My journey with the Dead Presidents Society

Warren County continues to take advantage of funding Stefanik voted against

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My respect, my reverence of the American presidency began with the funeral of John F. Kennedy when I was just six-years-old.

Those images, the sounds, the sense of loss from the adults around me stayed with me all these years.

During our eighth-grade class trip, we visited Washington, D.C, and my most vivid memory is of visiting Arlington National Cemetery and the grave of President Kennedy.

I've returned to Washington many times over the years for journalism conferences and meetings. At night, I would often walk from my hotel over to the White House and walk around the perimeter.

In awe.

I don't think I have ever felt more patriotic than during those walks.

After I moved to Tennessee, a friend of mine from the Oneonta newspaper was planning a visit and wanted to know if Greeneville was nearby.

It was an hour's drive.

That's when it all started. That's when my friend, John Doherty, told me about the Dead Presidents Society and how he and another friend had a goal of visiting the graves of all the presidents.

So in April 1988, John and I drove down to Greeneville, toured Andrew Johnson's house, then made the stop at the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery where John insisted I take a photo of him at the gravesite.

You had to have proof, he told me.

That started me on a journey over the next four decades that culminated two weeks ago with a visit to President Ronald Reagan's gravesite.

I've now been to all 40 gravesites.

The Dead Presidents Society mission has been accomplished.

Shortly after I returned to New York in 1988, I realized there were plenty of dead presidents within an easy drive of Glens Falls so my wife and I made the drive out to Plymouth Notch, Vt. to see Calvin Coolidge's modest homestead and even more modest grave in the family plot. It was in the parlor of his house where he took the oath of office after Warren Harding died in office in 1923.

It's those experiences and sharing them with family and friends that were the most important part of the journey.

What I learned about the presidency and American history over the ensuing decades is a master's class that cannot be replicated at any university.

After Coolidge, there was a day trip to Hyde Park to see Franklin Roosevelt, a drive to Kinderhook to see Martin Van Buren with a stop on the way back to see Chester Arthur in Albany.

Each business trip, each sporting event on the road was an opportunity to knock off another president.

While my wife tagged along on most of the journeys, my brother Dave also caught the bug and for my son, well, this is just what his family does for fun. Somewhere along the way at one of our Tingley family reunions, we discovered my cousin Nancy Tingley had been doing the same thing for years.

It was something in the Tingley DNA.

The stories from those journeys is what has made this so special.

Three times I've been to Young's Memorial Cemetery in Oyster Bay, Long Island to see Teddy Roosevelt and twice the gate was locked. Twice, I showed my companions - my son and my brother - the back way in through a hole in the fence.

We would not be deterred.

My wife actually agreed to take a week-long vacation in Virginia in 1991 where we knocked off George Washington (first), James Madison (fourth), James Monroe (fifth) and John Tyler (10th). I still find it amazing that Monroe and Tyler are buried within feet of each other in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Jefferson Davis is also there, but we decided that treasonous presidents did not count.

When I was covering the Breeders' Cup in Louisville in 1998, I went out a day early to score my own personal trifecta.

I got up as the sun was rising and arrived at Zachary Taylor National Cemetery to find a spooky, misty fog enveloping the cemetery and the gate locked. So I jumped a stone wall and found the 12th president's final resting place.

Back over the wall I went, drove the hour and a half to Cincinnati and repeated the exercise at the grave of William Henry Harrison (ninth president), then back into the car for a two-hour drive to Indianapolis and a photo at the grave of Benjamin Harrison (23rd president).

When I told the other sportswriters what I had done that day, they seemed perplexed.

My brother and I flew to Kansas City in 2005 to visit Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower - with a Yankee-Royals game squeezed in between. After visiting Eisenhower, we found ourselves trying to outrun a tornado outside Wichita on I-35.

By 2020, there were just five presidents I needed - Ronald Reagan (Simi Valley, Calif.), George H. W. Bush (College Station, Texas), James Polk (Nashville), Andrew Jackson (Nashville) and Gerald Ford (Grand Rapids, Mich).

When my son moved to Texas in 2020, there was an opportunity to being the final push. On our drive to Texas, we made a brief diversion outside Nashville to see Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage, then made a day trip to see George H.W. Bush while he was living in San Antonio.

In 2022, we made a family trip to Michigan to see Gerald Ford.

A few months later, my son took a job in New Orleans and I was going to fly down to help him move. I flew to Nashville first, got Polk, then on to San Antonio.

That left one remaining president.

So earlier this year I told my wife I wanted to take a trip to Los Angeles to see the Academy Award Museum and the Ronald Reagan Library.

She agreed as long as I threw in a trip to Hawaii on the front end.

So two weeks ago, we rented a car and drove north to Simi Valley to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

After four hours in the museum, we made our way to the gravesite with the most spectacular view of any previous presidential memorial.

Visiting the final resting place of President Ronald Reagan completed my journey with the Dead Presidents Society.

My wife took my photo of me in triumph.

Some of the of visitors might have wondered what I was celebrating.

On Tuesday, I called my old friend John Doherty and we talked about that trip to see Andrew Johnson in 1988. We had not spoken in years and he was perplexed by the call and my pronouncement that "I had completed the mission."

After we shared how we are doing in retirement and what our children were doing, we started to talk about those past dead president trips. The memories were still fresh.

John just turned 70. He said he still had another nine presidents to go. The tough ones. The ones out west. I told him to get back on the road, finish the journey.

He seemed to dismiss the idea.

I hope he changes his mind.

Hell, I'd go with him and do it all again.

Warren County projects

The Finance/Budget Committee in Warren County met to discuss how to spend the $12.4 million allocated by the American Rescue Plan Act last week.

The money comes from the American Rescue Plan Act which was passed in Congress in 2021 to help communities recover from the Covid pandemic. Rep. Elise Stefanik joined the rest of the Republicans in the House of Representatives by voting against the plan.

But that has not stopped her from bragging about returning money to her district.

President Biden called out many of those Republicans in 2021.

“Even my Republican friends in Congress, not a single one of them voted for the Rescue Plan,” President Biden said at the time. “I’m not going to embarrass any one of them, but I have here a list of how, back in their districts, they’re bragging about the Rescue Plan. ... I mean, some people have no shame. But I’m happy. I’m happy they know that it’s benefited their constituents.”

NBC News reported there were 13 names on the list and Rep. Stefanik was one of them.

Politico reported at the time that Stefanik had taken credit for $12 million for hospitals in her district that came from the American Rescue Plan in the form of rural development grants from the Department of Agriculture.

Warren County has completed 43 projects with the money so far and has another 41 in the works. It needs to spend the rest of the money before it expires in 2026.

Don't be surprised if Elise Stefanik brags again about her role in bringing this money to the district even though she voted against it.

Cadets visit Ticonderoga

The West Point History Department posted a shout out to Fort Ticonderoga recently for hosting history cadets the weekend of April 20-21 at the fort where they "experienced a two-day living history immersion at Fort Ticonderoga."

The Cadets donned Continental Army uniforms, fired black powder weapons, and conducted camp duties such as firewood splitting, gambion creation, and Von Steuben style drill and a night patrol. Cadets learned to cook Continental Army rations and slept in the Ticonderoga barracks.

Battenkill Books

It's a busy time of year, but I hope you can make it out to Battenkill Books in Cambridge on Thursday evening as former Schenectady Gazette Editor Judy Patrick and myself have a conversation about newspapers, journalism and my latest collection of columns, The Last American Editor, Vol. 2.

Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.