Music, McKinley, and Mayhem – Pt. 2

Estes Park was great.  Rocky Mountain National Park was great.  River Spruce Cabins were absolutely wonderful and I highly recommend them.  Anyways, we got home later than I anticipated (13-hour drives are long regardless of direction), so I’m further behind than I thought I’d be.  We might be playing catch-up for a day or two, because there are a couple things I really wanted to cover.

If you recall, President McKinley had been shot on September 6, 1901 in Buffalo, New York.  Doctors had tried unsuccessfully to locate the 2nd bullet that struck him and, fearing infection, simply closed his wounds.  McKinley remained in Buffalo and appeared to be getting stronger.  But the bullet in the President’s body was still causing damage, despite its lack of motion.

On the 12th, the President actually felt well enough to eat, but within hours of his breakfast, his condition had taken a serious turn.  It turns out that gangrene had formed around his wounds, and it would be the deadly infection that would take McKinley’s life early in the morning of September 14, 1901.

The President was buried at his home in Canton, Ohio.  Leon Czolgosz, his assassin, was executed in the electric chair later in the year, and the beautiful Temple of Music was torn down when the Pan-American Exposition ended.