But that is exactly what happened yesterday when three of the four bylined obituaries in the NYT are by Robert D. McFadden for a 91 year-old upstate New York politician Joseph L. Bruno, whose name might grace more Little League fields and parks than any other politician in New York and for Mark Andrews, 94, a farmer and North Dakota Politician and for the Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., grandson of 10th president of the United States, John Tyler of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" fame and whose younger brother, Harrison Ruffin Tyler is still with us at 91. Yes, the grandson of an 19th-century president commemorated on a $1 coin was with us on September 26 and whose slightly younger brother can still have one of those coins in his pocket and pay for something.
If you've been anywhere in the Albany/Saratoga area of New York State you've probably bumped into the name Joseph L. Bruno adorning a statue or a fence surrounding a Little League field. Joe Bruno, was a career politician for nearly 32 years, serving as a state senator, senate majority leader, and even acting lieutenant governor from 1977 to 2008.
In a complicated series of trials and appeals, Mr. Brno eventually had a fraud conviction overturned by a federal court in Albany in 2014, ending a near 10-year legal battle that allowed him to finally retire permanently to his farm.
The second of the three McFadden obits is for Mark Andrews, 94, a farmer and long-time North Dakota politician who served as a Congressman and U.S. Senator for 23 years. His legislative priorities were always about farming.
His father was also a farmer, having been born in 1886 on the family spread started by his father in 1881, when North Dakota was a territory. (1881 is one of those Mad Magazine years that is the same backwards as well as upside down. Can you name the one in the 20th-century?)
Mark's father, also named Mark, was also a sheriff who happened to be able to sing opera arias and did so in concerts in Fargo and New York, while also in his campaign for Cass County sheriff. Mark Jr. admitted to no singing ability and said he couldn't carry a tune in a bushel. He did however carry votes by the bushel when he won his senate seat with 70 percent of the votes in 1980, outpolling Ronald Reagan in the state.
The third of the three obits is last but certainly not least, when it tells us that Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. the grandson of the 10th president of the United States John Tyler has recently passed away at 95 and that one of his survivors is his brother Harrison, another, but slightly younger grandson of John Tyler who is 91.
John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, 1841-1845, had 15 children with two wives, the second of whom was 24 when he married her at 54. His presidency was notable for a few things, chiefly the annexation of Texas as the 28th state. This was important for several things, but mainly because it gave his family a place to live.
The reach back in time through only three generations astoundingly connects a man who has just passed away with a grandfather who was born just after George Washington became president 231 years ago. Talk about being able to drop the name of the fellow who is on the one dollar bill.
The Tyler connection is a function of extreme longevity and late in life parenting, even if having children with a second wife who is 24-years-old might seem like something anyone can accomplish. Lyon's father Lyon Gardiner Sr. was 82 when he passed away in 1935. His father John Tyler, the president, lived the shortest amount of time, passing away at 71 in 1862.
Having a father who was a president's son seems to have worked in Lyon's favor, because he graduated from William and Mary College after his father was president of William and Mary from 1888 to 1919. Talk about a legacy admission.
Lyon Tyler Jr. told the Daughters of the American Revolution that his grandfather President Tyler always cared deeply about his children and the truth. In a letter to his son John Jr. in 1832 he said "truth should always be uttered no matter what the consequences."
It is doubtful anyone lied about their age in that family.
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