A new day A new experience

Many years ago My sister Sara, her husband Joe and Debbie, their daughter came to Indiana for a visit. It was planned ahead that we would take a short trip to a few places where Presidents were buried not too far away from us

Sara was an avid collector of presidential memorabilia, and she liked to visit their graves as well.

We went first to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the Gerald Ford' s presidential library and museum is located. He was not yet dead at that time but his library and museum are there.

We spent some time there looking in the museum and library. then we traveled on to the other president's graves we planned to see. It has been so long ago that I cannot remember who the other two presidents were that we visited. They must have been in either Illinois or Ohio because I know they were not too far away from Indiana.

All that being said, we were at the cemetery of one of them and we were driving along the side of the cemetery and suddenly Ford took a sharp right turn and threw us all to one side of the car--it was before seat belts--and then he explained his sudden turn. We had come to an entrance and he didn't want to miss it so he just suddenly turned into it. If we had gone around the block to another entrance we would have taken a few more minutes. Fortunately, no one was any the worse for his jerky driving!

It was a good thing he did that because when we got to the attendant in the cemetery he was just going to lock the gates as it was closing time. If we had not taken that sudden turn we would have not got in before the attendant locked everything up. So we thanked Ford for his sharp turn into the gate. But we often remember that shockingly sharp turn that threw us all to one side of the car.

At the other president's place, it was his home that had been made in to a museum. We toured through the house and out to the back yard. As we were in the back yard, Ford suddenly had an urge to use a bathroom. Unfortunately, there was none there. So Ford looked around and since there were many trees around, he picked one and took a tinkle behind It.

I can't remember which president's home it was but Ford did leave him a present in his back yard! I might add that we were the only guests there at the time!

I remember with pleasure that trip because my sister, Sara, is now deceased and that trip was one of my good memories of time spent with her!