TJ Fallon started visiting U.S. presidential grave sites during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“I did it out of complete boredom after being furloughed from my job,” the New Jersey native said.
Four years later, not only has he visited all 39 presidential grave sites at least twice, but — as of this month — his son, Henry, 10, has also seen them all.
Henry, of Brick, N.J., likely has become the youngest person ever to check off the feat of paying homage to every dead president after he and his father disembarked from their inbound flight to LAX to visit the Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon libraries.
“I’m nervous and excited,” Henry said before walking to Nixon’s grave site in Yorba Linda, Calif., the visit that would cap his achievement.
Afterward, he said he “kind of” felt accomplished to have seen every presidential grave.
The Fallons have traveled across the country to visit presidential libraries and cemeteries. They spent Henry’s spring break, for instance, road-tripping around Kansas and Missouri to see the graves of Eisenhower and Truman.
Henry’s favorite president? Lincoln.
But, like many 10-year-olds, Henry is not a big history buff and seems practically uninterested in politics. He zipped through the Nixon Library in an Aaron Judge baseball cap, spending more time practicing his batting swing than paying attention to the exhibits.
His favorite museum is the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, he said. And his favorite part of these road trips with Dad is not visiting the presidential gravesites, but stopping at the ballparks along — and sometimes out of — the way. The Fallons were also headed to Dodger Stadium and San Francisco’s Oracle Park — as well as Dinseyland — this week.
“People always ask me why I visit presidential grave sites,” TJ Fallon said. “It’s an odd hobby. But it humanizes all these great figures. They were people with families. They were mortal.”
The hobby began with a random Google search in 2020 when Fallon asked if any presidents are buried in New Jersey. In fact, Grover Cleveland is buried in Princeton. Though Cleveland never attended college, he fell in love with the area after delivering an address at the university in 1896, made Princeton his home after his second term as president and became a trustee of the Ivy League school.
After visiting Cleveland’s grave site, Fallon made an ambitious Google search. “Has anyone visited every presidential grave site?”
Based on his research, Fallon said it seemed like at least one person had done so and maybe others. He set out to do it faster.
So, he drove more than 60,000 miles through 34 states to visit all of them in nine months. He’s also gone to all 34 graves of vice presidents, 53 of the 56 graves of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and all 39 signers of the Constitution. He’s been featured by his hometown paper and Jay Leno’s show “You Bet Your Life;” he has 20,000 subscribers on his “Dead History” YouTube channel and 50,000 followers on Instagram.
Fallon says Nixon has the best epitaph of any president: “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.” Meanwhile, he believes Martin Van Buren might have the most unassuming grave site in a small cemetery in his hometown of Kinderhook, N.Y.
Fallon’s enthrallment with presidential history might not have totally rubbed off on Henry, but at least they’ll always have this journey together to look back on.
