This is the story of a United States presidential resting place where the casket holding the former chief executive's body is above ground and available for public viewing.
The body of James A. Garfield is in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. But the flag-draped casket is in full view for the public which may visit the memorial to the nation's twentieth president who died from an assassin's bullet in 1881.
"During his life he actually stated that he wanted to be buried at Lake View Cemetery," said Katherine Goss, cemetery president. Garfield, who was from Mentor, a community just outside Cleveland, had only been in office a few months when a deranged gunman fired a shot into the president's body. The scene was at a Washington, D.C. train station.
President Garfield held on for a few months until an infection from the bullet, which was never retrieved from his body during life, claimed the man who died just short of his 50th birthday.
In keeping with his wishes, the body of Garfield was brought to Lake View Cemetery where it was housed in a temporary vault. It was temporary because plans had begun to build what would become the Garfield Memorial and Monument. It took eight years from planning, to the raising of $300,000, to the completion of the building which stands at the highest point of the cemetery.
In those days, the U.S. government did not pay for a president's burial or a monument built in his memory; not even for a president who was murdered while in office.
In the upper portion of the massive structure are photographs and paintings depicting the various aspects of Garfield's life as he campaigned for political positions as a Republican. In the lower level of the structure is the casket. Next to that of Garfield is the casket of his wife, Lucretia, who died 30 years after her husband's murder.
"Sometimes I think we forget all the culture and history and historical things that are around us in Cleveland," said Sara Corrigan of suburban Cleveland as she viewed the presidential casket in the subdued light of the resting place.
It was said of President Abraham Lincoln who was assassinated 16 years before Garfield was murdered that Lincoln "now belonged to the ages."
Goss, who has visited the Garfield site many times since her childhood, said much the same of President James A. Garfield. "But I'd like to think of him first for Cleveland and then for the ages," she said.
The Garfield Monument and Memorial in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery is open to the public April 1 through November 19. The latter date is the birth date of Garfield. On that day, the President of the United States sends a high-ranking U.S. military officer to the site to place a wreath in the memorial in tribute to a president who was murdered.
