Like it or not, being the President of the United States is hard on a man (or woman, if we ever have one). Some men fare better than others, and I suppose their age might have something to do with it, but it seems the president always leaves office with a lot more gray hairs that they entered with. President Woodrow Wilson took office on March 4, 1913, and left office on March 4, 1921. Born on December 28, 1856, he entered office when he was 56 years old. His wife, Ellen’s health declined after he became president, and in July 1914, she was diagnosed with Bright’s disease. She passed away on August 6, 1914, leaving President Wilson devastated and battling depression. On March 18, 1915, Wilson met Edith Bolling Galt, a Southern widow and jeweler, at a White House tea. After several meetings, Wilson fell in love and proposed to her in May 1915. Initially, Edith declined, but Wilson persisted in courting her. Over time, Edith grew fond of him, and they got engaged in September 1915. They married on December 18, 1915, Wilson then one of three presidents, along with John Tyler and Grover Cleveland, to marry while in office. 
Wilson served during World War I. War likely ages a president even more. After signing the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson quickly embarked on a national speaking tour in September 1919 to promote the League of Nations. However, the decision was ill-advised for a man already drained from negotiating the end of World War I. His exhaustion and recurring illnesses eventually led to a series of mini strokes by the month’s end. After the mini strokes, Wilson canceled the rest of the tour and returned home. BY then things were already too far gone, and on October 2nd, he suffered a full-blown stroke. Wilson’s entire left side became paralyzed, he became blind in one eye, and he experienced further symptoms that even affected his mental faculties., boding the question, was he fit for office.
You might think that something like this would mean the end of his presidency, but all of this was kept from the press, and even from the bulk of Wilson’s own government. First Lady Edith Wilson stepped in as her husband’s
steward and began running what was described as a bedside government. She went as far as to hide Wilson’s symptoms from members of Congress and continued to run his affairs in secret for the remainder of his term, technically becoming America’s first woman president, although now legally. I suppose the whole thing could be considered scandalous, and I’m not sure why it wasn’t. He did recover enough to do somethings, but he was not really the president in the same way he was before.
Wilson was still so sick by the time Warren Harding became the 29th President of the United States, and so he was unable to attend the inauguration. After the end of his second term in 1921, Wilson and his wife moved from the White House to a townhouse in the Kalorama section of Washington, DC. Wilson’s health did not markedly improve after leaving office and began to decline rapidly in January 1924. He died on February 3, 1924, at the age of 67.


Leave a Reply