MY CONNECTION WITH THE PRESIDENTS

I was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, nicknamed “Birthplace of Presidents” because two of our first six presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, were born there.  Their birthplaces are located maybe 10 feet from the sidewalk on Independence Avenue where I used to walk on my way home from school in grades 1 through 8. 

Before I married and moved to Boston, I had been a lifelong resident of tiny Norfolk County, Massachusetts, "County of Presidents.”  In addition to being the birthplace of John Adams (2nd president) and John Quincy Adams (6th president), it's the birthplace of two other U.S. Presidents. 

In 1917, John F. Kennedy (35th president) was born in Norfolk County's Brookline, Massachusetts, and in 1924, George H. W. Bush (41st president) was born on Adams Street in Milton, three and a half miles from Peacefield, the Adams family home located at 22 Adams Street in neighboring Quincy.  Adams Street meanders through Quincy and into Milton.  George Bush admitted that he was relatively unfamiliar with this fact until I informed him of it in a letter I sent him in 2008. 

In the 70s, I attended law school in Washington, D.C., "Home of the President." 

After graduation, I moved to California, but that didn't prevent me from continuing my residetial connection to U.S. Presidents.  In the 90s, I lived in Rancho Mirage, "Playground of the Presidents."  The city adopted this nickname because starting in the 60s, presidents visited there on a regular basis.  Rancho Mirage's Eisenhower Medical Center is named after the ex-president who spent a great deal of his retirement golfing there, and Rancho Mirage resident Frank Sinatra built a guesthouse fit for a president for a visit from JFK, who actually never came.  The president did visit California, but stayed with the less controversial Bing Crosby instead, which infuriated the hot-tempered Sinatra no end.

In 1969 Richard Nixon established the precedent of a New Years presidential visit to the Rancho Mirage estate of Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg.  The vast estate is located at the intersection of Bob Hope Drive and Frank Sinatra Drive, and from then until the ambassador's death in 1999, every Republican president spent the New Years holiday at Annenberg's estate in Rancho Mirage, "Playground of the Presidents."

I wonder if there's a "Final Resting Place of Presidents?"