It's funny the types of hobbies people come up with. When I was a kid, I used to collect stamps. I enjoyed it, it was like owning a personal art collection. Somehow, I stopped collecting them in 1980 (the last stamp in my album is dated thus.) What am I interested in Today? Well, history is one of my favorite interests. In addition, I love to take pictures (way too many pictures.) So I somehow combined my two hobbies and started a collection of Dead Politicians. Searching on websites, I found a number of webpages already dedicated to gravesites. The best, of course, is Jim Tipton's Find-A-Grave site. I have made a few contributions to the site myself (however, it already has all of the presidents). In addition, there are three excellent webpages dedicated to Dead Presidents; Manus Hand's Dead Presidents, Bart Barker's Dead Presidents Collection and Pat Weissend's My Presidential Sites. There is also a great book put out by C-SPAN called Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? Therefore, I decided to add my own. I still have to come up with an interesting logo for this page.

        I started with Presidents of the United States (where else). I dubbed this collection "DPOTUS" (For those who do not know, POTUS is the acronym for President of the United States). Even though they held the highest political post in the country, it wasn't always easy to find them. Sometimes the hunt is where the fun is. My wife Debbie thought I was crazy when I started, but she is coming around. Of course, when I announce a vacation spot she, along with most of my friends, respond with, "Who's buried there?" At the moment, I have visited 21 Dead President's (that's over half of them). Not all of our vacations are planned around graves, only a few.

        It wasn't long before I started looking for Vice Presidents. After awhile I began to collect Dead Governors of my home state of New Jersey. This was interesting and frustrating at the same time. The best part about this is it doesn't take much traveling. The hard part is you had to find where they were buried. Lawrence Kestenbaum's The Political Graveyard is an excellent reference source. This site is highly recommended to research information on almost any politician (living or dead). It is also well organized and easy to navigate.

        I then started a collection of signers of the Declaration of Independence. I already had some of these since two went on to be presidents. I wanted to do this because I find these men of particular importance and interest.

        I am thinking about adding some new categories, but they would have to fit the following criteria:

            1. Be a finite number (like the signers) or a number that is not too large
                (like presidents, etc.)

            2. Be something that would be of interest to me.

        I have been thinking about presidential losers. Main candidates, who ran for the presidency and for one reason or another, lost. I also have been thinking about Civil War generals since this is one of my favorite periods of American history, but I will have to classify it somehow, because there are over 500 of them. In addition, I would have to rename the website.

This site will be perpetually under construction. I am a perfectionist and I just want it to be prefect. Since this is impossible, I will be always working on it.