Warren Gamaliel Harding was born on November 2, 1865, in Blooming Grove, Ohio, moved with his family to Caledonia and then Marion, attended village schools and Ohio Central College, bought the bankrupt Marion Daily Star at age 19, improved it into a profitable newspaper, and owned The Star for nearly 40 years. He married Florence Kling DeWolfe on July 8, 1891. Harding entered politics in 1900, served two terms in the Ohio Senate, became lieutenant governor of Ohio, was elected to the United States Senate in 1914, won the 1920 Republican presidential nomination on the 10th ballot, and defeated Ohio Governor James Cox, whose running mate was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, after a front porch campaign built around “A Return to Normalcy.” On his 55th birthday, Harding won the presidency with more than 60 percent of the popular vote. During his 29 months in office, he started the Budget Bureau, became the first president to present a federal budget to Congress, arranged the Washington Disarmament Conference, established the Veterans Bureau, reduced the federal deficit, reduced income taxes, ended hostilities with Germany by signing the Treaty of Berlin, and sought U.S. participation in a World Court while leading the nation through the post-World War I transition to peacetime. In June 1923, he and Florence began a cross-country trip to the western states, Canada, and the Alaska Territory, the first presidential visit to Canada or the Alaska Territory, and he died of a heart attack in San Francisco on August 2, 1923. Florence Kling Harding, born in Marion on August 15, 1860, to Amos and Louisa Kling, was educated in Marion, became an accomplished pianist at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, married Henry “Pete” DeWolfe in 1879, had a son, Marshall, later divorced, and married Warren Harding in 1891. For the next 32 years she supported his newspaper and political careers, managed business and circulation work at The Star for 12 years, helped host the intense 1920 Marion campaign, and as First Lady in 1921 championed women’s issues, female journalists, professional sports for women, and wounded veterans from World War I. After Harding’s death, poor health forced her return to Marion, where she died of heart and kidney disease on November 21, 1924. The nation followed Harding’s funeral train from California to Washington, D.C., and then to Marion, where his body was first placed in the receiving vault at Marion Cemetery; on December 21, 1927, the bodies of President and Mrs. Harding were placed in the completed Harding Tomb, and on June 16, 1931, President Herbert Hoover dedicated it. Designed by Henry F. Hornbostel and Eric Fisher Wood after a national competition, the tomb was built beginning in 1926 with privately raised funds from more than a million contributors, including pennies from more than 200,000 children, and was conceived as a circular white Georgia marble structure reflecting Greek and Roman traditions and Harding’s wish to rest under the open sky. The 10-acre grounds were laid out in the form of a Latin cross, with the tomb at the intersection. After Harding’s death, widespread grief gave way to damage to his reputation when scandals involving Albert Fall and Charles Forbes emerged, though Harding had forced Forbes’s resignation and had no knowledge of Fall’s Teapot Dome scandal. Since 1978, the State of Ohio has owned the tomb and the Harding Home, with management by the Ohio Historical Society.