The idea of Carter, Truman, Eisenhower, McKinley, Roosevelt and Grant taking a holiday together in Florida can look like a fantasy, but the society of presidential descendants makes it occur every year.
It is a club in which you literally have to be born. Every day presidents, the first families meet in a historic place called the little White House to Scenic Key West.
“The first time we did something like this was in 2010 with Margaret Hoover, the great-granddaughter of President Hoover, and her husband,” the grandson in ABC News Clifton, the grandson from the 33rd President Harry Truman. “And the following year, we added Susan Ford and Luci Baines Johnson.”
The presidential descendants James Earl Carter IV, Tweed Roosevelt, Clifton Truman, a help from former President Harry Truman, Ulysses Grant Dietz, Mary Jean Eisenhower and Massee McKinley dragged to Key West, Florida.
ABC News
Since 2018, the group has met each year and has raised 75 direct descendants of 26 presidents. They know that their families are wrapped in the history of the country.
“Susan Ford said, I was not sure, that the work was somehow double. One, to follow the inheritance – the inheritance of your ancestor – to preserve this, to promote it, to defend it,” said declared Clifton. “But the second part of the work is to do something with it by yourself, to do yourself in one way or another.”
Part of the preservation is to share stories with an audience eager for the second house of Harry and Bess Truman. The little White House is now a museum, but Clifton came here with her grandparents in the 60s.
Their names have a lot of weight and a lot of responsibilities. Tweed Roosevelt, the great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th commander-in-chief of the country, said a level higher at the school.
“‘Mr. Roosevelt, it is good for other boys to do it. But it’s not good for you to do so,” he told ABC News. “It was the most precious lesson I learned during my four years of college.”
The annual gathering of the Society of Presidential Descendants takes place at the holiday home of former president Harry Truman and his wife Bess.
ABC News
Ulysses Grant Dietz, the youngest great-back-back-fant-child of President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia. Out of 41 great-great-child, he is the only one to share a name with the 18th president.
“I became the flame holder,” he told ABC News. “And so people will say” Oh, well, they are historians, but we want you to talk about because your name is Ulysses. “So you have to support this with self-education.”
Although it is the annual formal gathering, this group of specially connected friends meets elsewhere from other special occasions. Before the death of former president Jimmy Carter in December, almost a dozen descendants – including his grandson James Earl Carter IV – met to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 39th president in October.
They descend from Democrats and Republicans, but the affiliation of parties and political discussions have never borrowed the group’s mission to stay together.
“One of the things that all our ancestors had in common was a great love for the country, a great respect for the institution of the presidency, whatever politics, and it is something that we all share too” said James.
It also acts as a support system in more difficult times.
“I had a heart attack in July, and all these friends contacted me and were there for me, so they are from the family,” said Massee McKinley, who is the back nephew of the 25th president William McKinley and the big one, the Greater the grandson of the 22nd and 24th President Grover Cleveland told ABC News.
Mary Jean Eisenhower, younger grandchild of the 34th president of Dwight Eisenhower, noted that they do not pursue any conflict that their ancestors could have.
“I think it is enough to know that Truman and my grandfather had a flaw, you know, later in their lives,” she told ABC News. “And we talked about it, and not only we discovered that they invented, but we decided that we straightened our grandparents.”
This group is determined to use its famous family names to advance the inheritance.
“Presidents’ day is an opportunity to start reminding people what their civic duties are. Everyone seems to know their rights, but they seem to have forgotten that these rights come with homework,” said Tweed Roosevelt. “One of the things we try to do is help Americans understand what their role is, so that democracy survives.”
