Renfrew woman visits graves of presidents
Renfrew — While the third Monday of February is set aside as the day we recognize our nation's presidents, one Renfrew woman has made a mission of observing our chief executives all year round.
In March 2014, Teri Wilson, 53, visited Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site in Texas, making LBJ's grave the final stop on her personal tour of presidential grave sites.
In three years, Wilson visited the grave site of every U.S. president along with the grave site of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America.
She said her quest to visit the sites grew from an interest to learn about the presidents as individual men.
“The first president grave I ever visited was JFK in Arlington National Cemetery, along with every other school-aged kid,” Wilson said. “It wasn't until Ronald Reagan died that I wanted to visit his presidential library in Simi Valley, California.”
She said visiting Reagan's grave and learning about him as a man and not just a politician made her interested in visiting the graves of other presidents.
In addition to her trips to Texas and California, Wilson's travels took her as far north as Vermont for Calvin Coolidge's grave and east to Long Island, N.Y., for Theodore Roosevelt's grave.
“Some (graves) are very elaborate, some are just like a regular man,” Wilson said. “Some are on their own home properties, and some are in cemeteries with everybody else, like a regular guy.”
She said her favorite is James Garfield's grave in Cleveland.
“His is pretty elaborate, and it's the only one where you can actually see the flag-draped coffin,” Wilson said. “It's not in the ground, it's not in a vault. So that was interesting.”
Wilson, who works at AK Steel in Butler, said she visited the sites during long weekends from work. Sometimes she traveled alone, and sometimes her niece or a friend accompanied her.“I would plan out those weekends, like, head to Ohio where you can hit five of them, and I just started knocking them off,” Wilson said. “I had to fly to Texas or to California, but most of them were road trips that I planned out to specifically hit different ones.”Wilson collected photographs from her travels in a scrapbook as well as interesting information about the presidents.“With the exception of JFK, all our assassinated presidents have large monuments,” Wilson said. “Lincoln's body was moved 10 times before resting in his final place.”Of all the states, Wilson said Virginia has the most interred presidents with seven buried there.“Some people surprise me when they think all presidents are buried in Washington, D.C.,” Wilson said. “Really, (it's) only three — JFK, Taft and Wilson.”Wilson said she was disappointed after visiting the grave site of James Buchanan, the only president from Pennsylvania, because she found his site in Lancaster to be the least cared for of the presidents.Despite this discovery, Wilson said she only has one regret from her many trips.“I didn't think to keep track of the mileage and the money for the hotels, gas, airfare, and rental cars to see what exactly this accomplishment cost,” Wilson said. “However, for me, it was priceless.”Now that she's visited every U.S. presidential grave site, Wilson is shifting gears and plans to continue checking off celebrity graves.She's already visited about 150 grave sites of celebrities and other famous people, including Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee, Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe and Johnny Cash. Most recently, Wilson said she visited the grave of Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL who inspired the current movie, “American Sniper.”“I now plan vacations with consideration as to whose grave I can visit,” Wilson said. “Some people consider it morbid and sick, but I have found cemeteries to be beautiful and full of art.”
Presidents Day evolved from the annual celebration of George Washington's birthday on Feb. 22, first declared a U.S. government holiday in 1885.A movement in the early 1950s pushed to create a day honoring all presidents. Some proponents of the holiday suggesting keeping it in February to celebrate both Washington's and Abraham Lincoln's birthdays. Others proposed March 4, to commemorate the original presidential inauguration day.In 1971, Congress passed the National Holiday Act to establish the observance of certain federal holidays on Mondays. The act moved celebrating Washington's Birthday from Feb. 22 to the third Monday of February, thus establishing Presidents Day.
