Examining his patient on Thursday, the thirty-first, Grayson remained unalarmed. But Edith wanted a second opinion. She called Dr. Sterling Ruffin, her internist, who concurred with the night nurse. “He is a very sick man,” he told Edith, and he advised Grayson’s spending the night in the house. The next morning at eight, Edith came downstairs to tell Randolph that she believed Woodrow was dying and that they should notify his children. While they were talking, Grayson entered and said that Wilson had taken a sudden turn for the worse in the early morning hours. His systems were shutting down.
Bolling telephoned Margaret in New York, telegraphed Nell in California, and cabled Jessie through the Siamese Embassy, advising them all of their father’s condition. Margaret arrived that afternoon. Despite everybody’s discretion, the press caught wind of the story. Grayson invited Dr. Harry A. Fowler to consult, and when he informed Wilson that he had his two colleagues outside the sickroom ready to examine him, Wilson attempted a smile and said, “Be careful. Too many cooks spoil the broth.” The next day Altrude Grayson drove over with two of their sons; the younger remained in the car with his mother while six-year-old Gordon, the President’s young companion after his stroke, was invited upstairs, briefly, to look in on his old friend. Faintly, Wilson smiled.
With repeated visits from physicians and the convergence of family members upon S Street, reporters gathered outside the house for what they realized was a death vigil. They erected a small shack to shelter themselves from the winter weather. They saw Margaret arrive alone, followed by Wilson’s younger brother, Josie, who was so much a stranger to Washington that few even recognized him. That night, Grayson released a statement saying that Wilson had not been allowed out of bed all day.
The next morning’s headlines warned that Wilson was dying. The news, President Coolidge wrote Mrs. Wilson, had disquieted the nation. “I join in the universal prayer that there may very soon be a change for the better.” Dr. Grayson telephoned the White House to inform the President that both Wilsons wanted him to know how much they had appreciated his letter. Grayson added that the former President was too weak to talk but upon having the letter read to him managed to say, “He is a fine man.”
Wilson steadily declined. He ingested only a few sips of broth. With his kidneys failing came uremic poisoning. The doctors administered oxygen and morphine to ease any pain. Dr. Grayson chose his patient’s final moments of lucidity, when he was fully conscious, to pronounce that his death was imminent, and Wilson did not recoil. “I am ready,” he said. “I am a broken piece of machinery. When the machinery is broken—.” His voice trailing off, he never completed the thought, but he recovered enough to whisper, “I am ready.”
While they were not Woodrow Wilson’s last words, they proved to be striking enough to resonate as such. In truth, he revived for a moment and rested his hand on Grayson’s arm. “You have been good to me,” he said. “You have done everything you could.” Grayson turned away in tears and left the room. After composing a brief statement, he faced the hundreds standing outside in the cold, the press among them. “He knows his condition,” Grayson said, choking on his words. “He is the gamest man I ever knew.” And as he read in a tremulous voice from his bulletin, several in the crowd rushed up to him, grabbing at the paper in his hand—as if stopping the announcement might prevent the inevitable.
After almost a two-year absence, Tumulty stopped by the house several times that day but did not gain admittance. He returned that night and asked for Grayson, insisting that his decade of loyal service had earned him the right to one final encounter. The doctor agreed, though he said the patient was sleeping. Edith hardly left her husband’s side, and Grayson knew, of course, that she had no interest in Tumulty. By midnight, most of the crowd had dispersed, though the press corps remained. At midnight, a window on the second floor opened, and Isaac Scott poked his head out to say, “Mrs. Wilson asks you to please go away. She is trying to sleep.” The house darkened, except for a faint light from her room.
By then, Wilson had slipped into unconsciousness. “Profoundly prostrated,” one bulletin had reported. Grayson fought back tears with each discouraging update. All that Saturday, people dropped by—Herbert Hoover, Cordell Hull, Carter Glass; diplomats and well-wishers left their cards on the butler’s silver tray; the crowd on S Street swelled; Tumulty returned. But only Wilson’s wife and daughter and physician, and a few nurses, could enter the dying man’s bedroom. At one point during the day, at a moment when his wife had left his side, he whispered a single word: “Edith.” He hovered in a twilight state for the rest of the night.
Dawn broke on a raw Sunday, February 3, 1924. Grayson’s 9 a.m. bulletin announced that Wilson remained unconscious and weak but alive. Church bells rang, producing a strange occurrence. At first dozens, and then hundreds of worshippers entered S Street and knelt before No. 2340. One could see people’s lips moving in silent prayer, producing a profound stillness.
Inside the house, inexplicably, Wilson’s eyes opened. Edith leaned in and held his right hand, while Margaret grasped his left. Two nurses stood at the foot of the bed. Dr. Grayson took hold of his wrist to monitor his pulse. Wilson’s wife and daughter gently called to him, but he did not respond. After ten minutes, his eyes closed. At 11:15 the machinery gave out, as his pulse ebbed and then stopped.
Grayson appeared at the front door at 11:20. Reading very slowly and in a subdued voice, he announced the death, saying, “The heart muscle was so fatigued that it refused to act any longer. The end came peacefully.” As he detailed the medical causes of the death—the arteriosclerosis and hemiplegia with which Wilson had lived for years and the “digestive disturbance” that had signaled this fatal siege—he did not even attempt to keep from crying. Those in the street too far away to hear Grayson’s words had only to watch him blotting his face with a handkerchief to know the end had come.
Within minutes the rest of the world knew. In Bangkok, a telegram notified Frank Sayre, who left his office that morning to break the news to Jessie, who was “heartbroken.” They could do no more than attend the next day’s memorial services in the local English church. Nellie McAdoo and her husband were on the California Limited, halfway across the country, with another few days before they would reach Washington. Radio programs everywhere interrupted their Sunday morning sermons to announce Wilson’s death. Within minutes of hearing the news at Washington’s First Congregational Church, the Coolidges left the service and drove directly to S Street. The President told Joseph Wilson and Randolph Bolling that the government awaited instructions from the family as to how it might assist with the funeral, whether it be an official state occasion or a simple private ceremony.
For his immediate part, Coolidge issued a proclamation announcing Wilson’s death and directing that the flags of the White House and of the departmental buildings be displayed at half-staff for thirty days. He also ordered suitable military and naval honors for his funeral. The next day the President wrote Admiral Grayson that while he had no jurisdiction over the Capitol, he would certainly use his good offices to have Wilson’s body lie in state if the family desired; and he offered Arlington National Cemetery for his interment. He placed the Departments of State, War, and Navy at the family’s disposal.
Edith Wilson took charge, starting with the question of a burial place. Mindful of her husband’s position in the world but in keeping with his character, she wanted to maintain as much dignity and modesty as possible. Wilson had repeatedly said that he did not wish to be buried in Arlington. Staunton, Augusta, Columbia, and Wilmington all laid legitimate claims, but Wilson had hardly returned to any of them; he had kin buried only in South Carolina, and the family plot in the churchyard was full. Princeton, where he had spent most of his life—and where Witherspoon, Jonathan Edwards, and Grover Cleveland rested in its historic cemetery—seemed appropriate were it not for the unpleasantness of his departure. Rome, Georgia—alongside his wife o
f almost thirty years—was never even considered. The solution lay practically around the corner.
A mile and a half up Massachusetts Avenue, the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul—known as the Washington National Cathedral—sat atop Mount St. Alban. It had been under construction since 1907, and would remain unfinished until 1990; but the neo-Gothic edifice—the second-largest cathedral in the United States—was operational, and its Gloria in Excelsis Tower, which would crown the structure, was destined to become the highest point in the capital. As it rose in fits and starts, its hierarchy was desperate to establish it as the Westminster Abbey of the nation, a center for spiritual ceremony and commemoration, complete with an American version of Poets’ Corner. In fact, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, James Edward Freeman, had actively solicited celebrated Americans for their burial rights. Freeman now offered Mrs. Wilson the Bethlehem Chapel of the National Cathedral, a modest but impressive sanctuary with a high vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows, for both her husband’s service and burial. The chapel could accommodate only three hundred mourners, which pleased the widow, as it provided an excuse to forgo a state funeral.
Edith decided to hold a short service at the house, followed by another at the cathedral on Wednesday, February 6. The former would be more personal, the latter adhering to Washington protocol. By handwritten note, she invited the Coolidges to both ceremonies. Upon reading in the newspapers that the Senate was suspending its business for three days and that a delegation had been assigned to attend the cathedral rites, she immediately composed a brief personal letter. “As the funeral is private and not official,” she wrote Henry Cabot Lodge, “and realizing that your presence would be embarrassing to you and unwelcome to me, I write to request that you do not attend.”
Lodge replied promptly and courteously. He explained that when the Senate committee had been appointed, he had no idea that its members were expected to attend a private service in the house or that the church service was anything but public. “You may rest assured,” he wrote by hand, “that nothing could be more distasteful to me than to do anything which by any possibility could be embarrassing to you.” The press would announce that Lodge withdrew from the proceedings because of a respiratory condition.
Tensions on S Street still ran high, as the circumstances elicited the worst of Edith’s behavior. The McAdoos reached Washington on Monday at a particularly troubling moment in his career. Just as he was seeing a clear path to the White House, investigations of the Teapot Dome scandal revealed that one of the co-conspirators, Californian Edward L. Doheny, had paid extravagant fees to McAdoo. The association alone was enough to sully his reputation. After arriving at S Street and paying his respects, McAdoo withdrew to his father-in-law’s library with a number of his supporters to discuss damage control. Finding Nellie teetering on hysteria, Edith lashed out at her for caring more about getting her husband elected President than she did about the death of her father. Margaret, who had been dabbling in Christian Science, flitted about the house, wearing a beatific smile, insisting there was no reason to lament because death was merely an illusion. Edith felt she could obtain no support from her stepdaughters, then or in the future. And the feeling was mutual.
Wednesday was cold and gray, with a passing storm periodically delivering heavy rain mixed with snow. Thunder sounded all morning, but it was, in fact, gunfire—salvos to the former President from the nearby military bases. Other salutes spread across the country. Every town and city acknowledged Wilson’s death, usually with the ringing of bells or by observing moments of silence. Edith had Army trucks deliver to nearby hospitals the hundreds of flower arrangements sent in sympathy. She received in all eight thousand messages of condolence. “The names of kings and the great of the earth were on these tributes,” noted Josephus Daniels, “and the names of loyal, humble friends and comrades.”
At two-fifty, the President and Mrs. Coolidge arrived at 2340 S Street. Two hundred others gathered inside as well—Wilson’s former Cabinet members and advisers, including Tumulty and his wife, who had not been invited until McAdoo arranged for their entry. Ike Hoover was present along with Starling from the Secret Service, a small contingent of Princetonians, and a few Woodrows, Wilsons, Axsons, and Bollings. Before the fireplace in the library sat Wilson’s open black steel casket—covered with a spray of Edith’s beloved orchids.
At exactly three o’clock, the Reverend James Taylor of the Central Presbyterian Church raised his voice to recite the Twenty-third Psalm—“The Lord is my shepherd.” Edith stood on the landing above, her sobs threatening to drown out the preacher. The Reverend Sylvester Beach, Wilson’s pastor from Princeton, spoke next, a few sentences about Wilson’s “zeal in behalf of the Parliament of Man, in which the mighty nations should be restrained and the rights of the weak maintained.” Then Bishop Freeman of the National Cathedral read a few lines from Wilson’s own Bible. As the clock on the landing chimed the quarter hour, eight servicemen entered the room and carried the coffin down the stairs, out the front door, and through a double line of guardsmen to the waiting hearse.
After eight years of maintaining her composure to help sustain her husband, Edith—in black and a heavy veil—wept without compunction as her brother Randolph took her arm and escorted her down to the waiting car. McAdoo followed, attending Nellie and Margaret. The Coolidges were right behind. Then the rest made their way to their cars and up Massachusetts Avenue for Wilson’s final procession. Eight men in uniform accompanied the hearse, four on either side, with files of eight flanking them and with soldiers and Marines positioned along the entire route, holding back the solemn crowds on both sides of the road. Fifty thousand more waited outside the church, their umbrellas accentuating the somberness of the day. The great church bells tolled, and as the funeral caravan turned right onto the Way of Peace up to the Bethlehem Chapel, the carillon sent forth a slow rendition of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” which resounded for blocks.
Once the pallbearers had placed the casket before the altar, the three clergymen conducted the Episcopal ritual for the Burial of the Dead, beginning with the words of John: “I am the Resurrection and the life.” The service, which was broadcast on radio and to the mourners outside, included readings of Psalms and the singing of one of Wilson’s favorite hymns, which began: “Day is dying in the west. / Heaven is touching earth with rest.” The Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed followed. The Bishop closed the ceremony with his benediction, and the organ played the recessional hymn, “The Strife Is O’er, the Battle Done.”
The chapel emptied, except for the family and a few intimates, and the eight servicemen guarding the casket. Workmen approached the center of the chapel and removed a marble slab and then a concrete slab, revealing the vault below. As the men lowered the heavy black casement down beams to its catacomb, a bugler from the 3rd United States Cavalry stood outside playing “Taps.” That very moment, across the Potomac at Arlington National Cemetery, another bugler echoed the call.
All but one of this last group of mourners accompanied the widow back to S Street, where she would live out the rest of her days. Cary Grayson, who had promised Ellen Wilson on her deathbed that he would look after her husband, complied to the very end, remaining until the servicemen had replaced the great stone slab.
• • •
The Bethlehem Chapel did not remain Woodrow Wilson’s final resting place. As construction of the cathedral proceeded, his survivors favored a more accessible shrine. In 1956—the centennial of Wilson’s birth—he was re-entombed in a new limestone sarcophagus in its own bay on the south side of the nave. Its top is carved only with his name, dates, and a cross fashioned after a Crusader’s sword. Eighty-five-year-old Edith Wilson had largely withdrawn from the public eye, except for occasions that honored her late husband. Naturally, she attended the reconsecration ceremonies, over which Wilson’s grandson the Very Reverend Francis B. Sayre, Jr.—the boy who once exclaim
ed that he was “for the League!”—presided in his role as dean of Washington National Cathedral.
A little more than four years later—on January 20, 1961—Chief Justice Earl Warren administered the Presidential Oath to John F. Kennedy on the East Portico of the Capitol. Few recognized the small elderly woman in the third row on the President’s Platform, or would even have believed that Mrs. Woodrow Wilson was still alive. Later that cold day, Edith rode in the inaugural parade, sharing the backseat of a convertible car with another former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. On December 28, 1961—what would have been her husband’s 105th birthday—Edith Wilson was meant to dedicate a new bridge across the Potomac that was being named in his honor. But, suffering from heart and lung ailments, she died in her bed on S Street that night at eighty-nine. She was interred beside her husband’s tomb.
“Cathedrals do not belong to a single generation,” Dean Sayre once said. “They are churches of history. They gather up the faith of a whole people and proclaim the goodly Providence which has welded that people together as they have hoped and suffered and believed across the centuries.” Few, if any, figures in modern history held loftier dreams and endured greater pain and maintained deeper faith than Sayre’s grandfather, especially in promoting the “ideals of public service, liberal thought, the extension of democracy, and peace through justice,” as Franklin D. Roosevelt defined his idol’s vision.
And as the sun sets each day, the crepuscular light curiously illuminates a little more of the past, as the passage of each year further defines its epoch. In one decade after another, one sees that the silhouette of history that spreads across the capital city of the United States of America is not just that of its national cathedral but increasingly that of the President who is buried therein. It is the lengthening shadow of Wilson.
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