Just finished reading: Presidential Grave Hunter
I just finished Presidential Grave Hunter: One Kid’s Quest to Visit the Tombs of Every President and Vice President by Kurt Deion. I’ve known Kurt for a few years now … through social media. But having been trounced by him a couple of times in Dead History Trivia, I feel like I actually know him. I was very excited when I heard he wrote a book.
You may remember he teased out 10 vice presidential grave facts in a recent POTUS Notice. Here are a few more nuggets from his book, in no particular order.
Robert E. Lee’s house overlooks JFK’s final resting spot.
The military took it and 1,100 acres when the Civil War started. (As a reminder: Mary Lee, the Confederate General’s wife, was Martha Washington’s great-granddaughter.)
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Eleanor Roosevelt asked that her wrists be slit after she died to be sure she was really dead.
Seems like maybe there are some less extreme solutions to this (waiting a little longer to be buried, checking for a pulse, etc.), but who am I to argue with The First Lady of the World.
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Ronald Reagan hated the movie that inspired the guy who saved his life.
I knew that Jerry Parr, the Secret Service agent who saved Reagan’s life during an assassination attempt, was inspired by a movie he watched when he was 9 years old. But I didn’t know that Reagan hated the movie. On The Dick Cavett Show, he said it was “the worst movie” and that he’d never watched it himself.
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Eisenhower Porky Pigged it while at West Point.
He and a friend were ordered to show up in their dress coats, so they did. “And that’s all, folks!”
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Richard Mentor Johnson lost his head.
See? Kurt points out that the missing head is on the “southern face” of the monument. Interesting word choice.
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William Seward lucked out by breaking his jaw in a terrible carriage accident.
I knew Seward escaped assassination because he was bedridden. But I was fuzzy on the details.
When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, he was supposed to be one of a few killed — including Vice President Andrew Johnson, maybe General Ulysses S. Grant, and Secretary of State William Seward. Lucky for Seward, a bad carriage accident left him with a dislocated shoulder and, more importantly, a broken jaw. When his would-be attacker showed up nine day later, Seward’s jaw brace saved his jugular.
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LBJ’s favorite song was “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”.
This fact is everything and it’s hilarious. The guy who used to freak out guests by driving his amphibicar into the water yelling that the brakes failed. The guy who used to hold meetings in the crapper. The guy who would give people “The Johnson Treatment”, standing over them with his hulking frame … close-talking to intimidate them into getting his way. The guy who talked about his bunghole while ordering pants. That guy loved “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”
FOR MORE
Look up tons of graves on his website, Kurt’s Historic Sites.
Visit Kurt’s YouTube page for videos of him visiting each site.
PS Oh, good … you’re still here. I’ve been very transparent about how I’m not into perfection with my project. I’m here to get stuff on paper (or the screen) fast, even if I make mistakes along the way. And I do. It’s bugging the crap out of me that there are stray lines in the LBJ animation. Maybe you noticed it, too. But by the time I realized my sloppiness, it would have taken forever to fix it. Know that I know that I messed up and I probably will again. But not the same way. As LBJ himself said, “We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.”
