BUFFALO, N.Y.- The New York Air Guard’s 107th Attack Wing honored Millard Fillmore, the nation’s 13th president, as the wing’s mission support group commander laid a wreath at his grave Jan. 7.
Lt. Col. William Gourlay placed a wreath from President Joe Biden at Fillmore’s grave in Forest Lawn Cemetery.
Since 1967, when Lyndon B. Johnson was president, military officers have maintained the tradition of placing a wreath sent by the current occupant of the White House at the graves of former presidents on their birthdays.
“I love Buffalo history, and it was my honor to make the wreath presentation on behalf of the White House and our nation,” Gourlay said.
The 107th Attack Wing is based at Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station.
Descendants of Fillmore, who served from 1850 to 1853, members of the Buffalo Presidential Center, and local American Legion members looked on as Gourlay presented the wreath.
Fillmore had a profound, positive impact on the Buffalo community, and Forest Lawn continues to help commemorate his legacy, according to Julie Snyder, chief executive officer of Forest Lawn Cemetery.
“We are honored to receive the wreath every year and keep it here for the community to pay their respects and honor him this time every year,” Snyder said. “We’re very honored to be one of the 40 cemeteries across the country to have a home for a past president.”
New York National Guard officers also present wreaths at the graves of presidents Martin Van Buren, buried in the Hudson Valley village of Kinderhook, and Chester Arthur, buried in the Albany suburb of Menands.
Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery was established in 1849 and has over 175,000 burials.
Fillmore was born in Summerhill, New York, in 1800. He became a lawyer in 1823 and served as a member of Congress and then the comptroller of New York State. He was elected vice president in 1848 when Zachary Taylor ran for president.
When Taylor died in 1850, Fillmore assumed the presidency. He was the last member of the Whig party to serve as president, and while many Whigs joined the new anti-slavery Republican Party, he refused to do so and ran for president in 1856 as the candidate of the Know Nothing Party.
As president, he backed the compromise of 1850 that admitted California to the union as a free state and banned the sale of enslaved people in the District of Columbia but also required federal officials to assist in catching runaway slaves.
The Fugitive Slave Act was deeply unpopular in the North and hurt Fillmore politically in his home state. He died of a stroke in 1874.