kurt: kurt's historic website is a website where i detail the accounts, i have the accounts of all my different trips to presidential and vice presidential burial sites, presidential homes, libraries. different gravesites. i have interesting facts about the different individuals whose gravesites i have been to because also, not just showing the different sites i have been to, but it is also supposed to be a learning tool. brian: how old are you? kurt: 20 years old. brian: where are you in school? kurt: presently, i am a rising senior at bryant university in smithfield, rhode island. brian: what is your major? kurt: i am a history major, one of the few at bryant. it is a very small history department but a very good history department and i have actually the only history major graduating from bryant next year.

i have been so passionate about history for well over half my life. i first got into presidents when i was seven years old. my mother brought me this book called "so you want to be president?" george andudith st. david small. i actually don't know why she bought me the book. i think she offered to tell me at one point that i declined because i like the mystique about it. brian: have you read the whole book? kurt: it was a very thin book. when i really liked was the illustrations. it was my first exposure to presidents and i found the illustrations very funny. there is william howard taft,

who famously got stuck in the bathtub at the white house. when david small's illustrations did was they showed president taft being lifted out of the bathtub with an industrial crane. there is an operator wearing a hard hat lifting taft out of the bathtub while he is holding a champagne glass and turkey leg. stuff like that got me interested in presidents in general. i have been passionate about it since then and eventually i started visiting presidential burial sites. brian: what got our attention is the fact that you have been to every presidential gravesite in and every vice president's gravesite. and you say you might be the only human being in the united states that has done that? kurt: i may be the only one who has visited all 66 graves collectively. brian: you could hear someone now saying, "why?" how did this all start? kurt: i visited my first four presidential burial sites before picking it up as a quest, hobby,

however people want to characterize it. i went to the adamses sarcophagi. massachusetts. there.e lived when i first went, in the summer of 2003, i was eight years old. my family came down here for vacation and we visited several sites. we went to mount vernon, where it just so happens george washington is interred. a few months later, i was watching television on c-span where it detailed the presidential gravesite visits, particularly richard norton smith. i did not watch the program but

my father then came out of the room and he told me about it. i was nine years old at this point. i had been to four and there were 36 at the time. passedand ford had not away yet. i asked him, can we do that? he said, what? i said, visit every presidential burial site. that night, he started looking up information on where they were buried, the different pictures. we visited quite a few that year in 2004. brian: one of the things they got our attention is that you used the book that we published. i want to show you, and i know this happened before you were born. this happened in 1993. it was on our program "book notes." have you ever seen this? somebody here told me that they thought you had visited every grave of every former president.

>> yes, i have. i am one of those rare americans that can say that. it was a hobby as a child, a rather unusual hobby, and sometimes and embarrassing hobby. i contracted heatstroke one day when visiting james k. polk on the grounds of the tennessee state capital in the middle of august. doould not advise viewers to this. i almost got arrested one night about 7:00 at night trying to find grover cleveland in a cemetery in princeton, new jersey. brian: which one was the hardest to find? richard: appropriately, i guess, richard henry harrison, who was president for only a month. presidents who die in office are instantly enshrined and they build these enormous monuments. which do not always stand the test of time.

brian: where is he? he is in north bend, ohio. brian: it is not in this clip, but he started doing this when he was nine years old. what is about being a nine-year-old that intrigued you about going to the gravesites? kurt: i'm not sure, perfect timing i guess. what struck me about what he describes with all the different experiences he had. he had sunstroke at polk's grave. what i always think of in every single trip i have taken, whether my father and myself or my whole family, is that there is always a different aspect, different story. you are traveling to see a different part of the country. you're going to meet different people. different experiences. sometimes you're going to have a good experience, sometimes it is not going to be as much. everything is a new, different story.

brian: the one gravesite that everyone has trouble getting to is the rockefeller gravesite. kurt: nelson rockefeller, vice president for ford. brian: did you get there? kurt: yes i did, in may of 2010. i was able to get there. brian: how did you do it? kurt: as my father likes to describe it, it is an act of god. it is on the rockefeller family property in sleepy hollow, new york. very limited access, but we were able to get to it through what my father described as an act of god, which was a gigantic tree fell and crushed the fence. it was a gigantic tree. my father actually had his picture taken with it for posterity. it adjoins a cemetery next door, where there are several notable people buried. andrew carnegie, washington irving, walter chrysler. my father went to go scout out the best way to get the grave a

week before i visited it. he was out in western connecticut for a wake. we had heard through channels that over the fence, nelson rockefeller's grave was sort of near the walter chrysler mausoleum. my father saw where this gigantic tree had fallen and crushed the fence and he went in and decided that he would have to get me there fairly quickly after that. we went the next week and i was able to get it. for clarification, my father abstained from going to a different vice presidential burial site. he also went to nelson rockefeller's but he did not go to henry wilson. apart. is what sets me

brian: just for your benefit? kurt: it was not intentional at the time. i went there with my mother on the way to a boston red sox game and afterwards it worked out that way. brian: on your website, you have connections to other websites and there is a picture on there of a fella who is trying to climb the fence at the rockefeller but he doesn't get in there. kurt: he did not. we were the only ones, we believe at this point, who were willing to go the extra mile. tomorrow withends the u.s. capital historical society, and recently we put on a dinner honoring the house ways and means committee. i had a chance after the dinner to talk with the new committee chair paul ryan and i discussed that. it came up about rockefeller and he said, it is on private family property, how did you do it? i said that we had the connections. i didn't tell him that it was because the tree connected with the fence but semantics.

[laughter] brian: you have to be careful with the vice president henry wilson because there are several cemeteries in the area. kurt: there are a few cemeteries on that street. sometimes it is harder to find certain ones. the presidents were all pretty easy. i don't think we had any problems finding a presidential burial site. vice presidents, at times. his is a very small, diminutive grave. it is not even the most prominent one in the plot. his son, next to him, has a better grave with a hat sculpted on top of it. that would probably be my least favorite of the 66. brian: what do you think you have learned? kurt: i think i have learned about the presidents as individuals, whether it be their own personal tastes about how they want to be remembered.

but sometimes they didn't have a say. sometimes they died in office and a lot of those at the bigger, grander ones. sometimes it is a look into how they want to be remembered and sometimes it is a look at how we want to or want to remember them. for example, i don't believe lincoln would have been ok with the gigantic monument he has in springfield today. brian: why not? kurt: it is beautiful from an architecture standpoint and whatnot, but i feel for his tastes, simple lincoln, it would have been too ostentatious in a sense. he would not have wanted a memorial to him in that way. brian: let me read you a quote that i found in an article on your website.

this man is dennis mendez. and where was your teacher? kurt: he was my anatomy teacher in 12th grade. cranston high school west. brian: this is at the end of an article that was about you. "he is a great kid and an attentive student even when his classmates are not." did your classmates see that? kurt: i don't know. it was a very small class. he has a great sense of humor. brian: why don't you reveal this hobby of yours quickly? kurt: sometimes it can put people off a little bit. they think, why do you want to go to cemeteries?

you have some weird obsession with death or something or i am morbid in some way. which i am not. even growing up, just being into history are being into that realm was really offputting for a lot of people my own age. my friends breanna and kelvis are into history. friends nowfew who are into history. but for a while it took a -- it was hard to have people that tolerated having a friend who spent vacations going to cemeteries. brian: set this up. but i want people to see the look on mrs. clinton's face when you walk up to her. what did you do leading up to this? kurt: she was there for a book signing for her book that came out last year. my father waited overnight and i

joined him in the morning. he was actually the very first person in line and i joined him. i showed her -- are we waiting to reveal that? brian: yes, we'll do that later. why does your dad do all this? how often has he stood in line for one of these things for you? kurt: twice. once in april of 2005 when former president bill clinton came to providence. he waited outside a bookstore. he waited out again when former secretary clinton. brian: why does he do it? kurt: he is doing it for me, so he wants me to have a better appearance. he doesn't want me to look all

disheveled. he describes how we looked when we met former president clinton he looked probably like a homeless man. he wants me to be better, not have bags under my eyes. brian: let's watch this video, and i would suggest to our audience that they watch the face of hillary clinton. >> an unlikely face at the sam's club of all places. former secretary of state hillary clinton signed copies of her latest book for those waiting hours for some face time. kurt: my father got here last night and was the very first person in line. he has been years since midnight and hasn't slept for probably 26 hours. >> deion, a 19-year-old history major, also did something bold, handing clinton a card with a link to his website about his visits to every presidential and vice presidential gravesite.

kurt: she took one for her and one for former president clinton. brian: what did she say to you? kurt: she was amazed that i had been to all the presidential and vice presidential burial sites, that my father had been willing to wait in line. i had mentioned to her that richard norton smith had signed the guestbook on my website and she obviously knew who he was. but the thing that really got her was the image that was on the back of my business card and that is when she said, oh my god. it was great to go home that day and see that there was the footage of the reaction to the image. brian: what is the image? kurt: the image of the back of my business card is probably the most important photo that i have been in in my whole life. it is a re-creation with a super soaker for satirical purposes of the pulitzer prize-winning photograph of lee harvey

oswald's shooting by jack ruby. the reason that it is so important is that i am actually handcuffed to james leavelle. time of the at the photograph. in a few weeks, he will be 95 years old. he was the individual, for those familiar with the in -- for those familiar with the original picture, handcuffed to oswald. brian: that is your father in that picture? kurt: yes, dressed up as jack ruby with the super soaker. that is the same model hat. we were trying to be very accurate. except my father has a bigger head. in more ways than one, probably.

we were actually down there in texas to visit my last presidential burial site. that was april of 2012 which was my senior year in high school. i found out that mr. leavelle was still alive and living in the area and he was also at pearl harbor when it was bombed. i decided that i needed to interview him for my website. the super soaker shot is actually an additional tack-on to that. my father and i had been working on a television program for satirical purposes there are all these laws, rules, and regulation that -- why are they on the books? it is illegal to go whaling in kansas. i would be the more responsible person in this crew. myself, my father, and our band of wacky friends, would go out to these different places and satirize these different laws, rules, and regulations that we don't think need to be taking up

legislators' time. whether it be with props, costumes, etc. the reason behind that shot was because in 2012, at the convention in tampa, they wanted to ban guns in the surrounding area for safety purposes. however, for various circumstances, guns were not banned. time,r, the mayor at the supersoakers. but it was going to be ok to be carrying around a real gun, but supposedly you were going to get arrested if you are carrying around a super soaker, which we thought was a little bit absurd, so i'd already arranged with mr. leavelle to go down and

interview him during my senior year when we were down in texas. my father decided it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. what if we could get mr. leavelle to re-create one of the most famous photographs in history. and well mr. leavelle is a gun rights advocate, he could still see the absurdity of someone carrying a super soaker being arrested. brian: he didn't know you were going to do this. how did you get the photograph taken? kurt: my family, my mother and my sister, were supposed to come with us. my mother had gotten ill and they were unable to come with us, so we had to get a photographer, which was no easy task. but he was able to take the shot. brian: did you bring him with you in the room? kurt: what happened was, we had originally planned to interview mr. leavelle, kind of have to warm up to us, and then give our request.

but because he had to switch days because he had a medical scare and then our photographer said he would do it for free if mr. leavelle sat for a portrait. but he had a commitment so we had to switch and do the super soaker photo first. we had to go in, meet mr. leavelle and his wife, and go into the elevator pitch on scofflaws. satirical name of our program, "scofflaws." we had to do that right away and then to the interview after. we did the recreation in our photographer left and my father set up the camera.

brian: it was a 55 minute interview. kurt: it was april, 2012. mr. leavelle here, was handcuffed to lee harvey oswald and oswald was then shot during the transfer by a local nightclub owner named jack ruby. the instance was captured and the famous pulitzer prize winning photograph by robert jackson. mr. leavelle: when i walked out, all of the flood lights came on. temporarily, but i could look down underneath the lights. he was standing in the middle of that driveway with the pistol in his hand. i saw this. that is why i jerked back on him. that is the reason he was kind of hunched over. i was trying to pull him behind me. i just turned his body enough that instead of hitting him dead

center, it hit him about four inches to the left. brian: your program, "scofflaws," can anybody see that? kurt: no, it is just a concept. we actually have a lot of photographs, other ones of us in wacky costume walking around in providence that show a taste of what could be. we had a production company involved in the didn't work out so we are working on finding another one. we have several episodes written up with different laws, rules, regulations. brian: is your dad as big historian as you are? kurt: he is into history. i would say that going to the different sites with me really stepped it up for him. he is into history as well. obviously, if he is willing to

accompany me on always travels. iiis big into world war history. brian: how many of these trips did you take where you had to go just to the grave site and back? what were the circumstances? if i read it right, there is only one year you don't have a stop, which is 2011? but 2003 up to now. kurt: it is different each time. early on, as we started, it was more of just the gravesites. if there was an accompanying house or library, it was good that we did that well, but sometimes the other places would fall as casualties. now, that is something -- we started going back later and redoing some of the things. sometimes it was just grave, grave, grave, grave. but obviously, i wanted to go

and get the full experience, go on.ome of the houses and so early on, it was more just the graves. in 2004, we did go to the lincoln's house, which was a great experience because they actually invited us to put our hands on the railing as he went up and use the actual railing that president lincoln used in the only house he ever owned. that is what is great about going to the places in addition to the burial sites. the places that the presidents actually lived in nd experienced. walking around the neighborhood in independence, missouri, just like harry truman used to do. brian: the pictures on the website of all the stops, thomas jefferson, you say squeezed through the gate. brian: the thing with the presidential grave visits is that with the best, you have to get as close as possible.

some presidential graves, like calvin coolidge's, you can just walk right up. some, there are a few perimeters. i am reluctant sometimes for my father is a force of nature and he will egg me on. for jefferson, there is a gate there. i was young enough at the time and slim enough to slip through the bars of the cemetery and get to the obelisk and get a better shot. brian: jackson is one of the presidents with a fence. did that deter you?

kurt: no, because my father also pushed me to hop over the fence at jackson's. sometimes you have to think about who the president is and what was their personality. at lyndon johnson's presidential burial site, the final one i visited at 17, it is the johnson family cemetery. they don't really let the public and there, but it is kind of faraway picture wise so we want to get a better photograph. we hopped over the wall and actually got yelled at by an employee there who we gave the seinfeld-esque nickname of mower-guy. yelled at aty got johnson's and that put the damper on it. sometimes you need to hop the fence for the better picture. we can justify because we know that we are not desecrating it in any way.

we not going to do the grave any harm. brian: there was a situation at one of the gravesites where they were closing and you convince them to review in the cemetery cemeteryou in the and that you would get out some way. kurt: i never been locked in a cemetery before. we went on this 17-day trip in april of 2010 that we called the michigan trip because our prime target was president ford's grave. we got locked in three cemeteries. the cemetery frederick douglass is buried in. we got locked in lexington cemetery in kentucky where henry clay is buried. we were mainly getting vice presidents. breckinridge is there. on the last leg of our trip, it was in paterson, new jersey, trying to get vice president

garret hobart, mckinley's first vice president who died in office. an employee was escorting a family out and she was escorting them out because they were closing. my father's point of view a lot of times is that we are here, we have to do it now. he convinced her somehow to lock us in a cemetery and this was a cemetery that had a fairly high wall with barbed wire on top. he said don't worry about us, we will get out. he parked our car half of the sidewalk outside and we went in. she didn't even know where garret hobart's cemetery site was. we found his mausoleum and then my dad always says, you have to look for the weakest link. so we went around and we saw there was a point where the

barbed wire that was keeping us in was sagging and there was a tree. we climbed the tree, grabbed onto the branches, ourselves over and onto the outside. brian: what does your dad do for a living? kurt: he had his own business for a while. the way back machine. he was a toy dealer, dealing in a lot of nostalgic character items such as dick tracy. he would sell it to people who wanted to recapture their youths. the way back machine, a reference to one of his favorite shows from his childhood, cartoon, "sherman and peabody." ebay actually kind of shut down his company because it kind of kills that way of life because no longer did they need middlemen. people could just sell their toys and collectibles on ebay. they could sell it directly, people could buy them directly, and it put demand way low and supply way high.

it kind of killed that way of life. meanwhile, we have been working on different things such as scofflaws, and additional television idea we kind of put on the back burner, and we are also working on fake foam muscle arms. which is a pretty interesting concept. just like the foam finger but muscle arms so you can have your hotdog at the game. pump fakes, which is a double meaning. working on that. brian: are there others in your family? kurt: my mother lynn and my sister olivia. brian: what does she think of all this? kurt: she doesn't really care for it, but she is a long-suffering sibling in that regard. i will give credit to her that

she was willing to put up with visiting residential burial sites on vacation. i remember there was one time that we were at james buchanan's grave in lancaster, pennsylvania, and my dad turned the camera on her. he said, would you rather be a james buchanan's grave or disney world? she said disney world and he said, you are not normal. brian: you note that at the james buchanan website, you went back again and found that they had improved the site. kurt: sometimes the surrounding areas aren't as nice. the only one that was really that bad at the time of my first visit in july of 2005 was james

buchanan's grave area. his was nice but some of the surrounding graves were toppled over, not in good condition. it really wasn't in a good section of town either. i went back on a subsequent trip a couple of years ago. i don't want to see any graves toppled over. brian: martin buchanan, you said there was nobody there but you. kurt: martin van buren. brian: i mean, martin van buren. kurt: that would be probably even fewer people at martin buchanan's grave. i have been there a few times and every time, nobody was at martin van buren's grave. it is kind of hidden away a little bit in kinderhook. brian: how much research did you do before going to each gravesite?

kurt: enough to find out where they are and whatnot. a lot of them are not that difficult to find, especially in the age of the internet and books. it is not that difficult to find somebody as notable as a president. a lot of times, with the presidents, there are signs. vice presidents are a bit more difficult. brian: it is not that unusual for young people sometimes to get into this history business. 15 years ago, we ran this video on our morning show. it is a young man and his father is taking the video of him. he is three-and-a-half-years old. i wanted to show you a little bit of what he was doing at the time. >> how do you know all the presidents? can you tell them to me?

sometimes you say them kind of fast. you have to say that kind of slow and kind of loud. can you say them loud and slow? >> george washington, john adams, jefferson, madison, john quincy adams, henry, harrison, tyler, paul, taylor, buchanan, lincoln, andrew johnson, harrison, mckinley, taylor, wilson, harding, hoover, franklin roosevelt, eisenhower, kennedy, lyndon johnson, ford, carter, reagan, bush, clinton. brian: could you do that now? kurt: yes, i could. brian: you are going to bryant university? how many students?

kurt: approximately 3600. brian: how many know about this now? kurt: i am part of a tightknit community organization called the commuter connection. there is about maybe 25-30 regular members in that. at least 20 of them probably know that i'm into presidential history and presidential graves. brian: what if you changed your mind about in the history part of it? are you political? kurt: i am. i would say, a little bit. i tried to stay away from being political in my website. i think most people have political, philosophical opinions. i tried to stay away from it. when i have my facts on the website.

sometimes what i tried to do is more stay with the personal lives of the presidents. how are they like us, how are they different? versus some of their policies which may be more well-known. history-wise, it is great to go to all the different homes and learn all of the different history aspects and put some of the information that i have learned there on my website. that is something -- i didn't have the website when i first started out when i was eight or nine. i put the website up in 2009, so i took greater appreciation and it was just easier being older. i had each visit when i went along to the different graves. to put it on the web site and pay more attention to the

historical aspect. brian: there is a picture of you at the henry wallace vice presidential gravesite in des moines. what time was that? kurt: probably after midnight. it was very cold. there was a point where i was literally thinking i was going to lose my hand. i had gloves on, but i was thinking this must be what frostbite is. it was a very interesting one. i have been to presidential graves and night and in the snow, but that was the first time in the snow and at night. that was interesting. there was a snowstorm going on,

a very intense snowstorm. we were driving down the highway when there were no lights on the highway. we couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of us. but then when we went by, you can see cars spun out on the side and we just kept plugging along. we went to the cemetery and i just wanted to drive by it. turns out that the gate was open. we tried driving the rental car down the hill and we actually couldn't make it with the car and it started going down backwards fairly fast and we couldn't stop. we didn't know where the grave was situated, so to try and find it at the night when it was snowing was going to be tough. we went to the hotel, went on the computer, found out where the exact location was. we parked the car outside the cemetery and i think we got to the grave after midnight and it was very cold. brian: in a number of pictures, you are wearing a t-shirt with the president on the t-shirt but it is not the same president. how many times did you buy the t-shirts? kurt: the specific t-shirt? brian: the different ones.

i made a note here you are wearing a rutherford hayes t-shirt when you went to the william wheeler. kurt: that is just a coincidence that he was hayes's vice president. we get a bunch. i like to always come away with some kind of souvenir at a presidential home or library if i can. shirts are big because it can promote what you are interested in. the hayes shirt actually get a lot of comments. think.ore than you would brian: you say that the ronald

reagan site is what to you? kurt: i think that the view from reagan's grave is the best view of any presidential burial site. it is positioned looking out at the valley and it is absolutely gorgeous there. he picked a very good location to have the library and to be buried. brian: the richard nixon website, you say has the best quote of any. kurt: is my favorite quote of all time is that the greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker, which is something i have tried to live by my life, not necessarily because nixon said it. being a little political here, not necessarily the biggest nixon fan. necessarily think a lot of people are post-watergate. but i think those are important words. brian: what about the james garfield site? kurt: that is my favorite presidential burial site.

i visit that in june of 2005 in cleveland. it is monstrous. 180 feet tall i believe in it has a giant marble statue. stained glass windows, chandeliers. he is not really even interred, he is in a crypt in the basement. he is the only president where you can see their actual coffin. he and mrs. garfield are laid out in his out of the american flag on it but it is enclosed in a kind of cage. you can look in. but we were actually able to get in there. brian: how many vice presidents have died in office? kurt: i believe perhaps seven or eight. brian: i think it is seven. you noted that thomas hendricks was the fifth. crown hill the

cemetary in indianapolis. what did you find that that cemetery? kurt: our main intent in going there with benjamin harrison's grave, which was my 15th presidential burial site. it just so happened there were three other vice presidents buried there. marshall. fairbanks, dillon is buried there. i wasn't actually intent on going to vice presidential burial sites. it wasn't really until 2009 with charles curtis's grave when we were out in kansas that i decided that i might as well start doing all the vice presidents. i already have a lot of because there is a bit of overlap. brian: do you know anybody that has followed your website and tried to do the same thing? kurt: there are quite a few people who go to the

presidential burial sites. probably fewer who go to presidents and vice presidents. i have had people who have contacted me who say they are doing the same thing. there are a couple people who are actually younger than i am who have now contacted me saying, i am doing that, too. someone recently contacted me saying he has been to all of the presidents. brian: there is a young lady, i believe about five years old, and her name is mason hensley. -- maci hensley. she appeared several times on the ellen degeneres show because she has a big interest in presidents. there is a video clip of this five-year-old in may of this year at the ronald reagan library. ♪

>> is this marine one? it smells like old people in here. >> the oval office. >> jfk. can i play hide and seek? surprise! i heard there is an air force one plane here. >> i heard that, too.

♪ >> do you know who the first president was to fly on this airplane? >> no. >> richard nixon. >> he lied about watergate. ♪ is this an old computer? brian: what are some of the things you have learned about presidents i going to the library and going to the birthplaces and the gravesites? kurt: again, with the presidential burial sites or vice presidential burial sites, it is insight on may how they want to be remembered. with the different homes or libraries, you get to see how they lived, whether they were kind of -- thought of themselves maybe more high and mighty or whether they were for example, martin van buren was really into innovation and technology, something people don't necessarily know. as i went back on a tour not too long ago, they said that if you

-- he were around today he would have had the latest ipad. he was big on indoor plumbing and whatnot. he was big on technology for what it was at the time. seeing the different artifacts, too. sometimes you learn different things such as president truman's famous "the buck stops here" sign was made in a prison. so, it is about learning different fun facts maybe or aspects of their lives. brian: i have something on the table something you give away to people. it says on here kurt alexander deion, bone up on history. then it says what? gravewater.tv?

kurt: i mentioned before the tv concept my father and i were presently working on. the first idea was "gravehunter," where we would start at the grave site and maybe work backwards in their life. there were some aspects about it but i wasn't a fan of and one of the rare times that my father and i butted heads. grave hunting is very personal to me and there were some things he wanted to tweak about it to make it more tv-worthy that i wasn't a fan of. brian: a little bit of a close up here. there is a podium and you are standing behind it? kurt: that was actually at a gravestone. we had a photographer friend come with us, so that is at a

burial site -- i believe it is in providence, rhode island. brian: there is a note on your website about a couple that often visited hubert humphrey's grave site in minneapolis. they found a medallion on his grave site. is that what this was? kurt: yes, it is. we have the coin, which was an aspect i liked, where it is tradition in certain cultures to leave something -- for example, in the jewish faith leaving a stone on the burial site. one aspect that my dad introduced was that you should have your own coin. i liked that idea, so we have the coin and sometimes i leave it at more notable burial sites, like when i have gone back to a couple of the president graves subsequently. sometimes, people take them.

brian: do you always leave a medallion? kurt: not always. we only had so many that we ordered. brian: how many did you order? kurt: i don't know. there was actually a whole big snafu situation. maybe 100 or 200. brian: how many did you have framed like this? kurt: three, actually four. there was that one. one was sent to richard norton smith. one was sent to the now treasurer of rhode island, seth magaziner. and the other was given indirectly to president bill clinton. brian: if someone says they want to do this, what would you warn them about? and how many total did you go to? kurt: 66 presidential and vice presidential. as far as all the famous graves,

probably over 300. i would say, be prepared to invest the time and the money. sometimes, going on the trips if you have a rental car and are staying in hotels, you have to eat. it is going to cost some money. and time and patience because sometimes things are not going to go the way you intend for them to go. sometimes you will get locked in cemeteries and you have to call security or you have to climb over the barbed wire. brian: what stories have we missed that were particularly interesting to you? kurt: i think what of the better stories was the time i met bill clinton. that's a fantastic story. again, my dad waited outside

overnight holding my place. he was actually around eight in line at the time. in the morning, we met president bill clinton. it was a long wait in line. once they started letting us in, it was a long wait. brian: i know you said it was 10:30 a.m. that he was supposed to be there but he didn't get there. kurt: it was a long wait. i had a book to read, not to get him to sign it. i was 10 years old, april 2005, book and i just wanted to read it. several event employees kept coming up and said we have to take that book. he is not allowed to sign anything else. my father and i explained, we just want to read it in line.

we are not going to ask president clinton to sign the book. also, we weren't allowed to take pictures. however, we skirted around that with a disposable camera, which president clinton was more than happy to oblige us with -- actually, two photos. brian: you have to tell the story how you got the camera in. kurt: i always try to be as honest as possible so he decided to sneak it in with me. being that i was only 10-years-old. when the secret service was talking to us, they acted by had anything in my pockets and instinctively, i looked at my father and he knew exactly what i was going to do so he just looked away. eventually, as we got farther in line, he took the camera from the head as he was introducing

me to president clinton, he kind of snuck it out of his pocket and he is probably lucky he wasn't tasered or anything. what is my favorite part of this story is that they wanted to take away the book i was reading in line and that we were not going to ask president clinton to sign. after he already signed his copy of his autobiography and we were walking away, he asked, "do you want me to sign your other book for you?" all these people were saying is not going to sign his book and then he offers on his own. honestly, he is the most charismatic person i have ever met. he puts his arm around you, says your name. it is exactly what you say, in that he makes you feel like you're the only person in the room. brian: what did you work on this summer at the capitol hill historical society?

kurt: they have a fact-a-day calendar, where he stayed there is an historical fact. mainly i worked on the 1818 calendar. it is 1818 facts. calendar.be an 1818 james monroe did this on this day, john quincy adams did this. that is mainly what i did. it has been great doing other projects. i am presently working with the ohio society of washington, d.c. trying to get a marker at the assassination site of president garfield here in washington dc. it is the only one that isn't marked. brian: where is it? kurt: the building was at what is now the national gallery of art. the exact spot is in the middle of constitution avenue there so we are looking to get something maybe on the sidewalk on the opposite side. it has been great to work not only on the calendar but on the other side projects. brian: what is your website

address? kurt: kurtshistoricsites.com. brian: what is your goal after you graduate? kurt: i have a lot of possibilities, i think. i'm thinking of graduate school. i'm also trying to pursue "scofflaws," the tv program. maybe just some writing or traveling on my own as a job. brian: kurt says he is the only person in america who has been to all presidential and vice presidential gravesites. in spite of climing over the fence at the rockefeller gravesites.

>> thank you very much for joining us. urt: thank you for having me. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> for free transcripts or to give a short comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. >> if you enjoyed this week's q&a interview, here are some other programs you might like. our 2014 interview with the historian richard norton smith on his biography "on his own terms, a life of nelson rockefeller." our interview with david mccullough earlier this year. and, the 2013 interview with author doris kearns goodwin talking about her book, "bully pulpit."

that is about president theodore roosevelt. you can watch these anytime or search our entire library at c-span.org. and comments calls on washington journal. 10:00 a.m., we marked the history of hurricane katrina. >> tonight, on the communicators, this summer marks the 25th anniversary of digital television. aries"hor of "television talks. 1990, almost 20 five years ago, cbs tells us we should submitted to the fcc for

broadcasterrestrial standard. we were not sure if we wanted to satellite andre cable guys and did not have much to do with the terrestrial net broadcast. our cover was blown, what we had done. at first people said it was impossible, what we were timing. enough, a couple years later all of our competitors were following us and it became a race. on c-span2.night >> later, ed martin talks about conservative agenda. then the executive director of americans united for separation of church and state discusses his new book, god

daveter, huffington post's jamieson. you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. "washington journal" is next. host: good morning. it is monday, august 24, 2015. we begin today on "washington journal" discussing the american constitution, amended 20 times. all of the leading presidential candidates have one or more proposals for how to change the constitution. the latest proposal from some republicans would resend birthright -- would rescind tothright to immigrants -- children of immigrts