Prologue
Authors are often encouraged to define for themselves the audience for which they are writing. I find this easy to do.
I am writing for any reader who is interested in learning more about the men who have served as President of the United States. I am writing for any reader who has enjoyed, or who anticipates the enjoyment of, visiting the homes where Presidents have lived. I am writing for readers who believe, as I do, that these residences can provide a means of deepening their understanding and appreciation of these leaders. And I am also writing for the reader who is willing to entertain the notion that an ordinary American citizen can have worthwhile insights that may not always correspond to the current scholarly opinions regarding the Presidents whose homes he has visited.
Many of my conclusions have little or no relationship to current lists of “The 10 Best (or Worst) Presidents" that are so popular these days. I have particularly enjoyed finding angles or aspects of our most maligned Chief Executives that suggest the need to reassess, even to completely revise, the prevailing opinions regarding the worth of their lives and their administrations.
In writing this narrative account of Carol's and my travels to presidential homes, I often quote directly both from our own conversations and from what guides, docents, National Park Rangers, and other travelers have said to us. Occasionally I have mentioned these folks by name. As I have never used a recording device with which to take notes, I openly confess that any conversations set down here are reconstructions of these moments and not actual transcriptions of anyone's remarks. I have always asked Carol to confirm these recollections, and I have never intentionally misrepresented an idea or an insight that has been shared with us by any of the multitude of wonderful guides we have encountered in our travels. But since I have been a teacher for over 40 years (and on occasion have been misquoted myself), I am also quite aware that a docent or National Park Ranger who recognizes him or herself in this text might say, “I don't recall saying that." Please forgive any lapses of memory or inaccuracies of statement on my part. I have employed this technique of remembering conversations only with the intent of helping readers to relive the discoveries Carol and I experienced in coming to know—and appreciate more fully—the Presidents we were studying.
And what a joy it has been! The project has led us down many roads we would never have otherwise traveled, toward many surprising locales it would have been impossible to anticipate. I am happy to record what has revealed itself to me as a result of my thinking and reading about the lives of these Presidents, together with many hours of wonderful conversations with my wife, brilliant trip planner, and co-enthusiast, Carol, to whom I lovingly dedicate this book. We both encourage you to join us, to become our companions, as we begin Calling on the Presidents. Their homes have many fascinating tales to tell.
One final thought. Although the Presidents in this book are arranged chronologically, I would recommend reading the chapters in any order, according to your interests and/or travel plans. Above all, I hope that you will find your reading experience both enjoyable and thought provoking.
Clark Beim-Esche
Introduction
Perhaps it was my afternoon visit to the Harding Memorial. Or maybe it was because I had seen a current edition of The Marion Star outside the Applebee's restaurant where Carol and I had just finished dinner. The Star had been the local paper that had launched Warren G. Harding into financial prosperity and a political career, and here it was, still being published in 2009. Whether these, or some other more esoteric, motivations were building up within me, less than a week later I found myself urged, even compelled, to write. As my earlier efforts had taught me, the only way I could really enjoy writing extendedly was under the compulsion of needing to record my thinking and experiences.
So why was I here at my computer beginning this book? Because of something that I have found to be of increasing importance to my life: a deeper, more sympathetic, more complex understanding of the men who have served as President of my country, the United States of America. There is, of course, an obvious reason not to write about this topic. So much information already exists about the Presidents that one could spend an ample lifetime trying to read it all and still not do much more than peruse a small portion of the available information. What could I, admittedly an amateur history enthusiast, have to add to this tsunami of data? My answer is actually quite simple: I have visited the places where the Presidents have lived. Nowhere in my research has anyone used the presidential homes as a touchstone on which to base an understanding of the men who have occupied the vital office of President of the United States.
In the past whenever Carol and I had been traveling, we would frequently stop to visit the homes of past Presidents if these locales did not take us too far off the routes toward the other destinations to which we had been journeying. Over time, however, this casual practice morphed into an activity more consequential and more central to our thoughts and interests than I would have imagined possible in earlier years.
Then for the first time, in the summer of 2009, Carol and I took a trip to Ohio for no other reason than to visit four presidential homes. Our route was comprised of a loop around Ohio, from the home of Rutherford B. Hayes in Fremont, to the renovated farmhouse of James A. Garfield in Mentor, near Cleveland, down to the one surviving home associated with William McKinley in Canton, and then back across the state to Marion and the home of the universally disparaged Warren G. Harding. Clearly these visits had begun to assume a larger significance to both Carol and me. But significance regarding what?
In recent years the political landscape of the United States has reflected some serious disillusionment. From both the political left and the political right we are almost daily presented with an endless litany of displeasure with nearly every decision any President makes.
The negativity feels pervasive. But the presidential homes Carol and I have been visiting over these years, attest to a very different truth, and we never leave any one of them with a sense of deflation or disappointment. Time and again, the predominant feeling Carol and I have experienced in these locations is a quiet gratitude for the dedication and efforts of the men who have been willing to serve their country as Chief Executive. Each of these leaders has been unique. Some have even been personal friends, though most came from substantially dissimilar backgrounds. But all the Presidents have been linked together by a few indispensable characteristics: each felt a humbling responsibility in becoming President; each worked tirelessly to leave the country better off than he found it; and each both succeeded and failed in bringing about the improvements and programs he wished to see enacted.
And for all this, I have concluded, these men deserve to be understood and to be remembered by all of us who have been the beneficiaries of their efforts. Just as The Marion Star continues to be published more than eighty years after Harding left his position as its owner and editor, Harding himself, together with all the other men who have captained the United States' ship of state, deserves an honored place in our hearts. This book is my attempt to chronicle the silent testimony regarding their tragedies and triumphs, their mistakes and their successes, and, most importantly, their individual perspectives on the world to which their homes often bear eloquent witness.
Note: All photographs
