James A. Garfield 20th President of the United States shot while in office

On my visit to Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, I stopped at the James A. Garfield Memorial, which stands at the highest point of the beautifully landscaped grounds. The monument is striking not only for its design, but also for the fact that all the stone used for Garfield’s tomb was locally sourced and quarried.

Photo I took in the Wade Chapel, Lake View Cemetery, Tiffany designed stain glass widow installed in 1898. 

President James A. Garfield, a longtime resident of nearby Mentor, Ohio, was shot about four months into his presidency in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1881. Remarkably, he survived for 79 days after the assassination attempt. As the recent Netflix series Death by Lightning dramatically and graphically portrays, Garfield ultimately died not from the bullet lodged in his back—which was not immediately fatal—but from severe infection caused by unsterile medical instruments and procedures. His story remains one of the most tragic examples of how limited medical knowledge of the era contributed to the loss of a president whose life might otherwise have been saved.

Illustrated Magazine (Oct. 1881) shows images of Garfield’s body being embalmed.