The Garfield memorial stands within the grounds of Lakeview Cemetery in eastern Cleveland. The grounds themselves alone are gorgeous, but drive straight for about a minute into the cemetery and you’ll see something even more breath taking: the four story tall memorial to the President’s life. Even when the clouds are gray, the 130 year old stone stands out in its history and its beauty against the green around it, and makes the sky look pale in comparison. The outside of the building, far above your head and encircling the structure, is a series of lifesize terracotta panelling depicting James Garfield’s life and death. It was breathtaking, but unfortunately because of the weather and the angle, I couldn’t get a well-exposed picture of the embossment.
Walking up the giant stone steps that lead to the entrance of the building, I thought I was already about at the peak of my capacity to revel in awe of the works of man. But then I stepped inside for something I was not at all prepared for. Middle Floor: You can already feel the sense of solemnity and appreciation weeping out of the doors before even crossing the threshold, but being met by the gold glow coming from beyond just another short staircase straight ahead, and the enticing spiral of a staircase going both up and down to your right, you just simply fail to be able to take in everything. I think I had finally become adjusted enough by the time I was preparing to leave to take in all that first room had to offer. There were pictures of Garfield hung around the walls, against a buttercream colored paint, which clashed in a line with colors about 8 feet up the wall. See, the highest portions of the walls were covered in murals, again much depicting Garfield’s life, but this time in vibrant color instead of in stone. Straight ahead, up just few steps is the golden room. Truthfully, I’m trying to think of anything man-made I’ve seen that has been more awe-inspiring than that golden room. In the middle, lighted by spotlights up from the ground, stands a literally larger than life marble statue of President Garfield, beard in full glory, alighting from his chair with a script in his as if about to make a speech to Congress. Encircling him are thirteen women dressed in stained glass: the ladies of the fourteen colonies, each bearing a gift: the representation of what size essential to each of their home. The funniest one in my opinion was lady New York, clad in classical gown, bearing a mini Statue of Liberty in her left hand. (This would have been built only a few years after the actual Statue of Liberty was built.) I can’t even begin to describe what lies above that but this: I’ve never seen the sistine chapel, but if it famed for it's beauty and magnificence of art, I don’t know why this memorial is such an underdiscovered treasure. The Tomb:
From the base floor, a larger and more elegant spiral staircase descends into what the signs describe as Tomb/washroom. I thought the latter was going to be some fancy historically preserved washroom or something, but across the small rectangular room at the base of the stairs sits a thoroughly modern bathroom. Directly to the left, an embossed sign says: SILENCE. It is the tomb. It felt wrong for some reason to have a bathroom only feet away from where a President sits in final rest. Normally I love visiting graveyard sites to see the legacies left behind, and to pay my far too belated respects, but for some reason this felt different. I was hit by a deep feeling of solemnity as I turned left and saw them. In yet another circular room, in what I was assuming was directly under the gold room, a series of pillars and steel gate doors separate the public from the hollowed place. I don’t know what I expected but it was strange to see them just out of the ground like that. Two coffins, raised on marble pedastles almost float in the middle of the room. The one on the left has an aged American flag draped across it. Mr. President. His wife, Lucretia, floats a foot or two away. Two urns, containing the ashes of his daughter, Mollie, and her husband, Joseph Stanley-Brown (who was also the president's private secretary,) stand farther back into the room. I walk around the room, glancing at the scene from every angle. There are more gated passages leading into darkness at different points in around the small room, which makes it feel less like a deadend than it would have felt otherwise. I spent a long while just standing there and contemplating. Paying my respects. Thinking, “This was the President of the United States. I am standing mere feet away from a vessel that once held the president of the United States.” It was humbling. It was awe-inspiring. It was an amazing, if saddening, experience. After a few minutes of silence, I took one last glance back at the four of them, guarded safely behind the gates, admiring the red, white, and blue shining out in the darkness, then ascended back up the stairs. By the time I stepped back out into the daytime, the sun had begun to peek out through the clouds and the steps of the masuleum were gleaming with sunshine and remembrance. |
Regrettably, Garfield’s name is one of those underknown amongst the president's office in the United States, but he was alive during such an exciting time. Unfortunately, his fate was continually decided by others.A series of decisions made by a few different groups of people throughout his lifeitme led him in the direction of his untimely fate: at age 49, James Garfield, President of the United States was murdered. James Garfield was the first president I was able to visit in the course of this adventure. I didn't know much about him before the stop, but there’s a long list of reasons why he should be closer to our hearts and not be forgotten to history: -only President to have been serving in Congress when elected -elected as president against his will -came from humble beginnings as a farm boy in Ohio -only US president to be an ordained minister -had one of the greatest beards out of all the US presidents -first president to rally support of both Northern and Southern states since the Civil War -first president to have a presidential library -assassinated by a mad-man -beloved by nearly all during his lifetime The balcony:
Follow what seems like three sets of spiral staircases straight and narrowly up, passing rusting gated passageways off to the side along the way, you’ll find yourself coming out to a circling balcony that leans down and looks over the golden room. The floor lights cast an authoratative shadow of the marble Garfield’s head up on yet another small carving, a smaller mirror of the one on the outside of the building, this one encircling a compartment in he upper room above the statue. The roof: A journey up yet more spiral staircase faces you with, first, a cool breeze, and immediately after, a strict sunlight, blazing through an opening in the middle of the spiral staircase. I say middle, because a gate separates the public passages way from even more steps that go up and up into infinity. Darkness obscures farther than you can see through that direction. The only way to go is towards the light. The stones of the rooftop occasionally shift underfoot, but the view is worth the combined fear. In the distance, the mist of Cleveland’s skyline reaches up in front of the even more distant expanse of lake Erie. You can follow the lake’s horizon until your eyes hit the building again and automatically follow up the straight shaft of an American flag, blowing in the wind of the graveyard. More information |
About James A. Garfield:
When he became president in 1881, it was a time of transition in the United States. The civil war had ended and direct reconstruction in the south was coming to an end. Industry was booming in the North; the country was entering a new phase of life. Cities grew at a phenomenal pace, and immigrants fluxed into the country from all over. America had begun to bloom into her modern face.
James Garfield grew up in poverty on farm in Ohio, yet another age old story of a man who rose out of dejection and disease to a place of great power. When unable to pay for college, he offered to work as a janitor to pay off his tuition debts. Within two years he was teaching more classes than he was taking and by the time he was 26 he was president of the university. Through personal connections and surprisingly no ambition of his own, he was shortly thereafter nominated and affirmed to the Ohio state senate. He was never much for politics, thinking it a detestable job so much so that when the political strife in the nation exploded into the civil war, he left his home state eagerly to serve in the war. As if an overarching pattern in his life, he once again unnaturally and quickly rose in rank.
On the home front, he moved from state senate, to national senate, and once the war was over, on to president, thought his own personal convictions gave him the desire to merely stay in Ohio and return to a simple life of family and farm. But the people spoke differently. Amid a factional war within the Republican party, Garfield was nominated and was soon moving into the White House. The warring factionalism within the party would also spell a theme through his presidency, as the Stalwart party strove for principles that Garfield stood against. In the end, it was a crazed man, Charles Guiteau, who after seeking a patronage position for months in Washington was finally and blatantly given a negative answer by one of Garfield’s compatriots. Coincidentally, that night Guiteau “received a message from God” that told him it was his sacred duty to kill the president. A few weeks later, the president was walking through a train station on the national mall, unaccompanied save by a single friend (and no security, despite the fact that Lincoln had been killed in the same city only 16 years earlier), when Guiteau approached him with gun out (still attention was paid,) shot him in the arm, (only at this point did anyone begin to raise a concern,) then shot him again in the back. Guiteau claimed these famous words after he shot the president: “I am a Stalwart... Chester Arthur is President.” There were ideas going around that possibly Arthur (Garfield’s vice president) and other Stalwart leaders either hired or encouraged Guiteau, but proof either doesn’t exist or has been lost to history. Meanwhile, Garfield is lying on a train station floor with a bullet in his back and doctors swarming around him- doctors whose hands had just been on the same train floor and whose fingers and unwashed instruments were now probing around in his open wound. If this doesn’t give you chills of disgust, you might in fact be a pre-twentieth century doctor who, that’s right, didn’t believe in germs. Garfield was dying for more of his presidency than he was acting president. See, he almost definitely would have survived his gunshot wound; it missed major arteries, vital organs, and his central nervous system. Loads of Civil War vets were walking around town at the time perfect functional with bullets jammed here or there within their bodies. What actually ended up killing Garfield, was the infection. The doctors who thought it was best to keep sticking their unwashed fingers in an unwashed and bacteria ridden wound, pulling out flesh and cloth and bits of bone at their leisure, were the men who actually killed Garfield. Guiteau brought him to the bridge, the doctors pushed him in the water to drown.
And with that, after months of suffering, a very interesting movement from D.C. to New Jersey, the assistance of Alexander Graham Bell, and a missing lead bullet, possibly the greatest president we ever could have had died. He was a manly man, a grassroots guy, beloved by both north and south, of sound morals, an ardent supporter blacks’ rights, of honesty in Washington, and he was dead after mere months in office. The nation mourned for the fruition of a lone crazed man’s mission and the glory and of Garfield was raised at the structure in Cleveland, Ohio, where his mortal body forever more lay, though undoubtedly the great Orator continues in the great beyond...
James Garfield grew up in poverty on farm in Ohio, yet another age old story of a man who rose out of dejection and disease to a place of great power. When unable to pay for college, he offered to work as a janitor to pay off his tuition debts. Within two years he was teaching more classes than he was taking and by the time he was 26 he was president of the university. Through personal connections and surprisingly no ambition of his own, he was shortly thereafter nominated and affirmed to the Ohio state senate. He was never much for politics, thinking it a detestable job so much so that when the political strife in the nation exploded into the civil war, he left his home state eagerly to serve in the war. As if an overarching pattern in his life, he once again unnaturally and quickly rose in rank.
On the home front, he moved from state senate, to national senate, and once the war was over, on to president, thought his own personal convictions gave him the desire to merely stay in Ohio and return to a simple life of family and farm. But the people spoke differently. Amid a factional war within the Republican party, Garfield was nominated and was soon moving into the White House. The warring factionalism within the party would also spell a theme through his presidency, as the Stalwart party strove for principles that Garfield stood against. In the end, it was a crazed man, Charles Guiteau, who after seeking a patronage position for months in Washington was finally and blatantly given a negative answer by one of Garfield’s compatriots. Coincidentally, that night Guiteau “received a message from God” that told him it was his sacred duty to kill the president. A few weeks later, the president was walking through a train station on the national mall, unaccompanied save by a single friend (and no security, despite the fact that Lincoln had been killed in the same city only 16 years earlier), when Guiteau approached him with gun out (still attention was paid,) shot him in the arm, (only at this point did anyone begin to raise a concern,) then shot him again in the back. Guiteau claimed these famous words after he shot the president: “I am a Stalwart... Chester Arthur is President.” There were ideas going around that possibly Arthur (Garfield’s vice president) and other Stalwart leaders either hired or encouraged Guiteau, but proof either doesn’t exist or has been lost to history. Meanwhile, Garfield is lying on a train station floor with a bullet in his back and doctors swarming around him- doctors whose hands had just been on the same train floor and whose fingers and unwashed instruments were now probing around in his open wound. If this doesn’t give you chills of disgust, you might in fact be a pre-twentieth century doctor who, that’s right, didn’t believe in germs. Garfield was dying for more of his presidency than he was acting president. See, he almost definitely would have survived his gunshot wound; it missed major arteries, vital organs, and his central nervous system. Loads of Civil War vets were walking around town at the time perfect functional with bullets jammed here or there within their bodies. What actually ended up killing Garfield, was the infection. The doctors who thought it was best to keep sticking their unwashed fingers in an unwashed and bacteria ridden wound, pulling out flesh and cloth and bits of bone at their leisure, were the men who actually killed Garfield. Guiteau brought him to the bridge, the doctors pushed him in the water to drown.
And with that, after months of suffering, a very interesting movement from D.C. to New Jersey, the assistance of Alexander Graham Bell, and a missing lead bullet, possibly the greatest president we ever could have had died. He was a manly man, a grassroots guy, beloved by both north and south, of sound morals, an ardent supporter blacks’ rights, of honesty in Washington, and he was dead after mere months in office. The nation mourned for the fruition of a lone crazed man’s mission and the glory and of Garfield was raised at the structure in Cleveland, Ohio, where his mortal body forever more lay, though undoubtedly the great Orator continues in the great beyond...
"There is nothing in all the earth that you and I can do for the Dead. They are past our help and past our praise. We can add to them no glory, we can give them no immortality.
They do not need us, but forever and forever more we need them."
-James A. Garfield