Paul Brustowicz

~Paul Brustowicz

It used to be we had two holidays in February: one for Lincoln and one for Washington.  Now we have one President’s day and it is not clear to me if it is for Abe and George or all the presidents.  In a prior piece I wrote about the fictional TV president, Josiah Bartlett.  This time it is about real presidents and grief.

Harold Ivan Smith has researched and written extensively about presidents and their grief, both before they were elected and when they occupied the White House. He is my source for what follows.

In The Griever-in-Chief: Abraham Lincoln, Smith describes how Lincoln was no stranger to grief, having lost his mother, aunt and sister before he was 20 years old.

At 26, Lincoln was grief-stricken over the death of his beloved Ann Rutledge and had actually contemplated suicide. Smith tells how, during the Civil War, Lincoln actively dealt with the deaths of his son, Willie, (the second one to die) and of a close friend and a general who had been named after Lincoln’s son Edward (the first one to die), and even cousins on the Confederate side.

According to Smith, Lincoln cried, moaned, groaned and otherwise was not afraid to express his feelings in public while mourning these losses.  “It is hard, hard to have him die”, Lincoln sobbed when he saw Willie’s dead body for the first time.

Other presidents affected by grief that Smith studied, include Andrew Jackson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

  • Rachel Jackson, Andrew’s wife, died a few weeks before his inauguration. His grief was still evident six years later when he prostrated himself on her gravesite.
  • Chester Arthur put fresh flowers next to his wife Ellen’s picture every day since she died in January 1880.
  • Calvin Coolidge’s son, Calvin Jr., died in 1924 from blood poisoning after a blister on his toe became infected. He was sixteen years old.  After that, Coolidge’s term in office was a non-event and one medical practitioner diagnosed him as clinically depressed.
  • The Eisenhowers buried their three year old son in January 1921 and it wasn’t until 1979 that Mamie Eisenhower expressed heartfelt but unnecessary guilt she carried all those years about Ikky’s death. Mamie had insisted in 1920 that she needed a maid, who turned out to be a carrier of the scarlet fever that led to meningitis that affected Ikky.
  • Dorothy Walker Bush, George H.W.’s mom, died not long after he was defeated by Bill Clinton. He admits to being a weepy mess in private throughout the holidays.  He kept his grief in check in public.  Her death resurrected some old hidden feelings.
  • The Bush’s four year old daughter died of leukemia when George W. was seven.  George W. remembers those years of “Lone Ranger” grief in his house:  everyone trying to mask their feelings.
  • Jackie Kennedy had a miscarriage in her first pregnancy when Jack was in Europe. Patrick Bouvier Kennedy died before he was a month old in the President’s arms.

You can find out more in Smith’s book, GriefKeeping – Learning How Long Grief Lasts.