Something for the President

A less curious lad might have let himself go to intellectual seed on a diet of comic books and TV westerns. But when seven-year-old Bruce Frankel of Interlaken, N.J. was kept home from school last fall with a kidney infection, he took to watching television quiz shows. One day he announced: "Presidents are my category." He began reading up on the men of the White House, with all the enthusiasm of a young Harry Truman.

Soon he could not only reel off the names of the Presidents in order and without a slip, but he also mastered their dates, parties, terms, major accomplishments. When he got better, his parents took him driving around the Jersey countryside. One day in nearby Elberon (pop. 985), the Frankels came across a wooden sign in the window of an old private garage, bearing the crude message:

UPON THE SITE or THE FRANCKLYN COTTAGE IN WHICH PRESIDENT

JAMES A. GARFIELD DIED SEPT. 19TH, 1881.

With the indignation of the historian, Bruce decided this was a "silly plaque" to mark the spot where Garfield, dying of wounds from bullets fired at him by an assassin in Washington's old Sixth Street railroad station, had been sent by his physicians in a last vain hope that the sea air might save his ebbing life. Last week, having started with a contribution from his own weekly 50-c- allowance, Bruce was in the midst of a campaign to raise funds for a memorial worthy of a President. In time he wants to collect "several hundred dollars" (he now has $22) which he intends to turn over to a historical association so that some day James A. Garfield, 20th President of the U.S., will get "a real stone like other Presidents have."

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