Cold, Snowy, or Miserable

January is a heavy-load month for presidents and the final curtain call. No less then five presidents passed away in January, spanning the month, starting with Calvin Coolidge (5th/1933), followed by Theodore Roosevelt (6th/1919), Rutherford Hayes (17th/1893), John Tyler (18th/1862), and Lyndon Johnson (22nd/1973). Aside from sharing this month, each funeral was marked by a mixed bag of wintery weather. Coolidge, having died in MA, was transported to Plymouth Notch, Vermont for burial. The drive to the Green Mountain state was a miserable affair-rain, freezing rain, and more freezing rain throughout a large part of the trek made for a less than a harmonious farewell. But at the cemetery, there was no reprieve from the bone-chilling rain as hillside burial service was done under the same conditions that plagued the road trip from MA. Theodore Roosevelt's funeral in Oyster Bay, NY was a typical classic winter scene for New York. From the time his casket was removed from his home, Sagamore Hill, to the church service, and to the final stop at nearby Young's Memorial Cemetery, snow lined the streets, frosted the forest floors, and blanketed the hillsides of the cemetery. It was a sentimental departure for the outdoor enthusiast buried in the bucolic Young's Memorial Cemetery overlooking Oyster Bay, NY. A few hundred miles to the west and twenty-six years earlier, a similar funeral scene played out in Fremont, OH, where Hayes died at his home, Spiegel Grove. On the day of the funeral, around two feet of snow covered the Spiegel Grove lawn, which made for a less than optimal setting for Fremont locals on hand to watch the home memorial services through the windows. The laborious trek from the home to Oakwood Cemetery, despite it being fairly close, was a miserable experience for those who walked on foot through the freezing temperature and knee deep snow behind the horse drawn hearse. The Hayes family, distinguished guests, and honorary participants rode in carriages, insulated from the frigid Ohio winter. Thirty-one years earlier, a hundred miles to the Southeast in Richmond, VA, Tyler, the country's first vice-president who assumed the office, passed away in a Richmond hotel. His send-off, in particular the trek from St. Paul's church to Hollywood Cemetery was mired by cold wintry rain that continued during the burial service. It was a miserable experience for those in attendance, heavy wool jackets and pants absorbing the rain and increasing in weight, bonnets heavy from rain, and the ground muddy and soft. Fast forward to 1973, nearly a month after the passing of Harry Truman, Johnson passed away. The weather for his state funeral-set up in three parts, Austin, Texas, Washington, D.C., and Stonewall, Texas-was, for the most part, ideal. It was cold given the time of year but the skies were sunny in Austin and Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, there was no sunshine during the burial service in Stonewall at the family cemetery. The hill country weather was a blend of wintry rain and muddy, rain soaked ground shared by thousands of locals watching from all angles as Johnson's body was committed to the earth. So, in short order, January funerals have not been ideal, especially for the burials. Perhaps the biggest takeaway, though, is that despite the awful weather and frigid temperatures, each president received a large outpouring of grief displayed by locals on hand to bid farewell.

Johnson's bleak January funeral: a combination of bare trees, gray skies, and wintry weather.

Despite visiting Coolidge's grave in April, the grass was still brown and snow was still present.

Not exactly a thick layer of snow but it added a further degree of melancholy that was a stark contrast to the energy and vitality of the robust Theodore Roosevelt.