TJ Fallon began visiting the graves of U.S. presidents at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“I did it out of sheer boredom after being furloughed from my job,” said the New Jersey native.
Four years later, not only has he visited all 39 presidential graves no less than twice, but as of this week, his ten-year-old son Henry has also seen all of them.
On Monday, Henry of Brick, New Jersey, became perhaps the youngest person ever to perform the feat of paying his respects to each deceased president after he and his father disembarked from their flight to LAX to go to the libraries of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
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Afterwards, he said that it had been “somehow” a way of accomplishment for him to have seen all of the presidential graves.
The Fallons have traveled across the country to go to presidential libraries and cemeteries, including spending Henry's spring break on a road trip through Kansas and Missouri to go to the graves of Eisenhower and Truman.
Henry's favorite president? Lincoln.
But like many ten-year-olds, Henry just isn’t an enormous history buff and seems to have virtually little interest in politics. He zoomed across the Nixon Library wearing an Aaron Judge baseball cap and spent more time practicing his batting swing than taking a look at the exhibits.
His favorite museum is the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, he said. And what he likes best about these road trips with Dad just isn’t visiting the presidential tombs, but stopping on the ballparks along the way in which — and sometimes off the beaten track. The Fallons also headed to Dodger Stadium and Oracle Park in San Francisco this week — in addition to Dinseyland.
“People always ask me why I visit the graves of presidents,” said TJ Fallon. “It's a strange hobby. But it humanizes all these great people. They were people with families. They were mortal.”
The hobby began with a random Google search in 2020 when Fallon asked if New Jersey had any presidents buried. In fact, Grover Cleveland is buried in Princeton. Although Cleveland never attended college, he fell in love with the realm after giving a speech on the university in 1896, made Princeton his home after his second term as president, and have become a trustee of the Ivy League university.
After visiting Cleveland's grave, Fallon launched a difficult Google search: “Has anyone visited all the presidential graves?”
Fallon said that based on his research, it looked like no less than one person had done this, and maybe others. He resolved to do it faster.
So he drove greater than 60,000 miles through 34 states to go to all of them in nine months. He also visited all 34 graves of Vice Presidents, 53 of the 56 graves of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and all 39 signers of the Constitution. He was introduced by his hometown newspaper and Jay Leno's show “You Bet Your Life”; he has 20,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel “Dead History” and 50,000 followers on Instagram.
Fallon says Nixon has the most effective obituary of any president: “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.” Meanwhile, he believes Martin Van Buren has essentially the most inconspicuous gravesite, in a small cemetery in his hometown of Kinderhook, New York.
Fallon's fascination with presidential history may not have completely rubbed off on Henry, but no less than the 2 can at all times look back on this journey together.
“Seeing America with his father,” Henry said, “means a lot to him.”
Originally published:
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