Our presidents. Since our country was first formed in 1776, we have had 47 presidents. Some of them have been repeaters, as you well know. All of them have been men.
Anyway. At times, they do great things and at other times, not so much.
And in that? Well, we seem to love presidential firsts.
The first to have a beard. The first on television. The first to be impeached.
(The answers to this will be in tomorrow’s blog.)
But the lasts? Those are sneakier. Stranger. And sometimes more revealing.
Presidential “lasts” are a little screwier. “He was the last guy to….”
Like these.
Bill Clinton was the last president to leave office with a federal budget surplus. He was the 42nd president and served from 1993 to 2001.
James K. Polk was the last president with no children of any kind.
Harry Truman was the last without a college degree. Back then, the road to the presidency looked very different.
Some lasts are oddly human.
Benjamin Harrison was the last bearded president. No whiskers have crossed the Oval Office threshold since. He was the 24th president and was in office from 1889 to 1893.
James Buchanan was the last bachelor president. He mostly relied on his niece to act as First Lady.
Woodrow Wilson was the last to marry while in office. He fell in love again after grief had already taken its toll. His wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, died of kidney disease in 1914. He then married Edith Bolling Galt Wilson in 1915.
Other “presidential lasts” show us how the country itself changed.
Franklin Roosevelt was the last inaugurated in March before the nation decided waiting that long made little sense. Now it is freezing January.
Dwight Eisenhower was the last to regularly travel by train. His wife didn’t like to fly.
William McKinley was the last president without full-time Secret Service protection. Of course, that sad fact probably killed him. His assassination forced the issue.
Historically, we seem to pay more attention to the “firsts” in the scheme of things. But endings? They slip past us. Most of us never notice, because, at the time, we don’t know it is a last. Like that beard on Benjamin Harrison.
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“History is not the past. It is the present.” — James Baldwin
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“Change is inevitable. Change is constant.” — Benjamin Disraeli
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“Every ending is a beginning we don’t yet understand.” — Mitch Albom
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