A presidential tomb

The 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died on August 2, 1923, before completing his first term. He was beloved at the time of his death, since his official corruption and incompetence were not yet widely known . That knowledge would come later, cementing his legacy as among the worst presidents of all time.

Following his untimely passing, a movement sprung up to construct a memorial to Harding in his hometown of Marion, Ohio, whose hometown newspaper he ran before embarking on a political career. Marion’s Harding Memorial, a ring of white marble columns encircling an open courtyard with the graves of Warren G. and his wife, Florence, was completed in 1927 and dedicated in 1931.

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I moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, in September 2003, and soon after set out to discover this foreign land. I drove through the small towns of central Ohio and eventually discovered Marion, about an hour’s drive to my west. It’s not much of a place anymore, with a population of 37,000 people and a downtown that’s seen better days. It’s certainly not the kind of town one would expect to give rise to a modern president. But I’ve returned, taken by the sense that something once happened there. I’ve stood trackside at the (former) train station and watched trains pass, and I’ve visited the Harding Tomb a few times. It’s at a busy intersection, with a cemetery on one side and highway-oriented sprawl on the other. But it is maintained as a park and has a nice, green lawn. It’s never been particularly busy when I’ve visited, but people sometimes walk their dogs on the grass when the weather is nice.

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When looking through my grandfather’s papers, I came upon a tattered, discolored envelope from the Port Royal National Bank, addressed to J.J. Patterson. The postmark was torn off, so I couldn’t see the year. Although I was expecting to find a letter or invoice inside, I instead pulled out four small booklets, all in excellent shape, advertising the Harding Memorial Association.

The association, under the honorary presidency of Calvin Coolidge (but truly run by its acting president, New Jersey Senator Joseph S. Frelinghuysen), was organized to raise $3,000,000 to honor the memory of Warren G. Harding. One half of that amount–$1,500,000–would be pledged toward “the erection of a mausoleum and the creation of a shrine.” One million would purchase bonds to support the ongoing maintenance of the memorial, and the remaining amount would be used for other purposes.

These booklets, tucked inside an old envelope in East Waterford and, later, Honey Grove, Pennsylvania, for ninety years, were original fundraising pieces for the memorial that opened all those years ago. How they fell into J.J. Patterson’s hands I will never know.