Notes From Boomerang Creek: President Garfield’s dream deferred Cathy Salter When Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of the United States and I was in the fourth grade, I memorized and could recite the names in full of every president. I learned brief facts about the great ones and others who came and went from office having achieved little worth noting in my classroom history books. I’d recite — “There was Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison… Monroe, Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van Buren… Harrison, Tyler, Polk and Taylor… Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan and Lincoln… Johnson, Grant, Hayes and then… For only 200 days, there was James A. Garfield (1881)….”