When the Cheering Stopped (35 page)

Saturday night: “There has been no radical change in Mr. Wilson's condition during the day, but rather a gradual wearing-away process.” The reporters stuffed back into their pockets the handkerchiefs quickly yanked out at the sight of Grayson and intended for use in signaling to the other men by the telephones that the extras could be put on the streets. When it got dark Scott came out and addressed himself to the hushed people standing behind the reporters and the policemen: “Mrs. Wilson asks you please not to remain.” The people drifted away, save for one woman, who said she would pray for him.

Saturday night: The Kiwanis Clubs … The United Spanish-American War Veterans … John W. Wescott, who twice nominated him for the Presidency:
WORDS FAIL BUT I SEND WITH BREAKING HEART ALL MY LOVE AND HOPE
.

For a moment she went out of the room. It had seemed he was totally unconscious, unmoving, eyes closed, hands limp on the blanket, but he sensed that she was gone. It could not have been that he knew it with his eyes, for he was blind now, nor with his ears, for his hearing was gone now, but he knew that he was alone now, for all that Margaret and Grayson and the nurses were there. The last word he would ever say came from his lips:

“Edith!”

Sunday morning, and in the dark the worn and tired and unshaven reporters ruing lost Saturday nights with girls, with families, with theater tickets given to friends, stamped their feet and tried to keep warm. Scott appeared and swept the steps and the street and took in the ice and milk incongruously left on the step despite this coming event monopolizing the world's press. At eight-thirty Grayson, haggard, came out and handed the reporters a typed statement and several carbons: “Mr. Wilson is unconscious and his pulse is very weak.” Two hours later Grayson came out again. When the door opened the reporters straightened up and leaped to the steps to take the typed sheets with their free hands. But the handkerchiefs went back to their pockets, for the statement was: “After a quiet night, Mr. Wilson is very low and the end may be expected at any time.”

It had been going on for more than seventy hours—three days. He would not die. “I am ready”—but he would not surrender. Grayson came out and said, the people gathered behind the newspapermen straining to hear him, “He is holding life by a thread so slight that it may break at any moment.” Winter sunshine, brilliant, bathed Washington. It was Sunday, although perhaps after the long stint, the endless waiting, the cold and fog, the reporters hardly knew it. Church bells faintly sounded off in the distance toward the center of town. Upstairs, Margaret and Edith now and then whispered to him. There was no answer, no movement of the eyes closed for hours past, no change in the barely perceptible breathing. The shades of the room were drawn to keep the light out.

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Evans Hughes, he the defeated Republican Presidential candidate of 1916, came and left their cards. It was ten-fifteen, ten-thirty, eleven, on this Sunday morning in Washington.

He opened his eyes.

Edith bent forward and took his right hand. Margaret took his left. Cary Grayson looked into the open blue-gray eyes. At the foot of the bed nurse Lulu Hulett and nurse Ruth Powderly stood by. Edith spoke and Margaret spoke. “Woodrow.” “Father.” But there was no answer, although the eyes, unblinking, stared upward. Grayson felt for a pulse. Seventy-two hours. But the pulse was still there.

Outside, the crowds gathered after church. The street was closed to all traffic by the police and was entirely silent save for occasionally the voice of a child too young to understand why the hundreds stood voiceless. Among them was Mrs. Minnegerode Andrews, who passed out slips of paper upon which was written, “Peace on earth, good will to men.” As she moved from person to person she said, “This is not so much for Woodrow Wilson as for the people left to carry on his ideals.” When the last of the slips was out of her hand, she stepped off the sidewalk and in her Sunday finery she sank to her knees in the cobblestone gutter underneath the bare maple trees. For a few seconds she was there alone, a kneeling woman among hundreds of standing people, but it was only for a few seconds. All around her men and women went
down, the men taking off their hats. The policemen and the reporters in front of the house turned away, unwilling to stare at this. The New York
Times
man gazed off down the hill and there he saw, slowly coming up from Massachusetts Avenue, a crippled girl on crutches. As he watched, the girl saw the people on their knees and tried to get down so that she might be as they were. She shifted her weight to one crutch and used her free hand to try to adjust her braces so that she could kneel. But she could not get it done; the braces held fast. As the reporter watched, she gave up and simply stayed as she was, leaning on one crutch. But she brought her hands together in front of her breast and clasped them as she looked up toward Number 2340. Her lips were moving.

In front of the house, then, it was so quiet that the sound of a dog scurrying in the leaves of an empty lot could plainly be heard.

Upstairs, the blue-gray eyes closed. They had been open for some ten minutes. The wife said, “Woodrow. Woodrow.” It was a few minutes past eleven. In the street the people were getting up one by one.

The telegraphers were ready, and the reporters, in front of the house and down by the telephones. Edith was still holding the right hand and Margaret the left. Weeping, Nellie was heading east on the California Limited. Jessie was in Siam. Grayson was bending over him, holding his wrist, and the two nurses stood at the foot of the bed. He had been three days dying his long death when, at 11:15
A.M.,
February 3, 1924, Grayson straightened up and stepped back.

*
Hamlin was a former head of the Federal Reserve Board.

*
Still in Navy service, Grayson had been assigned by President Harding to duty in Washington so that he might be at hand to care for the invalid in S Street. President Coolidge did not change Harding's orders concerning Grayson.

*
The rumor was untrue.

15

Five minutes after Cary Grayson came out for what would be the last time that day, Sammy White went up to the door of 2340 S Street. Sammy was five. He had on a dark sailor suit, stockings, high button shoes. His mother must
have loved his blond hair, for he wore it long. He held in his hand a single red rose.

The reporters were gone from the front of the house when Sammy came up. As soon as Grayson had appeared and said, “The end came at eleven-fifteen,” the reporters dashed out into the street and jumped up and down so that the waving handkerchiefs could be seen by the men at the phones down the hill. Then they came rushing back to Grayson, who read from a typed slip of paper. “Mr. Wilson died at eleven-fifteen this morning,” Grayson began, but the reporters at the outer edges of the circle around him interrupted, yelling, “Louder! Louder!”

Grayson raised his voice. “Mr. Wilson died at eleven-fifteen this morning. His heart action became feebler and feebler and the heart muscle was so fatigued that it refused to act any longer. The end came peacefully.” Behind the reporters the people straining forward against the police lines could not hear, but when Grayson wiped his eyes they understood. A reporter asked, “Was Mrs. Wilson in the room when the end came?” Grayson said, “Yes, she was there—right there. Miss Margaret was there also.” “Did he smile or give any evidence of consciousness just before he died?” “He died—” Grayson choked and began again and said, “He died peacefully. He just went to sleep. There were no words spoken. It looked to me as though he had just gone to sleep.” Grayson blew his nose. The reporters broke and ran, heading down the hill to the telephones, a little covey of runners weaving in and out of groups of women standing with bowed heads, of men one by one taking their hats off.

Then Sammy White, five, came forward with his red rose. It was perhaps eleven-thirty and the thin winter sunshine was as strong as it was going to be that day. Someone asked Sammy what he wanted and he timidly said, “My father bought the flower and my mother told me to bring it over.” A newspaper photographer came and told Sammy to stand in front of the house and hold his flower off to one side so that it would not cover his face in the picture. Sammy did as he was told, squinting, a solemn-faced little boy born about the time the President of the United States went to Europe and to the Peace Conference, and then reached up to ring the bell.
When Scott came Sammy mutely pushed the red rose forward, and Scott took it. There were no words between the two.

The reporters came back from the phones and were standing in front of the house when the Minister of Uruguay, who had come to leave a card for a dying man, instead became the first person to leave one for a dead man. Minutes after the diplomat left, the first papers were on the streets, the boys who carried them shouting aloud the news. In Washington's First Congregational Church, those shouts penetrated the closed doors and windows and were heard by the minister, who halted the services and asked that the worshipers pray for the man who had just died. President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge and the rest of the congregation bowed their heads. The shouts of the newsboys also reached the bell-ringer of the McKim Memorial Chimes in the tower of Epiphany Church, and he left off playing peals of welcome to churchgoers and changed to peals of sorrow, to hymns. He played
The Strife Is O'er, the Battle Done, Abide with Me, Lead, Kindly Light.
In the Central Presbyterian Church the pew once reserved for the President of the United States was draped in black crape.

In Princeton the chapel services were just ending. As the students and members of the faculty came out, bells began to toll and flags on the campus sank down to half staff. In New York, Mary Peck, who had once hoped to be the second Mrs. Wilson, listened to a church choir. The voice of one of the male singers rose above those of the others; the man sang, “‘The heart of the world is dying for just a little love.'” Mrs. Peck felt a sudden knowledge. He is dead, she thought. Aboard the California Limited speeding in the West, Nellie learned she was too late. Her husband started writing a statement for the press.

At S Street, visitors began to arrive. Stockton Axson came, and Helen Bones, in black, leaning on Altrude Gordon Grayson. A close woman friend of Margaret's came in response to a telephone call. And as soon as the services at the First Congregational Church were over, two White House cars drove up S Street's hill past the police officers standing to block all traffic. It had
been less than an hour since the death announcement when Calvin Coolidge stepped out of the car and helped his wife onto the sidewalk. Movie cameramen came rushing for pictures as the Secret Service men took up places around the President. The President was in high silk hat and black overcoat with silk lapels. Grace Coolidge wore a brown velvet suit. They put their cards on Scott's outstretched silver tray. As with Sammy White, not one word was spoken. Soon after, Joe Tumulty drove his car up, the police letting him past the lines. He slowly went through the crowd standing in the street and parked across the street from the house. He got out, took a few steps, and stopped and simply stood there. A reporter asked, “Are you going in?” Tumulty hesitated in an uncertain way and a look of bewilderment came to his face. “My God, I can't make it,” he said, and suddenly burst into tears. He staggered and put his hands over his face. The reporter caught him and other reporters came and half carried Tumulty to his car.

Church services were over now, and in many homes Sunday dinner also. In Boston an audience filed into Symphony Hall for a concert by the Negro tenor Roland Hayes. When the singer came out on the stage, there was applause, but he quieted it by solemnly holding up one hand. He spoke of the passing of a great soul and then began a song not listed on the program. It was
Goin' Home.
He sang:

“Goin' home, goin' home,

I'm just goin' home.

It's not far, just close by, through an open door.

Work all done, care laid by,

Goin' to fear no more.”

Many of the people in the hall did not understand at first for only a fraction of the audience knew of the death in S Street. When the singer finished his song he stood with bowed head and a few people began to applaud. But the noise of their clapping hands suddenly seemed completely out of place, and in a moment there was silence and no movement either from the seated
people or the motionless figure standing with eyes on the floor. In St. Paul the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra was giving a concert at Minneapolis Auditorium. The first selection on the program was the
Rienzi
Overture, but without any explanatory announcement the orchestra began Chopin's Funeral March. In different sections of the audience people who understood got to their feet. There was whispering all over the auditorium: “It must be for Wilson. Wilson must be dead.” When the music ended, there was perfect silence for a moment and then the people sat for the
Rienzi
Overture.

There had been some three or four hundred people standing in S Street when Grayson made his announcement, but when the news spread in Washington the crowd swelled to many times that number. Through the people came the telegraph boys.
MOST HEARTFELT SYMPATHY IN THIS HOUR OF SORROW JACOB S LAUL PRESIDENTS CHAUFFEUR IN PARIS METUCHEN NEW JERSEY
… Samuel Gompers … The Knights of Pythias …
WOODROW WILSON SANDLER NAMED FOR HIM IN NINETEEN HUNDRED TWELVE NEW YORK CITY
… The Polish Fellowship League of Chicago …
WHILE A NATION GRIEVES
…
THIS DARK HOUR
…
HE IS WITH THE PRINCE OF PEACE NOW
… The Elks, the Rotary, the War Mothers Service Star Legion of Fulton County, Georgia, the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
MY WIFE AND I WISH THAT IT WERE IN OUR POWER TO SAY ANYTHING OR DO ANYTHING THAT COULD HELP AND LESSEN YOUR GRIEF BUT WE KNOW WE MUST LEAVE THAT TO GOD AND TIME HIS SERVANT JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS
… The Improved Order of Red Men of Georgia …
IT MUST BE A COMFORT TO YOU TO KNOW HIS GREAT SOUL LIVES ON AND WILL FOREVER
… The Catholic Study Group of Detroit, Michigan …
SINCEREST SYMPATHY I AM A GOLD STAR MOTHER MRS E R DROPHY BIRMINGHAM ALABAMA
… The Bristol, Tennessee, Chapter of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan …
DEEPEST SYMPATHY OF THE CHILDREN OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD
… Italian-American Protective Association of Portchester, New York …
J R THOMPSON SOLDIER IN CHARGE OF PRIVATE TELEPHONE SYSTEM AT MURAT MANSION PARIS FRANCE DURING
MR WILSONS STAY IN PARIS
… The School for the Deaf, Knoxville, Tennessee …
IT WAS A PRIVILEGE TO HAVE LIVED IN HIS GENERATION
.