BUFFALO--Col Jim McCready, the vice commander, and incoming commander, of the New York Air National Guard’s 107th Airlift Wing places a wreath honoring President Millard Fillmore at his grave in Forest Lawn Cemetery on the 211th anniversary of the president’s birth in 1800 during a ceremony held by the University of Buffalo.
Filmore served as the 13th President from 1850 to 1853. During his administration California was admitted to the Union and he dispatched Commodore Matthew Perry and a fleet of ships to Japan to open that nation to American trade.The United States military places wreaths from the current president at the gravesites of our nation’s past presidents on the anniversary of their births. The New York National Guard is responsible for placing the wreaths at the graves of Fillmore, Martin Van Buren in Kinderhook, Columbia County, and Chester Arthur in Menands, Albany County.