.

MODEST TO THE END

Before he died Thomas Jefferson wrote his own epitaph:

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statuette of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and the father of the University of Virginia.

You’ll notice Jefferson neglected to mention he had ever been the president of the United States.

“Excuse me? Did you say something?”

* * *

It was George Washington who made the shortest inauguration speech on record—133 words and less than two minutes long.

CURSES!

When William Henry Harrison was a young man fighting at the Battle of Tippercanoe, a Shawnee Indian put a curse on his head. As a result, they say, Harrison died a month after he took office. And until 1980 all other presidents elected in a year ending in zero also died while in office—Lincoln, McKinley, Harding, Kennedy.

MORE CURSES!

Call it character assassination if you want. Or call it death of a career.

When the leader of Haiti, Jean Claude Duvalier, came to the conclusion that Jimmy Carter was treating him and his countrymen badly, he did the only logical thing: he headed for the backyard at midnight on a dark Haitian night and put a curse on the president’s head by chanting and throwing a live bull, some photos of Carter, and a lot of dirt into a very large hole.

Did it work? You be the judge. Shortly after Duvalier cast his midnight spell:

• Fifty-two American hostages were taken in Iran just before an election year and Carter couldn’t get them out.

• Inflation soared out of control, and prime interest rates reached as high as 20 percent.

• Carter’s popularity plunged.

• Carter lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.

DEATH WISH

• According to family history, George Washington insisted he be embalmed in whiskey for three days after his death, just to be sure he was really gone before they buried him.

• Andrew Jackson, who came within one senate vote of being impeached, requested he be buried with a copy of the Constitution under his head as a pillow and the Stars and Stripes wrapped over him like a shroud.

• One might have thought “Silent Cal” Coolidge would use his will as the instrument to finally speak his mind, but he didn’t. Instead he left this world in the same spirit in which he had lived—practically silent. Coolidge’s entire will, in which he left everything he owned to his wife and made it quite explicit he was leaving nothing to his one surviving son, consisted of one sentence.

• JFK, who was independently wealthy and a member of one of the richest and most powerful families in the country, left his wife all of his “personal effects, furniture, furnishings, silverware, dishes, china, glassware, and linens, which I may own at the time of death” along with a grand total of twenty-five thousand dollars in cash.

• When Andrew Johnson died, his family wanted to “do the right thing” and throw him a proper funeral. But before Johnson died he had expressly forbade them to call in a minister to do the job.

“Please put out the light.”

—TEDDY ROOSEVELT’S LAST REQUEST BEFORE DYING

DEAD LAST

Ever wonder just how far you could take a rivalry?

While John Adams lay dying on July 4, 1826—exactly fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was signed—he resigned himself to the fact that his most bitter political rival, Thomas Jefferson, would live on and beat him again.

Thus Adams’s last words were, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

Little did Adams know that Jefferson had died just a few hours earlier.

“This is the fourth?”

—THOMAS JEFFERSON’S LAST WORDS. THE FIRST TIME HE ASKED, IT WAS STILL JULY 3.