Folks have been either saddened or overjoyed to see President Obama leave office. But the amazing thing to consider is that he is still alive…

Let’s go back a few years and start the story with James Monroe. He was, among other noteworthy things, a soldier in the Revolution, a member of the Continental Congress, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and then a Senator from 1790 to 1794. After he left the senate, he was Minister to France, Governor of Virginia, Minister to France (again), Minister to England, a diplomat to Spain, Virginia State Assemblyman, Governor of Virginia (again), Secretary of State, Secretary of War, and then – whew, finally! – President of the United States from 1817 to 1825.

The key point is that Monroe was the first person elected to the Senate who went on to become President.  He was followed by nine other men who, just like Monroe, were elected to the Senate, went on to do something else, and THEN were elected President.  Yes, I’m going to make you read the list; the nine men are John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Benjamin Harrison.

But then, 28 years after Benjamin Harrison, something unique happened: a sitting Senator was elected directly to the Presidency. Can you guess who…drumroll…hint: the year was 1920…it was…..

Warren G. Harding!  An insurance man and editor/publisher from Ohio who became the state’s Lieutenant Governor and then Senator beginning in 1915 before being elected President.  Harding was a popular figure whose administration was distinguished by the formal ending of World War 1 and by getting the country through a post-war recession. However, in his second term, he embarked on a grueling “Voyage of Understanding” that took him by train throughout the country, up to Canada and Alaska, and to the West Coast.  Unfortunately, the trip proved his undoing: he caught pneumonia and then a week later he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died, on August 2, 1923.

Twenty-two years after Harding, another former Senator became President. It was Harry S. Truman, but he didn’t go straight from the Senate to the Oval Office. He served as Vice President (for a mere 82 days) before his predecessor Roosevelt’s death, when Truman ascended to the Presidency.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected, making him only the second sitting Senator to win the Presidency. And unfortunately, just like Harding before him, Kennedy died in office, shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Following Kennedy, the next two Presidents – Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon – were both former Senators, but both served as Vice Presidents for a time before attaining the high office.

Which brings us to the election of 2008, and an electoral first: TWO sitting senators – McCain and Obama – vying for the Presidency, guaranteeing that SOMEBODY was going to be sitting on the hot seat of history.

When Obama was elected, many of his supporters feared for his safety as the nation’s first African-American President, and many of his detractors felt he couldn’t leave office fast enough. But as has often been the case, Obama defied the odds of fate.

On January 20, 2017, after successfully serving eight years, he stepped smoothly out of the White House, boarded a helicopter, safely departed Washington and achieved an historic first.

Barack Obama is the only U.S. President ever elected directly from the Senate who survived his time in the oval office.