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| President Jacob Gould Schurman, right, poses with former U.S. President William Howard Taft on the Arts Quad during one of Taft's visits. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections |
By Linda Grace-Kobas
It's been 21 years since a former president of the United States visited the Cornell campus. In 1983 Gerald Ford presented a lecture at Alumni Reunion. (Bill Clinton will speak at Senior Convocation on Saturday, May 29, at Schoellkopf Field. See accompanying box.)
Since its founding, Cornell has played host to 11 visitors who held the office of Chief Executive. Only one was a sitting president -- Ulysses S. Grant. Four were past-presidents, including the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and a former farmer whose plain-spokenness was exemplified in his motto, "The buck stops here."
Six others had yet to reach their place in White House history. Gen. James A. Garfield, the last president to be born in a log cabin, "sat late into the night," talking with President Andrew Dickson White in 1878. Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to campus while they were New York governors. Richard Nixon stopped by in 1956. Who would have guessed that a young baseball player from Yale or a television personality/actor who visited would go on to hold the highest office in the land?
Jimmy Carter campaigned in the city during his run for the presidency in 1975-76, but there is no record of his being on campus.
The visits of Grant, Garfield and Dwight D. Eisenhower are commemorated with bronze plaques on the mantle of the fireplace in the parlor of the A.D. White House. A portrait of White in his middle age hangs over the mantle; he is full-bearded, a man in his prime. He was just 44 years old when he sat up late into the night talking to Grant, the hero of Appomattox, before the fireplace.
As recounted by Romeyn Berry in Behind the Ivy, White told the story "so often, and with so much gusto: the terrible time he had searching the pantry and the kitchen closet at 2 a.m. for a nightcap for the General. The butler had gone to bed ... and all the President of Cornell could uncover for the President of the United States was a half-empty bottle of inferior cooking brandy. But Andrew D.'s embarrassment was short-lived. Grant took that bottle of cooking brandy, he said, as promptly, and as unconditionally, as he once took Fort Donelson."
The presidential visits reflected the spirits of their times and Cornell's involvement in national affairs. Here are their stories:
The Journal gave a detailed account of Grant's visit, starting with his arrival by railroad in Ithaca with his wife. He was met by village dignitaries and his youngest child, Jesse Root Grant, who was Class of 1877 at Cornell. The Journal noted that it was to Jesse Grant's "presence in Ithaca we owe this honored and never-to-be-forgotten visit."
White led the Grants on a tour of university buildings and "despite the very disagreeable state of the weather, [they] made a thorough examination of them, and expressed themselves as highly pleased with the commanding site and fine appearance of the University and its precincts, and with the system of instruction pursued, as explained by President White," the Journal reported.
During the carriage ride to campus, Grant "expressed his great pleasure at his reception here, with the University, the progress his son was making in that institution, and with Ithaca and its people in general."
That evening, related the Journal, "At eight o'clock the spacious and brilliantly lighted residence of [President White] was thrown open" to guests who included the university trustees and faculty. Grant entered the library escorted by Henry W. Sage, and spent the entire evening standing and chatting with each guest. He took a cigar break, about which the Journal reporter enthused: "A stranger dropped into this company would never have for a moment imagined that the greatest general of the age, a man twice elected to the highest office in the gift of the nation, the Great Father of the Aborigines of the West, was among those here assembled."
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| New York Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt broadcasts from Cornell while attending Farm and Home Week in February 1931. His press secretary, Guernsey Cross, stands behind him. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections |
The next morning President and Mrs. White, with Jesse Grant, escorted the Grants to the railroad station for their return to Washington. A crowd gathered to bid goodbye to "the man who is at once the illustrious soldier, whose back no enemy ever saw, and Chief Magistrate of the mightiest nation of the earth," the Journal reported.
In 1925 Jesse Grant published a memoir, In the Days of My Father General Grant.
Garfield gave a lecture the next day, of which the Ithaca Daily Journal opined: "We wish that every republican, every greenbacker and every democrat in our county could have listened to his eloquent teachings, to his telling points, and his able exposition of the financial problem which confronts the American people." That problem was the value of its paper currency, and Garfield urged a return to "honest money."
This was only three years before the unfortunate Ohioan was fatally shot by a disappointed office seeker.
On June 20, 1899, Theodore Roosevelt, the former leader of the Rough Riders who was then serving as New York's governor, came to campus to pay tribute to his fallen comrade by planting two Norway spruce trees at Delta Kappa Epsilon's lodge on South Avenue. The trees still stand and are listed on the New York State Register of Historic Trees.
During his first visit in March 1915, the Cornell Daily Sun reported he spoke before "the greatest audience in Cornell's history." Three thousand students and faculty crammed into Bailey Hall to hear the ex-President discuss "The Signs of the Times." Hundreds were turned away. He also presented three Goldwin Smith lectures, two on the anti-trust law and the last on the powers of the presidency, which he said were "... wide enough to do the work that an energetic enterprising people wish him to do."
He returned in February 1916 to present four more Goldwin Smith lectures, whose topics illustrate still-ongoing national debates: "Our World Relationships and Preparedness," "The Supreme Court and Popular Government," "The League to Enforce Peace" and "The Limits of Jurisdiction of the Three Branches of the Federal Government."
During his third visit in May 1916, when he presented four lectures on the presidency, Taft was a dinner guest of the Cornell chapter of Acacia fraternity. Thomas Balcerski, a junior doing a double major in American studies and economics and the current president of Acacia, says that at the time of his visits, Taft "was well on his way to return to public service. Taft is one of those few American presidents who went back and served the United States in another capacity." Five years after the visit, he was appointed chief justice of the United States, a post he held until his death in 1930.
Two framed letters from Taft hang in Acacia's library, both of them related to the dinner invitation. Balcerski explains that the national fraternity was founded in 1904 by a group of master Masons at the University of Michigan. Cornell's Masonic Club joined the fraternity, whose motto is "Human Service," in 1907. As an alumnus of Yale and a Mason, Taft was made an honorary member of the fraternity by the Yale chapter, and thus was "Brother Taft" to the Cornell group.
"The Traveler," the Cornell Acacia newsletter, reported on the event: "Our guest was given the reclining Morris chair -- the biggest and strongest in the house. For three hours topics of the day were discussed. ... He had a good word for all and allowed no petty personal or political grievance to creep into his discussion. ... It was about 10:30 when Mr. Taft said: 'Well, boys, I've enjoyed myself; it is seldom I get a chance to air myself in the absence of reporters.' It is needless to say the 'boys' enjoyed themselves."
"I imagine he was very polished, very stately," said Balcerski, who added that the dinner was held in Acacia's former home at 708 E. Seneca St. The fraternity no longer has formal ties to Masonry and is proud of its diverse membership, Balcerski said.
Eleanor Roosevelt visited Cornell often, having great interest in the College of Home Economics, the first state-chartered home economics college in the country. According to Morris Bishop in A History of Cornell: "She was a regular visitor and speaker at Farm and Home Week. In fact, in March 1933, Mrs. Roosevelt, beginning her housekeeping at the White House, served a depression lunch recommended at Farm and Home Week: hot stuffed eggs with tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, prune pudding, bread, and coffee, at a cost of 7-1/2 cents a plate. The President ate it all, and then signed the bill legalizing a 3.2 per cent beer."
A campus legend says that Bush hit the first home run out of Hoy Field, but the true story is more interesting. The first shot out of the park was hit by a player from Syracuse University a year after the field opened in 1921. But the legendary Lou Gehrig, who was the starting pitcher for the Columbia University Lions, slammed Hoy Field's second over-the-fence home run -- at more than 400 feet, perhaps the farthest ever hit here -- on April 21, 1923.
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| On Oct. 17, 1956, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, second from left, speaks with Law School Dean Robert Sproule Stevens, while William Rogers, J.D. '37 (who later was Nixon's secretary of state), and Cornell President Deane Malott look on. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections |
Buck Laird '64 remembers flying to Ithaca with his mother for a campus visit and being on Truman's Mohawk Airlines flight. "Truman and his escort [a lone Secret Service agent] waited in the boarding area, got on and off just like all the other passengers," he said, adding that his mother, "an active Democrat and staunch Truman supporter," was thrilled at the opportunity to go to Truman's seat and chat with him.
Truman had been invited to speak by the Student Government Executive Board. Government Professor Ted Lowi, then a junior faculty member, played a role in what he called "a spectacular visit."
"Truman went to three Ivy League schools and I was at all of them," Lowi said. Truman was "terribly sensitive" about his lack of a college education and felt insecure about speaking at an Ivy League school, even though his administration had more Ivy Leaguers than any before, Lowi explained.
Truman finally visited Yale, where Lowi was a graduate student, in 1958, only on the condition that Yalie Dean Acheson, who had served as Truman's secretary of state, accompany him. Lowi set up meetings with students and faculty at Yale. When Columbia invited Truman to do the same the following year, Truman accepted "if you make it like the Yale thing," Lowi said. Lowi was then on staff at Columbia and was asked to repeat his work. The following year, when Lowi greeted Truman at the front door of the Statler Inn, Truman could hardly believe it, Lowi remembered, and exclaimed, "How do you do it!"
Laird said that for many years the Statler Inn displayed Truman's registration card in a frame on the wall behind the front desk. It read, in Truman's hand, "Harry S. Truman, retired farmer."
Truman had a "nice reunion" with Professor Frances Perkins, who had served as secretary of labor under Franklin Roosevelt and was instrumental in creating the New Deal, Lowi said. He described himself, then a bachelor, as the "escort gigolo" for Perkins at a formal dinner party she gave for Truman. "I was so much in awe of her," he said, noting that it was Perkins who is credited with coining the phrase, "Cornell is the most centrally isolated place in the world." Lowi observed, "It was her standard reply when asked why she left Washington to come to Cornell."
Lowi held a post-mortem of Truman's speech the day after he gave it. The Cornell Alumni News reported that students "flocked" to it and heard Lowi characterize Truman as "a most talkative sphinx." Lowi said Truman "finds education mysterious and over-rates it terribly; it is a thing he does not possess."
Truman's visit to Cornell haunted him for a while afterward. One of the events arranged was a press conference limited to student newspapers, Lowi said. A student reporter asked him what he thought about the student sit-ins for civil rights in the South, and he replied that he believed they were being inspired by Communists. This was reported the following day in The New York Times. Truman tried to back off from the statement, but one of the enterprising student reporters revealed a tape recording of the news conference, made "unbeknownst to me," Lowi said.
"There was a short flap about it, but he got by," Lowi said, adding that he believes Truman was sincere in his support for civil rights, but "he just didn't like demonstrations."
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| Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, right, is greeted at the Ithaca airport by Cornell President Deane Waldo Malott and his wife, Eleanor, on May 17, 1963. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections |
The revered general was guest of honor at a luncheon at the A.D. White House hosted by Malott on May 17, 1963, and afterward he presented a speech to more than 6,000 people at Barton Hall. Among the attendees were local schoolchildren, including Laura Linke '73, now senior reference specialist at the Rare and Manuscript Collections, who was a sixth-grader at Cayuga Heights School then. She said it was "a thrilling field trip" and vividly remembers Ike giving the victory sign.
A "suntanned and beaming" Eisenhower spoke for 15 minutes and issued warnings against the "evils of specialization," the Daily Sun reported. He said, "We are living under a system that encourages each of you to become extremely expert in your own selected line of endeavor ... these advances in experimental and other sciences -- wonderful as they are -- must never overcome your strength and dedicated devotion to the principles on which this nation was founded."
According to an account in the Ithaca Journal, Ford railed against federal budget deficits and any increase in domestic spending. He urged Congress to get the nation's budget under control. During the question-and-answer period, he was "obviously annoyed" when he was asked, "Why should anyone who believes in a compassionate role for government vote Republican?" His reply was that the most compassionate way to help the needy was to help them get a job, the Journal reported.
Special thanks for contributing to this article go to Erik Bjarnar, Ed Hershey and Laura Linke.
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