12/5/2023 0 Comments President tyler railroad storyRecently, Bob sent me a copy of his story about Ace. He also made a trip to Germany to visit the exact site of the crash of Ace’s B-24 bomber and to talk with individuals still living who witnessed the plane come down in flames. Bob gathered data from files obtained from the Department of Defense which up until recently had been closed to the public. He is survived by their daughter – and his brother.Bob had told me a couple of years ago he was in the process of compiling the data from his research after which he planned to author the story for the purpose of informing relatives and friends of just what it was like to have been a World War II pilot facing intense enemy fire while trying to complete a bombing mission. His wife Lucy, whom he married in 1958, died in 2001. In 2018, with other presidential descendants, he signed a drawer in a copy of the Resolute desk that stands in the Oval Office. Tyler liked to remember a granddaughter of Robert E Lee telling him that being a descendant of Lee was not a privilege, it was a responsibility. All his life, he remained a champion of his grandfather’s legacy, which is not rated highly by most historians. Subsequently, he studied for a doctorate and began to teach military history at the University of Richmond. After serving in the Pacific as a naval officer during the war, Tyler became a lawyer and practised in Virginia.įrom 1959 to 1963, he helped to run the state’s Civil War centennial commission. Then she asked me, ‘What would you do with the bones?’ and I told her, ‘I’ll spit ’em out.’”ĭespite these bloodthirsty tendencies, he passed quietly through St Christopher’s School and at 16 on to William & Mary, after Harvard the country’s second oldest seat of learning, of which his father (who died in 1935) had been head. “She asked me, ‘Little boy are you going to be president when you grow up? ‘No. He recalled meeting as a child a woman who knew his antecedents. His grandson never nurtured any political ambitions. He died in 1862, shortly after winning election to the Confederacy’s House of Representatives. He is now best remembered for presiding over the annexation of Texas. It was the first time that a vice-president had succeeded to the top job and Tyler soon found himself at odds with his cabinet and much of Washington. Tyler was unexpectedly thrust into office. He had been put on the Whig ticket, as a slave-owning Southerner, to attract voters who feared that Harrison, and the incumbent President, Martin Van Buren, favoured the rights of central government over those of the individual states.īut Harrison died from pneumonia just a month after his inauguration, at which he had insisted on making a two-hour long speech in the rain to prove his health was strong. The younger John Tyler became Vice-President in 1840 as the running mate of William Harrison. He became Governor of Virginia, and was a lifelong friend of Thomas Jefferson, his roommate at the College of William & Mary, Virginia, with which the Tylers were to have a long association. His own father, also John, had been born in 1747, in the reign of George II. John Tyler had 15 offspring in all, the most of any President. Lyon Sr’s father, the President, had himself been 63 when his son was born, as the fifth of his seven children by his second wife, Julia Gardiner. No doubt bucked by his son’s arrival, Lyon Sr went on to sire Harrison, when he was 75, and then Henry, who died in infancy. His father was then 72 and two years before had married, as his second wife, his first having died, Sue Ruffin, some 35 years his junior. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr, was born in Richmond, Virginia, on January 3 1925. The family had a tradition of reproducing late in life. Remarkably, therefore, in just three generations the Tylers spanned almost the whole history of the United States as an independent republic. Accordingly, he well remembered the outbreak of America’s Civil War when he was seven. Moreover, Lyon’s father, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Sr, was born some 170 years ago, in 1853. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, who has died aged 95, was an American lawyer and historian, but perhaps more of note for being the grandson of the nation’s 10th President, John Tyler, who occupied the White House between 18 – and was born in 1790.
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