Why do they pardon a turkey? Remembering Ohio’s presidential birds

On By Littum

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Turkey Day is just around the corner.

The holiday, which falls on Thursday, November 28 this year, is full of traditions, including when the President of the United States “pardons” one or two turkeys before Thanksgiving.

President Joe Biden pardoned two turkeysPeach and Blossom, Monday. The Minnesota-born turkeys weighed 40 and 41 pounds, respectively. They were raised on a farm by John Zimmerman, president of the National Turkey Federation, and his 9-year-old son, Grant. The pardons marked the 77th anniversary of the national Thanksgiving Turkey celebration.

What is turkey pardon?

When a president pardons a turkey, it basically means the animal will be spared its Thanksgiving Day fate at the dinner table. Each year, two birds (the official Thanksgiving turkey and an alternate) are selected and sent to the White House for the formal ceremony.

Prior to the pardon, the turkeys receive celebrity treatment, such as staying at the capital’s luxury Willard InterContinental Washington Hotel. Afterwards, the turkeys are moved to a farm and left to live out the rest of their days unharmed.

Have any Ohio turkeys been pardoned by a president?

On November 26, 2014, President Barack Obama pardoned two turkeys, Virgil and Homer, from Cooper Farms in Fort Recovery, Ohio. The nearly 50-pound turkeys were spared from a Thanksgiving Day feast and retired at Morven Park in Virginia.

They were eventually renamed “Mac” and “Cheese” by participants in a campaign on social media.

“Let’s face it: If you’re a turkey and you’re named after a side dish, your chances of being spared from Thanksgiving dinner are pretty slim. They’re way ahead of the curve,” Obama said during the ceremony. “I know some will call this amnesty, but don’t worry, there’s plenty of turkey to go around.”

At the time, Cheese had a larger wingspan (4.5 feet vs. 4 feet) and had a sip that was “tall, romantic, with a landing ring to it,” according to The White House blog. He was two pounds heavier than Mac at 49 pounds.

Mac had a strut style called the “feather shaker,” and his sip was described as “rhythmic, melodic with a hint of bluegrass.”

Who was the first president to pardon a turkey? Why do they pardon a turkey?

It has long been theorized that President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 pardon of a turkey, recorded in an 1865 broadcast by White House reporter Noah Brooks, was the origin of the pardon ceremony. However The White House Historical Society says this is “probably apocryphal”.

Reports of turkeys being gifted to presidents can be traced back to the 1870s, when Rhode Island man Horace Vose sent well-fed birds to the White House. The first families did not always eat Vose’s turkeys, but the annual sacrifice got his farm “widespread publicity and became a veritable institution in the White House.”

In 1947, the National Turkey Federation took over as the official turkey supplier and delivered a 47-pound bird in time for Christmas to President Harry S. Truman, but he reportedly ate the bird.

Then, in 1963, President John F. Kennedy attempted to carry on a new tradition by returning the turkey, declaring, “We’re just going to let this one grow.” But when Lyndon Johnson was president, the first family ate the bird.

President Richard Nixon began the tradition of sending the presidential turkey to a local petting zoo, but it wasn’t until the George HW Bush administration that pardoning a turkey became a tradition.

On November 14, 1989 Bush became the first president to “pardon” a birdand declared that this year’s turkey had been “granted a presidential pardon right now — allowing him to live out his days at a children’s farm not far from here.”