Cleveland Rocks!
"Someday, I'll be better remembered." -- Grover Cleveland
Here is something I never saw coming, back when I set out to visit the gravesites of United States presidents many years ago: my most-visited site, so far, is that of Grover Cleveland, the 22nd — and 24th — U.S. president. I don’t have an exact number in my head, but I am thinking that I may have visited Cleveland and his family members in Princeton Cemetery at least 10 times. So far.
Part of the reason for this is pure proximity. I am about equidistant from two former presidents: 42 miles from James Buchanan to my west, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and 48 miles from Grover Cleveland, 48 miles to my east, in Princeton, New Jersey. So it stands to reason that I have made multiple journeys to both sites.
In Princeton, though, there is something else, just up the street from President Cleveland: the Princeton Record Exchange, one of my favorite record stores in the country.
A late president and a world-class record store within a block of each other? The magnetic pull is almost more than I can stand. Sitting at my desk right now, I feel myself being tilted eastward just thinking about it.
March 18, which as I write this just became yesterday, is the anniversary of Grover Cleveland’s birth in 1837. I should note at this juncture that I might not have known it was Cleveland’s birthday if it weren’t for the efforts of the Grover Cleveland Art Society, (on Instagram at groverclevelandartsociety), which is working hard to propagate Cleveland awareness through art.
Since I knew it was Cleveland’s birthday, I was happy to be able to borrow a recent biography, A Man of Iron, by Troy Senik, at the Royersford Public Library. There is no reason a man’s biography should languish on a library bookshelf on his birthday! I am looking forward to reading it (by April 8!) because, to be honest, for as many times as I have visited his gravesite, I don’t know as much about Grover Cleveland — the man and the president — as I should. That’s all going to change.
One thing that won’t change though, is that I will continue to visit Grover Cleveland at Princeton Cemetery, and I will continue to bring my Princeton Record Exchanges purchases to him for his approval.
