Harry, James, and Herbert (Midwest presidential visits)

My path across the Midwest gave easy access to three National Park Service presidential sites – Harry S Truman National Historic Site in Independence, Missouri; James Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio, my hometown; and Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in West Branch, Iowa. 

While Truman’s image has been rehabilitated as a reluctant, working-class president, Hoover and Garfield fall into the presidential gray areas. Garfield had the second-shortest presidency due to his assassination, and Hoover’s term coincided with the nation plummeting into the Great Depression.

All three came from modest circumstances. Born into a farming family, Truman entered politics after several business failures winning county post in Kansas City before winning a Senate seat. Garfield came from poverty but became a lawyer, a Union major general during the Civil War, and a nine-term Congressman, the only person to move directly from the Lower Chamber to the White House. Hoover’s father was a blacksmith in a small Quaker town and after his death, his mother took on extra work to ensure her three boys could continue their educations. Later he became wealthy in mining, retiring at 40. 

In a presidential election year, these sites give insights into the personalities of past leaders and the lives they led. Plus, these sites nicely broke up a 2,400-mile roundtrip from Colorado to Ohio. It was almost as if I were welcomed into a stranger’s home for a rest from the road. 

Truman House on Delaware Street

Truman
Truman’s stately house has anchored a street corner in downtown Independence since the 1860s. Built by George Gates, Bess Truman’s grandfather, from 1867 to 1885, numerous generations of the family lived there before the house was turned over to the National Park Service following Bess’s death in 1982. 

Truman lived in the house from his marriage until his years in D.C. as a Senator then President, but he and Bess did not buy it until after the death of his mother-in-law in 1952 and the end of his presidency.

The house underwent many renovations through the decades but has retained its look from the time of Bess Truman’s death. It underwent a $1 million renovation in the 2000s but the décor did not change. 

The Trumans along with daughter Margaret are buried on the grounds of the nearby Truman presidential library. But I had a few hundred miles left to drive that day and the house tour was my only indulgence that day. 

I toured the first floor (the second has never been open to the public), which includes many artifacts from the Trumans’ lives. An ornate centerpiece still hides a cache of marbles that Bess Truman took from one of her grandsons when she found him dropping them into the heating vents. The front parlor has the Steinway piano that Harry bought for Margaret and numerous portraits, including Bess Truman’s official White House portrait, which was accidently shipped back to Independence when the Trumans left the White House in 1953 and never returned. A replica of Truman’s coat and hat hangs from the rack near the side door. 

The visitor center resides in a historic firehouse in downtown Independence. The historic site also encompasses several adjacent homes that belonged to Truman relatives, including two houses that owned by Bess’s brothers and the Noland House, which was once owned by Truman’s aunt.

Post-presidential life changed significantly for the Trumans in the 1960s. The Secret Service moved across the street after JFK’s assassination, much to the consternation of the Trumans. Their home was already an attraction, one of the few places where one could glimpse a former president just by walking past the house. 

The historic site also includes the farmhouse and a 5-acre remnant of the 600-acre Truman farm in Grandview, where the president grew up. Since 15 miles separate the two, that leaves another piece of Truman history for a future trip through Kansas City. 

Lawnfield

Garfield
I had no excuse for long stretches between visits to Lawnfield, the Victorian home protected as the James A. Garfield National Historic Site. I visited the Garfield house several times. I remember some Civil War reenactors on the site sometime back in the late 1980s. 

Much of the Garfield house, dubbed Lawnfield by the press corps during the 1880 presidential campaign, is covered in buildings constructed after his death. His wife Lucretia lived until 1915, leaving more than three decades to add buildings to the property. The Garfields are buried in Cleveland’s Lakeview Cemetery at a massive mausoleum at the cemetery’s highest point. Lakeview has been Garfield’s preferred burial site. 

As president, Garfield barely had time to make a mark. He took two bullets from office-seeker/psychopath Charles Guiteau at a D.C. train station in July 1881. Presidential security had not changed since Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and Garfield was unguarded. His shooting was witnessed by Robert Todd Lincoln, Garfield’s secretary of war who was also at the station. 

Although the wounds seemed minor, Garfield’s health deteriorated during the summer, and he died in New Jersey in September. Some say Garfield had inadequate medical care and could have survived his wounds, but his assassin’s defense attorney tried to make the same argument at trial before Guiteau’s June 1882 hanging, so who really knows. While not a joke like William Henry Harrison who caught ill at his inauguration, Garfield will forever remain a great “what if” of the American presidency. 

Built when Mentor was a small agrarian community in Lake County, the house looms above Mentor Avenue and stands out due to its period paint job. The grayish purples transport visitors back to the Garfields’ era. 

Immediately behind the house lies a cabin-like structure that served as Garfield’s campaign office. He would campaign from the front porch, but the office communicated with the rest of the country. 

Garfield didn’t seek the presidency – he had won election to a Senate seat that he would have otherwise occupied in 1881 – and only acquiesced because the Republican Party had great difficulty agreeing on a candidate in 1880. Garfield’s active campaigning from his front porch, where people could hear him speak on the issues, was the forerunner of today’s national campaigns, as previous presidents had been passive campaigners at best. 

Lucretia’s expansion of the house included a library of her husband’s congressional and presidential papers, forming the first presidential library before such libraries became post-presidential standards. 

The structure that struck me the most was the windmill. I had passed that house thousands of times and never once spotted the yellow brick windmill tower that provided water to the house. Built by Lucretia to improve Lawnfield’s water supply, it is not the spindly windmills of western farms but solid brick tower. The wind became obsolete in the 1930s when the house connected to Mentor’s municipal water. 

The old carriage house turned museum charts Garfield’s early life, Civil War postings, and years in Congress, but mostly focuses on his assassination and slow death. Garfield died in New Jersey after his condition worsened, and we see a recreation of his deathbed, along with his death mask and other items such as a bed used to ferry him in his last months.

Hoover family cottage

Hoover
Hoover falls into the Jimmy Carter category of presidents – far from great, but a better person due to his work outside the Oval Office. The first president born west of the Mississippi, Hoover was part of the inaugural class at Stanford University and made a fortune in mining, retiring in his 40s. He gained prominence nationwide after leading food relief for 300 million people worldwide during World War I. Hunger remained a key issue for Hoover, whose advocacy led to the founding of UNICEF. 

But the Great Depression will always define Hoover, and the historic site gives the Depression a light touch, saying his reserved Quaker nature held him back from doing more, focusing instead on his childhood, his humanitarian efforts and philanthropy. 

Light touch might also describe Hoover’s actions to halt the Depression during his lone term. There was scant mention of the nation’s 25 percent unemployment or evicted Americans living in shanty towns that came to be called Hoovervilles. Hoover grew deeply unpopular, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt trounced him during the 1932 presidential election. 

Given the presidency was four years of a 90-year life, focus on Hoover’s other accomplishments is understandable, although I was a little surprised to see such a time in U.S. history treated so lightly (full disclosure – I did not go into the presidential library adjacent to the historic site; the library might have taken a more even tone). 

Hoover graves

Hoover’s recreation of 1870s West Branch includes a number of historic homes including the Hoover cottage, a school, and recreations of his father’s blacksmith shop. It’s a nice open-air museum conducive to wandering on a gentle spring afternoon. 

On a hill above the library lie the modest monument with the graves of Hoover and his wife Lou. To their east lies a restored 80-acre tallgrass prairie, the same grasses that covered most of the Great Plains before settlement and only cover a tiny percentage today. 

From this small hill, you can see the whole town, the historic buildings, and stand where a young Hoover would have stood. West Branch might be a little bigger than it was in the 1870s (the town has less than 3,000 residents). 

Supposedly Hoover wanted others to find inspiration in his modest roots and feel they could succeed as he had. It’s a noble thought. Sometimes a view from a little elevation is all we need to catch new inspiration.