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Although I have always (since age 8 or so) had a desire to visit the presidential gravesites -- to be as close as one can get to each of the men who held the office -- the idea of recording the visits on film was something I never thought about. Truth be told, this whole somewhat macabre collection was all my wife's idea. Before we were married, we made a cross-country trip from her parents' home in Northern Virginia to Denver, and while doing so, we foolishly passed three or four presidential sites without stopping. This was because the trip was somewhat scheduled -- I wanted to make it to Chicago in time to see a certain Cubs game. Were it not for my love for the hapless Cubs (a love since replaced or augmented, I'm afraid, by the appearance of the Colorado Rockies), I'd have surely been stopping at the presidential haunts we bypassed.
We made it to Wrigley Field, and I saw my first big league ball game. To complete the perfect experience, my beloved Cubs lost for me, although Ryne Sandberg (my favorite player at the time) hit a home run for the Cubs' only run.
With our schedule freer after the Chicago stop, we pulled off the highway at the Hoover site in Iowa. Wearing the shirt I bought at the Cubs game, I mugged for the camera between the marble slabs which mark Herb and Lou's resting places, and my wife thereupon remarked that such photographs could become another presidential collection of mine (she was, of course, aware of my odd predilection for such things). I loved the idea, although we didn't take much action on it for a while. In fact, when we finally got around to adding to the collection at all, it was a quite a chore to hunt up the picture, shown above, which started it all.
...White
House Biography of President Hoover...
...Hear Hoover give voice to the American Dream [WAV]...