President Garfield, who rests forever at Lake View Cemetery, will grace a new $1 coin. Unveiled at the Garfield historic site in Mentor this week, the change is the 20th in a series of Presidential coins.
Would Garfield — born in what is now Moreland Hills and one of the Buckeye State’s numerous POTUS sons — approve? Damn straight, according to the PD:
“He didn’t trust paper money; he liked coins,” said Allan Peskin, author of “Garfield,” a biography of the president. Peskin is also an emeritus history professor at Cleveland State University.
While a congressman in the 1860s, Garfield strongly opposed the “greenback” — notes issued by the Lincoln administration during the Civil War — as the national currency, historians said.
Were he still alive today, Garfield would undoubtedly also prefer looking up information in the phone book as opposed to the internet.
Clevelanders will honor the Garfield $1 coin by muttering, “Fuck, what am I supposed to do with a dollar coin?” every time they come across one.
This article appears in Nov 16-22, 2011.
Wouldn’t it have been funny if Garfield OD’ed on the John? But alas, his assissination ended his galiant 200 day run in the presidency, and was hardly humorous.
Hope its a BIG coin.