Brian kurt deion, you have a website. Kurtshistoricsites . Kurt it is a website where i detail the accounts, i have the accounts of all my different trips to president ial and Vice President ial burial sites, president ial homes, libraries. Different gravesites. I have interesting facts about the different individuals whose gravesites i have been to because also, not just showing the different sites i have been to, but it is also supposed to be a learning tool. Brian how old are you . Kurt 20 years old. Brian where are you in school . Kurt Cranston High School west in cranston. Brian and where are you now . Kurt presently, i am a rising senior at Bryant University in smithfield, rhode island. Brian what is your major . Kurt i am a history major, one of the few at bryant. It is a very small History Department but a very good History Department and i have actually the only history major graduating from bryant next year. Brian why history . Kurt i have been so passionate about history for well over half my life. I first got into president s when i was seven years old. My mother bought me this book called so you want to be president . By judith st. George, illustrated by david small. I actually dont know why she bought me the book. I think she offered to tell me at one point, but i declined because i like the mystique about it. Brian have you read the whole book . Kurt it was a very thin book. What i really liked was the illustrations. It was my first exposure to president s and i found the illustrations very funny. For example, there is William Howard taft, very overweight president , who famously got stuck in the bathtub at the white house. When david smalls illustrations did in the book was they showed president taft being lifted out of the bathtub with an industrial crane. So, there is an operator wearing a hard hat lifting taft out of the bathtub while he is holding a champagne glass and turkey leg. Things like that in the book got me interested in president s in general. I have been passionate about it since then and eventually i started visiting president ial burial sites. Brian what got our attention is the fact that you have been to every president ial gravesite in and every Vice President s gravesite. And you say you might be the only human being in the United States that has done that . Kurt i may be the only one who has visited all 66 graves collectively. Brian you could hear someone now saying, why . How did this all start . Kurt i visited my first four president ial burial sites before picking it up as a quest, hobby, however people want to characterize it. I went to the adams sarcophagi. When i first went, in the summer of 2003, i was eight years old. My family came down here for vacation and we visited several sites. We went to mount vernon, where it just so happens George Washington is interred. A few months later, i was watching television on cspan where it detailed the president ial gravesite visits, particularly Richard Norton smith. I did not watch the program but my father then came out of the room and he told me about it. I was nine years old at this point. I had been to four and there were 36 at the time. I asked him, can we do that . He said, what . I said, visit every president ial burial site. That night, he started looking up information on where they were buried, the different pictures. We visited quite a few that year in 2004. Brian one of the things they got our attention is that you used the book that we published. Whos buried in grants tomb . I want to show you, and i know this happened before you were born. This happened in 1993. It was on our program book notes when Richard Norton smith was here. Have you ever seen this . I wnat want to show you how it started for your father. Somebody here told me that they thought you had visited every grave of every former president. Richard i am one of those rare americans that can say that. It was a hobby as a child, a rather unusual hobby, and sometimes an embarrassing hobby. I contracted heatstroke one day while visiting james k. Polk on the grounds of the Tennessee State capital in the middle of august. I would not advise it. I almost got arrested one night about 7 00 at night trying to find Grover Cleveland in a cemetery in princeton, new jersey. Brian which one was the hardest to find . Richard appropriately, i guess, William Henry harrison, who was president for only a month. It helps to die in office. President s who die in office are instantly enshrined and School Children send in their pennies and they build these enormous monuments. He is in north bend, ohio. Brian it is not in this clip, but he started doing this when he was nine years old. What is it about being a nineyearold that intrigued you about going to the gravesites . Kurt im not sure, Perfect Timing i guess. Brian whatd you think of what he said . Kurt what struck me about what he describes with all the different experiences he had. He had sunstroke at polks grave. How he almost got arrested. What i always think of in every single trip i have taken, whether my father and myself or my whole family, is that there is always a different aspect, different story. You are traveling to see a different part of the country. Sometimes youre going to have a good experience, sometimes it is not going to be as much. Everything is a new, different story. Brian the one gravesite that everyone has trouble getting to is the rockefeller gravesite. Kurt nelson rockefeller, Vice President for ford. Brian did you get there . Kurt yes, i did, in may of 2010. Brian how did you do it . Kurt as my father likes to describe it, it is an act of god. So, it is on the Rockefeller Family property in sleepy hollow, new york. Very limited access, but we were able to get to it through what my father described as an act of god, which was a gigantic tree fell and crushed the fence. It was a gigantic tree. My father actually had his picture taken with it for posterity. It adjoins a cemetery next door, where there are several notable people buried. Andrew carnegie, washington irving, Walter Chrysler. My father went to go scout out the best way to get the grave a week before i visited it. We had heard through channels that over the fence, Nelson Rockefellers grave was sort of near the Walter Chrysler mausoleum. My father saw where this gigantic tree had crossed the had crushed the fence and he went in and decided that he would have to get me there fairly quickly after that. We went the next week and i was able to get it. For clarification, my father abstained from going to a different Vice President ial burial site. He also went to Nelson Rockefellers but he did not go to henry wilson. Thats what sets me apart. Brian just for your benefit . So you could be the only one . Kurt it was not intentional at the time. I went there with my mother on the way to a Boston Red Sox game and afterwards it worked out that way. He decided to abstain from going to that one. Brian on your website, you have connections to other websites and there is a picture on there of a fella who is trying to climb the fence at the rockefeller, but he doesnt get in there. Kurt he did not. We were the only ones, we believe at this point, who were willing to go the extra mile. Im interning have an internship with the u. S. Capital historical society, and recently we put on a dinner honoring the house ways and means committee. I had a chance after the dinner to talk with the new Committee Chair paul ryan and i discussed how i was the one to possibly 66it only 66 visit all graves. It came up about rockefeller and he said, it is on private family property, how did you do it . I said that we had the connections. I didnt tell him that it was because the tree connected with the fence but semantics. Brian you have to be careful with the Vice President henry wilson because there are several cemeteries in the area. Kurt there are a few cemeteries on that street. Sometimes it is harder to find certain ones. The president s were all pretty easy. I dont think we had any problems finding a president ial burial site. Vice president s, at times. His is a very small, diminutive grave. It is not even the most prominent one in the plot. His son, next to him, has a better grave with a hat sculpted on top of it. Have skipped, that was probably of all the ones my father could have skipped, that was probably the one to skip. That would probably be my least favorite of the 66. Brian what do you think you have learned . Kurt i think i have learned about the president s as individuals, whether it be their own personal tastes about how they want to be remembered. Sometimes they didnt have a say. Sometimes president s died in office and a lot of those at the have the bigger, grander ones. Sometimes it is a look into how they want to be remembered and sometimes it is a look at how we wanted to or want to remember them. For example, i dont believe lincoln would have been ok with the gigantic monument he has in springfield today. Brian why not . Kurt it is beautiful from an architecture standpoint and whatnot, but i feel for his tastes, simple lincoln, it would have been too ostentatious in a sense. He wouldnt have wanted a memorial to him in that way. Brian let me read you a quote from a former teacher of yours that i found in an article on your website. This man is dennis mendez. And where was he your teacher . Kurt he was my anatomy teacher in 12th grade. Brian he said this is at the end of an article that was about you. Did your classmates see that . Kurt i dont know. It was a very small class. He has a great sense of humor. Brian why dont you reveal this hobby of yours quickly . Kurt sometimes it can put people off a little bit. They think, why do you want to go to cemeteries . Do you have some weird session with death or something or i am weird obsession with death or something or i am morbid in some way. Which im not. Even growing up, just being into history or being into that realm was really offputting for a lot of people my own age. I have a few my friends breanna and kelvis are into history. I now have a few friends who are into history. But it took a while to find people who appreciated or even tolerated having a friend who spent vacations going to cemeteries. Brian we have some video from wpri in rhode island. Set this up. But i want people to see the look on mrs. Clintons face when you walk up to her. What did you do leading up to this . Kurt she was there for a book signing for her book that came out last year. My father waited out overnight and i joined him in the morning. We went up. He was actually the very first person in line and i joined him. I showed her are we waiting to reveal that . Brian well wait to reveal that. Why does your dad do all this . How often has he stood in line for one of these things for you . Kurt twice. Once in april of 2005 when former president bill clinton came to providence. He waited out overnight on a cold street outside a bookstore. He waited out again when former secretary clinton. Brian why does he do it . Kurt he is doing it for me, so he wants me to have a better appearance. He does not want me to look on disheveled. He describes how we looked when we met former president clinton is probably like a homeless man. He wants me to be better, not have bags under my eyes. Be well rested at home. Brian lets watch this video, and i would suggest to our audience that they watch the face of hillary clinton. An unlikely face at the sams club of all places. Former secretary of state hillary clinton, the likely 2016 president ial contender, signed copies of her latest book for those waiting hours for some face time. Kurt my father got here last night and was the very first person in line. He has been here since midnight and hasnt slept for probably 26 hours. Deion, a 19yearold history major, also did something bold, handing clinton a card with a link to his website about his visits to every president ial and Vice President ial gravesite. The secretary was so amazed by the feat kurt she took one for her and one for former president clinton. Brian what did she say to you . Kurt she was amazed that i had been to all the president ial and Vice President ial burial sites, that my father had been willing to wait in line. I had mentioned to her that Richard Norton smith at sign the had signed the guestbook on my website and she obviously knew who he was. But the thing that really got her was the image that was on the back of my Business Card and that is when she said, oh my god. That was amazing. It was great to go home that day and see that there was the footage of the reaction to the image. Brian what is the image . Kurt the image on the back of my Business Card is probably the most important photo that i have been in in my whole life. It is a recreation with a super soaker for satirical purposes of the Pulitzer Prizewinning photograph of Lee Harvey Oswalds shooting by jack ruby. The reason why it is so important is that i am actually handcuffed in the image to james leavelle. In a few weeks, he will be 95 years old. He was the individual, for those familiar with the original picture, in the lightcolored suit, handcuffed to oswald. Brian that is your father in that picture . Kurt yes, dressed up as jack ruby with the super soaker. That is the exact same model hat. We were trying to be very accurate. My father has a bigger head, in more ways than one, probably. But its the exact same model hat. We were actually down there in texas to visit my last president ial burial site. That was april of 2012 which was my senior year in high school. I found out that mr. Leavelle was still alive and living in the area and he was also at pearl harbor when it was bombed. I decided that i needed to interview him for my website. The super soaker shot is actually an additional tackon to that. My father and i had been working on a Television Program for satirical purposes, because there are all these laws that why are they on the books . For example, it is illegal to go whaling in kansas. Kansas is landlocked. Nobody is going to go whaling there. I would be the more responsible person in this crew. Myself, my father, and our band of wacky friends, would go out to these different places and satirize these different laws, rules, and regulations that we dont think need to be taking up legislators time. Or be enforced or whatnot. We do it in the most absurd way possible, whether it be with props, costumes, etc. The reason behind that shot was because in 2012, at the Republican National convention in tampa, they wanted to ban guns in the surrounding area for safety purposes. However, for various circumstances, guns were not banned. However, the mayor of tampa then banned super soakers. But it was going to be ok to be carrying around a real gun, but supposedly you were going to get arrested if you were carrying around a super soaker, which we thought was a little bit absurd, so id already arranged with mr. Leavelle to go down and interview him during my senior year when we were down in texas. My father decided it was a onceinalifetime opportunity. What if we could get mr. Leavelle to recreate one of the most famous photographs in history with us and a super soaker . And even though mr. Leavelle is a gun rights advocate, he could still see the absurdity of arresting someone carrying a super soaker. He was willing to take that shot with us. Brian he didnt know you were going to do this. How did you get the photograph taken . Kurt my family, my mother and my sister, were supposed to come with us. My mother had gotten ill and they were unable to come with us, so we had to get a photographer, which was no easy task. But he was able to take the shot. Brian did you bring him with you in the room . Kurt what happened was, we had originally planned to interview mr. Leavelle, kind of have to warm up to us, and then give our request. However, because he had to switch days because he had a medical scare, and then our photographer we hired he said he would do it for free if mr. Leavelle sat for a portrait. He was nice enough to do that for us. But he had a commitment so we had to switch and do the super soaker photo first. We had to go in, meet mr. Leavelle and his wife, and go into the elevator pitch on scofflaws. The name of our satirical program. We had to do that right away and then to the interview after. We did the recreation and then our photographer left and my father set up the camera. We recorded. Brian heres an excerpt. It was a 55 minute interview. Kurt it was april, 2012. Brian lets watch a minute. Kurt mr. Leavelle here was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald and oswald was then shot during the transfer by a local nightclub owner named jack ruby. The instance was captured and in the famous Pulitzer Prize winning photograph by robert jackson. Mr. Leavelle when i walked out, all of the flood lights came on. They blinded me temporarily, but i could look down underneath the lights. I could see from here down. Ruby was standing in the middle of that driveway with the pistol in his hand. I saw this. That is why i jerked back on him. That is the reason he was kind of hunched over. I was trying to pull him behind me. I didnt have any leverage. I just turned his body enough that instead of hitting him dead center, it hit him about four inches to the left. Brian the program scofflaws, can anybody see that . Kurt no, it is just a concept right now. We actually have a lot of photographs, other ones of us in wacky costumes Walking Around in providence that show a taste of what could be. We had a Production Company involved, didnt work out so we are working on finding another one. We hav