On March 4, 1889, the outgoing First Lady of the United States said “I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, and not let any of them get lost or broken, for I want to find everything just as it is now, when we come back again four years from today.” Mrs. Cleveland told the staff on their departure after her husband’s first term. Four years later, she and her husband Grover returned.

            Grover Cleveland has a few distinctions as POTUS. He is the only man to serve two non-consecutive terms and is considered to be both the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president. Cleveland was the only Democratic president from 1861-1913. He was the second bachelor elected to the office, and the youngest first lady- BY FAR.

            Cleveland had served as sheriff of Erie County, New York, mayor of Buffalo, and Governor of New York before becoming the second youngest man to be inaugurated as president just shy of his forty-eighth birthday. In his second year in the Executive Mansion, it wouldn’t be called the ‘White House’ until Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, Cleveland became the first and only president to be married at the residence.

            It’s not going to become a little interesting. His bride, Francis Folsom, was just twenty-one years old. This isn’t Bill Belichick dating a younger woman in 2024, this is the President. He had known her all of his life.

            Her father, Oscar, was a friend and law partner of Cleveland. Oscar Folsom died in a carriage accident in 1875 just after her eleventh birthday. “Uncle Cleve” became her guardian. She received an excellent education and had been proposed to a few times that never followed through, perhaps knowing what was ahead. She and her future husband had remained in regular communication.

            This isn’t particularly romantic, but Cleveland proposed marriage in a letter. Francis had visited the White House so perhaps there had been chats, the big man (in office and stature) bending the knee as well. Her mother and secret fiancé thought it was best for mom and daughter to travel in Europe and contemplate her decision. There were rumors he was marrying her mother. I know you’re wondering; her mother was three years younger than the president.

            On June 2, 1886, they married. The nuptial was a success as they had five children and remained together until his death. Their eldest child, Ruth, is said to be the namesake of a very tasty candy bar but that is subject to interpretation. I haven’t had one of those in too long.

            In the summer of 1893, the president had a secret surgery on a yacht on the Hudson River to remove a cancerous tumor on the inside of his mouth. The economy was on shaky ground, and it was felt keeping this quiet was best for the nation.

            Grover Cleveland died in 1908 at the age of seventy-one from a heart attack. Francis wasn’t a widow long and remarried in 1913. She lived until she was eight-three, born during the Civil War and dying just two years after World War Two ended.

   I publish this on November 7, 2024. Now that Donald Trump has joined fellow New Yorker Cleveland and returns to the White House, Melania Trump will join Mrs. Cleveland as the only first ladies to live there twice. I never read her making a statement to the White House staff on January 20, 2021, but perhaps she did. We’ll see. We’ll see about a lot of things.