33. Discombobulating the Vice President With a Prank Call
On November 22nd, 1919 – two months after Woodrow Wilson was felled by a stroke – vice president Thomas Marshall was delivering a speech in an Atlanta auditorium. Mid-oration, a policeman approached a man sitting on stage, telling him to interrupt the vice president and direct him to call Washington immediately: the president had died.
A stunned Marshall froze, before muttering: “I cannot take up the burden of the great chieftain“. As he confessed later: “I dreaded this task“. As an organist played “Nearer, My God, To Thee”, audience members sobbed, prayed, and left. However, when Marshall reached the telephone in the lobby, the line was dead. Inquiries revealed that no long-distance call had come through from Washington: the vice president had been cruelly hoaxed. Relieved, he resumed his role as a non-entity and finished his term paralyzed by fear, alongside a president paralyzed by stroke.