“My president-obsessed son and I plan to visit all the presidential sites in Ohio this summer. Do you have a list?”

James A Garfield Memorial @ Lake View Cemetery

Okay, this one came from a friend of mine. Her son, my “faux” nephew (long story short, I have no brothers or sisters and consequently no nieces and nephew so he calls me Aunt Sam and I love it) is a presidential expert. He doesn’t just know all our of our American presidents names and terms of office, he knows where they were born, their significant feats, their family trees and, in some cases, their shoe sizes and their food allergies. He’s a seven year-old 37-pound walking encyclopedia of US leaders. It’s startling for the uninitiated. “We went to the Garfield Memorial at Lake View Cemetery and he chatted up the staff,” my friend told me in a whisper. “The guide was impressed, but also a little frightened, I think.”

For those who’ve never been to Lake View Cemetery, it’s a great day trip. I know, it’s an active cemetery and that might seem a bit morbid at first. But it is also a beautiful historic garden cemetery, an outdoor sculpture museum, the location of one of the few all-Tiffany designed rooms anywhere–Wade Chapel–and the final resting place for JD Rockefeller (leave a dime on his grave and you may have future riches), crimefighter Eliot Ness, African American inventor Garrett Morgan and others. Garfield’s memorial there is worth seeing and he, I have been told, is the only president with an above-ground coffin draped in an American flag.

Ohio is a hotbed of presidents, eight in all, which I think should be of interest to more than this pint-size historian during an election year. There are quite a few sites to tour and I sent my friend this list from the State of Ohio.

I was lucky enough to get to go with my “nephew” to the McKinley Presidential Library and Memorial in Canton. After touring the memorial, we headed to the galleries and exhibits across the way. The museum section is eclectic with dinosaurs, a planetarium and a street of shops–none of which held much luster for the presidential buff. He was singularly focused and the Garfield artifacts, video and info on ”first families” on their pets were all he thought was worth a look. My friend and I, however, were amazed by one exhibit in the “industrial hall,” a tribute to Canton companies like Sugardale and Timken.  The Hoover display included a chrome and blue “pleather” chair. Visitors were invited to sit in the suspended chair and then turn the switch on a common Hoover household vacuum which, the maker demonstrated, HAD THE POWER TO SUCK YOU UP IN THE AIR. My friend and I love the quirky. In our minds, it was totally worth the price of admission.    –Samantha Fryberger