Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb__ A Tour of Presidential Gravesites - Brian Lamb [52]
The president’s doctor first suspected food poisoning. Others blamed “apoplexy,” the term then used to describe a stroke. One journalist even accused Florence Harding of poisoning her husband as punishment for his extramarital affairs. Nothing sinister was ever proven.
Vice President Calvin Coolidge was vacationing at his father’s home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, when he got the news in the middle of the night. Coolidge’s father, a notary public, swore in his son as the thirtieth president of the United States in the sitting room of the family home.
The nation was stunned. Special edition newspapers were snatched up while the ink was still wet. Thousands turned out to see the funeral train that brought Harding’s body back to the East Room of the White House. Public mourning continued at the Capitol, where thirty thousand citizens passed by his coffin, resting on the same catafalque used for Abraham Lincoln.
The third president from Ohio to die in office was taken back to his father’s home in Marion, Ohio. Nearly all of the town’s residents paid their respects. Harding’s body was placed in a temporary vault at Marion Cemetery while public funds were raised to construct a monument in his honor. His wife lived just one year more.
School children donated their pennies to fund construction of the Harding Memorial
Warren and Florence Harding are buried together at the Harding Tomb
In 1927, the bodies of Warren and Florence Harding were moved to the newly constructed Harding Memorial. It was dedicated in 1931 by President Herbert Hoover.
Touring Warren G. Harding’s Tomb at the Harding Memorial
The Harding Memorial is located in a ten-acre landscaped park in Marion, Ohio, on State Route 423. The Harding Tomb is at the corner of State Route 423 and Vernon Heights Boulevard in Marion. Vernon Heights is about 1.5 miles west of U.S. Route 23 off of State Route 95 in Marion County.
The Harding Tomb is open year-round during daylight hours. Admission is free.
For additional information
Harding Tomb
Vernon Heights Boulevard
Marion, OH 43302
Phone: (740) 387-9630
www.ohiohistory.org/places/hardtomb
“Unfortunately, he received the worst possible
treatment from a quack named
Charles Sawyer…”
—Richard Norton Smith
On June 20, 1923, Harding and his party of sixty-five left Washington’s Union Station for what the beleaguered president called a “Voyage of Understanding.” Traveling through the isolationist Midwest, Harding showed genuine courage in advocating U.S. membership in the World Court. “I want America to play her part in helping to abolish war,” he told an audience in Salt Lake City.
But the trip had a somber subtext, one invisible to the large and enthusiastic crowds that turned out to greet the popular chief executive. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover never forgot the round-the-clock bridge games with which the president distracted himself.
“If you knew of a great scandal in our administration,” Harding asked Hoover, “would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?”
“Publish it,” said Hoover, “and at least get credit for integrity on your side.”
Pressing for details, Hoover heard vague talk of “irregularities” in the Justice Department, where a close associate of Attorney General Henry Daugherty had recently committed suicide. As the grueling trip proceeded, Harding’s health visibly deteriorated. Unfortunately, he received the worst possible treatment from a quack named Charles Sawyer, an old Marion acquaintance favored by the First Lady. It was “Doc” Sawyer, for example, who blamed the president’s collapse in Alaska on some tainted crabmeat.
By the time he arrived in San Francisco on July 29, Harding was at death’s door, his enlarged