Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [65]
Mr. Kaye died in 1972 of diabetes, soon after the couple had sold their modest sewing shop and retired. Mrs. Kaye moved into Patterson Senior Village in 1981. Due to medical complications, the couple had no children. She is survived by various distant cousins.
Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States when Mrs. Kaye was born, but her neighbors say she had always held a place in her heart for Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft.
“She loved to talk about the postcard she’d sent [Taft] when she was a little girl, back when he was still in office, before he disappeared and came back and all that,” says Patterson head nurse Becky Shalom. “And, of course, Taft himself came to pay her a visit last fall, which delighted her to no end. She also collected teddy bears and made the most beautiful quilts you ever saw, but mostly she listened to other residents rather than talk about herself all the time. She was an angel.”
Service will be held Friday, June 8, at Orlowitz Funeral Home. Burial will be in Walnut Hills Cemetery. —Tracy Sullivan
CLASSIFIED
Secret Service Incidence Report
BBR20120612.19
Agent Ira Kowalczyk
Attached find perimeter plan documents for 6/14, 6/15, and 6/16, the Taft Party National Convention at Great American Ball Park. Agents Pearsall, Horton, and myself assigned to Big Boy’s personal detail; agents Mietus, Kerr, and St. John assigned to Grand Girl’s. Have cleared all of Taft Party’s hired security forces for general crowd-control duties.
At this point, my main concern is not any external threat to Big Boy’s physical safety, but rather his psychological safety. He has been distracted and unfocused for the past two weeks. Must make sure he doesn’t put himself in harm’s way through sheer bloody Taftishness.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Great American Ball Park squatted at the south end of downtown Cincinnati, an overthrown pitch away from the Ohio River. Not that anyone was thinking about baseball today or, indeed, about anything other than the crowds. Taft had to hand it to the party leaders; they might not be—well, definitely were not—the campaign lieutenants he would have chosen had any of this been his own idea, but they nonetheless were capable organizers. As soon as the venue for the convention had been set in stone, they’d miraculously mobilized their various factions. Some anonymous benefactor had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars reserving every spare hotel room in the city and surrounding area. A fleet of private shuttles had shown up earlier in the week, ready to ferry battalions of Tafties from one event to the other. Umbrella-shaded food carts had popped up around the city like mushrooms, though Taft had noticed with a passing frown that the lunch vendors all seemed to carry a robust selection of Fulsom snacks among their wares. Wasn’t anyone listening to him?
As ravenous as he was this morning, Taft sat in his makeshift office suite in the Millennium Hotel and ate as slowly as he could. Sharing breakfast helped; it was easier for him to avoid wolfing down an entire plate of food that way. Of course, the cardboard-like taste and texture of these newfangled whole-grain bagels slowed the process considerably. For the better, though; his diet hadn’t been easy to institute and adhere to over the past few months. But what had been? Despite that he still needed to lose a good fifty pounds, he was on the mend; he let his momentary lapses—nights where he broke down and indulged in calories, carbohydrates, maudlin thoughts of Teddy and Nellie—pass behind closed doors, only to be forced to the back of his mind by morning.
He swallowed the last bite of his meager breakfast and pushed away the plate. He knew he should feel something. Anything. Here he was, arriving at a convention attended by thousands