Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? Part One

The Death of Restraint


When I was a kid, my father had dozens of little routines that he constantly threw out. My sisters and I were placed in the role of straight man as he hit the key punchlines in various Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and Marx Brothers routines. One of his favorite lines was "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?"

Unfamiliar with Marx's TV show "You Bet Your Life," I always assumed that this was a legitimate question. After all, maybe they built a huge crypt for Grant, but then someone more deserving died, so Grant ended up in a narrow grave while some other ex-president or a supreme court justice was buried in his tomb.


This, by the way, is what happens when you get used to trick questions. I had a little trouble dealing with the obvious.

When I got a little older and began displaying my nascent tourism interests, I asked my father where Grant's tomb was. He told me that it was in New York. When I asked him if we could ever visit it, he gave me a vague answer that it was "up North" and that we might go there "someday."

Based on his evasive answer, I assumed that the tomb was located somewhere in upstate New York, maybe near the Canadian border, and that we would never visit it. Years later, after I came to the city, I realized why my father was so loath to visit the site: it was located above 59th Street. As I might have mentioned once or twice, my father had a little paranoia about the city, and Harlem might have been Timbuktu as far as he was concerned.

One day, after dropping George off at day care, I decided to stop in and visit Grant. After a little research, I found out that his tomb was located at 122th Street and Riverside Drive, about fifteen blocks South of George's day care.

When Grant died, the national outpouring of grief was immeasurable, and areas fought over the right to hold his body. After a lot of politicking, New York City gained the contract, and a huge public subscription paid for the structure itself. The then-president, Benjamin Harrison, used a golden trowel to lay the cornerstone. The tomb itself, the largest individual mausoleum in North America, was based on a few classical references, including the tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus (which was one of the wonders of the ancient world) and Napoleon's mausoleum. The original plan called for a spur of the Hudson rail line and a dock on the Hudson river so that pilgrims could use numerous routes to come pay their respects.

Ultimately, these plans were scaled back somewhat, and they abandoned the dock and rail spur. However, the site is still a little over the top. To get to the mausoleum, one walks down a long, tree-lined plaza. The building itself is a huge pile of marble and granite, with a huge rotunda, gigantic granite eagles, and angels surrounding the slogan "Let Us Have Peace."

Inside, it's even crazier. There are three mosaics that detail events in Grant's Civil War career, a huge open cutaway (or oculus, if you want to be really particular about it) in the middle of the floor that displays the high-gloss caskets of Grant and his wife. There are also side rooms containing flags from the war, as well as painted murals outlining the major battle sites. After I talked to the guard a little, he let me go down to the caskets on the floor below.

The coffins of Grant and his wife sat side by side in their underground area, surrounded by busts of famous Civil War generals. It is simultaneously intimate and overwhelming.

It is also a little tacky and excessive. After all, Grant ranks with Dubya and Warren G. Harding as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. By his own admission, he was in over his head as a politician and statesman, and his presidency was marred by one terrible scandal after another. This is not to underestimate his incredible performance as a general, and the amazing honesty of his memoirs, but Grant was a disastrous President.

When one considers the comparatively humble graves of Lincoln, FDR, Jefferson, and Washington (not to mention Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, and even Kennedy), the fact tht America's largest and most impressive tomb is dedicated to Grant seems downright insane.

On the other hand, it's an amazing space, and it makes me nostalgic for the days when people would dedicate millions of dollars to create incredible public monuments. Once upon a time, people decided that they wanted to honor their greatest general and worst president. They saved their money and built an outrageous memorial that dwarfs the imagination and honors both Grant and their own excessive exuberance.

My Daughter's Gift to Me

Uncle Don was my father's only sibling. When I was growing up, he was a shadowy figure, shrouded in legend. Don was the one who told off my bitter, miserable grandparents, left his wife and son, and ran away to Mississippi. He remarried, fathered a couple of other kids, divorced again, and moved to Orlando. I met him years later, when I was in my early teens. He looked like Kenny Rogers, with a grizzled beard and eyes that were constantly laughing. In his relaxed, laconic style, there was nothing of the grim restraint that characterized my Long Island family. In fact, the only similarity between my grandparents and my uncle was that he was a (mostly) functional alcoholic.

Once Don came back into our lives, we started to see him every couple of years. He and my father could never truly be friends--my grandparents had hardwired hatred and competition into their sons from birth--but the two brothers also understood each other, and there was a genuine love that underlay the fist fights and drunken insults. For me, it was incredibly sad: even as a kid, I saw that, if they could ever get past their compulsive need to attack each other, the two men would be an unstoppable force. I also knew that this would never happen. The Watson boys would always be the best of enemies.

When my father died, Don came to visit. My sisters were convinced that he was sniffing around in search of whatever money he could scam off us. This might be true; he disappeared pretty soon after the funeral. I still like to give him the benefit of the doubt, though. He had his own life and family in Cincinnati and he needed to get back to work. Regardless, he did me a pretty big favor. Shortly after my dad died, I found myself completely overwhelmed. I had to arrange to have Dad's body shipped from the University of Virginia hospital in Charlottesville to the Everly Funeral Home in Fairfax while I was also planning for his funeral, dealing with visiting relatives, trying to get a job to support my family, writing an obituary, and making sure my sisters were doing well in school. In the middle of all of this, the well pump broke, and we found ourselves without water. Realizing that I was a hair's breadth away from a total meltdown, Don put his wife Trish in charge of the well and took me out for a beer. One beer turned into many, and I found myself unable to feel my toes. For the first, and only, time in my life, I had gotten wasted in a mall bar.

As we were draining pitchers, Don got me talking. We discussed all the responsibilities that I had to face, and my plans for the future. In the process, we got on to his relationship with Dad and the fact that they'd never been able to move beyond the hatred that their parents had so carefully cultivated. In the middle of all of this, Don said something really amazing. He told me that I'd completely changed my father. According to Don, Dad had always been taciturn and agressive as a child, and had never really been able to tone down his brutal, cruel intelligence far enough to deal with mere mortals. After I was born, Don told me, my father had finally allowed his humor to emerge, and had become a really funny, lovable person.

All my life, I had enjoyed my father's wicked, keen wit and incredible personal warmth. It had never occurred to me that these were not permanent parts of his personality, much less that I had had anything to do with them. Of course, I realize that Don might have been buttering me up, but I don't think he was. I think he was simply acknowledging a part of my father that he couldn't help loving.

Years later, I came across an interview with my mother's father, Maurice Kramer. Maurice was a health fanatic. He worked out a few days a week, swam constantly, and only ate "natural" food. What's really bizarre is that he followed this regimen in the 1940's, when "healthy lifestyle" could be roughly translated as "only smoking three packs of Luckys a day." At any rate, Maurice stated that he had performed his first handstand in his forties. I had always thought that Maurice was born in a gym, and it floored me to realize that he began working out only after the birth of his first few children. I began to glimpse how much fatherhood had changed even that unchangeable man.

I found out that my wife was pregnant in January 2005. Since then, I quit smoking, gained 20 pounds, began working out three times a week, started doing cardio exercises every day, watched my diet, and dropped 35 pounds. I got a tattoo. I started writing a blog. I began preparations for moving my family to New York. Within the next few months, I will leave Southwest Virginia and teaching and will begin a new life and a new profession in a new city. I have dropped friendships that stressed me out and cultivated relationships that make my life more meaningful. I have, in a very real way, tried to become the person that I always wanted to be. On the other hand, I have also been worrying more and laughing less. I find myself desperately trying to preserve my own sense of humor, even as my sense of self completely changes.

I have not gotten on this self-improvement kick for shits and giggles. Unlike my parents, I want to live to see my children graduate from college. Like my parents, I want to show my daughter what it is to be successful and self-actualized. I want my legacy to be one of joy and fulfillment, not bitterness and disappointment. I want to give George the best of my childhood, and demonstrate the best of my adulthood.

Thinking about my father and my grandfather, I wonder if this is something that every parent goes through. I have heard people whine about how having children forced them to give up their dreams, or cramped their lifestyles. It seems to me that George is making me pursue my dreams, and is forcing me to expand my lifestyle. Because of my daughter, I'm becoming the adult that I always wanted to look up to.

I can't help but think that our children are, at least to some extent, put here to remind us that our dreams are still attainable.

Victims

In 1995, I took a class on the history of the Vietnam war. Week after week, as our teacher passed out hundreds of xeroxed articles from period magazines, I found myself gradually realizing the horror of what had happened, both to Vietnam and to the young men that the United States sent there. Ironically, Robert MacNamara's memoir In Retrospect came out while I was in this class. I remember being enraged at his claim that he had realized that the war was unwinnable, even as he continued to send Americans to fight it. It seemed, to me at least, that he was clearing his conscience for his craven complicity in the destruction of so many lives. I decided that this was something that MacNamara should have taken to his grave, as it made it clear, once and for all, just how meaningless the war actually was.

I was reminded of MacNamara a couple of months ago when Gunther Grass, a German writer and Nobel laureate, admitted that he had been drafted into the Waffen SS when he was sixteen. This caused a huge uproar, as Grass had been an outspoken critic of Germany's Nazi past, and had even condemned Ronald Reagan for his visit to Bitburg cemetery in 1985 because Waffen SS officers were buried there. Grass' critics accused him of hypocrisy and smugness, and declared that he should have admitted his membership years ago, as it would have helped heal Germany's emotional wounds.

I found myself thinking about victims. In a culture where victim status is increasingly becoming the basis of legitimacy, it's interesting to think about real victimization, and the people that it hits. As a Navy brat, I grew up surrounded by Vietnam vets. My father didn't go to Vietnam because he was in military intelligence, and was quick to admit that he had a low pain threshold. As he told his superiors, if he was captured by the Vietcong, he was pretty much guaranteed to spill the beans as soon as they pulled out the pliars. Recognizing his sincerity, the Navy sent him to Korea. Personally, I'm glad they did, as my mother followed him to Seoul, where she conceived me.

But, to return to the actual point, much of my childhood was spent in the company of men who had gone to Vietnam. This was something that we rarely spoke of, but it was clear that these men did not remember their wartime experiences fondly. Occasionally, after a few too many beers, they would discuss some of their memories, and the things that they regretted.

I imagine that it was the same for Gunther Grass. In 1942, he was drafted into the Reichsarbeitdienst, or Reich Labor Service, a group that provided support to the Wehrmacht. Two years later, in November 1944, he was drafted into the Waffen SS. He served in the military for the few months between February 1945 and the end of the war.

I don't know what sights Grass saw during his few months in uniform, and I don't know what things he did. I don't want to know.

I do know that many of my father's friends had memories that tortured them for the rest of their lives. I also know that many of them were unable to forgive themselves for the things they did.

Did they have a choice? Did Gunther Grass? I know that, like Grass, some of my father's friends were drafted, while others voluntarily joined the military. However, I don't think that those who chose to sign up really knew what they were getting themselves into. By the time they had figured it out, I imagine that it was too late.

I know what I was like at sixteen, and I have some small understanding of the things that I was capable of doing. I'm really glad that I was never put in a position to do things that I would later regret. Faced with a choice between a low-paying entry-level job and enlistment, I'm pretty sure that I'd choose enlistment. For that matter, given a choice between not going to college or signing up for the National Guard, I'd have to go for the National Guard. In the current climate, that would mean that I'd end up in Iraq or Afghanistan.

When we talk about victims, it's fashionable to focus on people who have to deal with sexual discrimination, or racism, or other forms of prejudice. These are legitimate concerns, but I think we have to broaden our understanding of victimization. It seems to me that anyone can be a victim, and that some of the hardest things to forgive are the ones that we, ourselves, have done.