When President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, he continued a bizarre pattern that began in 1840 and (much to Joe Biden’s relief) apparently ended in 1980. Consider:

• William Henry Harrison, who was elected in 1840 died (probably from drinking bad water) in April 1841.
• Abraham Lincoln, who was elected to his first term in 1860, was assassinated in 1865.
• James Garfield, who was elected in 1880, was shot in July 1881 and died two months later.
• McKinley, who was elected in 1896 and reelected in 1900, was assassinated in September 1901.
• Warren G. Harding, who was elected in 1920, died of a heart attack in 1923.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected in 1932 and reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944 died of a cerebral hemorrhage in April 1945.
• John F. Kennedy, who was elected in 1960, was assassinated in November 1963.

When Ronald Reagan, was shot in April 1981, it seemed almost inevitable that he would join this macabre parade. But instead he became the first president who to survive being shot by a would-be assassin. George W. Bush, who was elected in 2000 and reelected in 2004, continued the new pattern.

McKinley – who appeared on several versions of the same postage stamp in the 1920s, including today #stampoftheday, a 7-cent, rotary press stamp issued on March. 24, 1927 – has another dubious distinction. He is the only president to have his name officially removed from a major mountain. And it’s not just any mountain, it’s the tallest mountain in North America, a 20,308 peak once called Denali, then called Mt. McKinley, and, since 2015, again called Denali.

Denali, the original name means “the tall one” in the dialect of Athabaskan spoken by groups that lived to the north and west of the mountain. However, William Dickeys, a gold prospector who also wrote about his experiences in The New York Sun, decided in 1896 to call the peak Mt. McKinley. As a 2016 Washington Post article about the mountain’s name explained: “McKinley, the Republican nominee, was an outspoken proponent of the gold standard. As a gold prospector with a vested interest in keeping the value of the precious metal high, Dickey picked the name as a form of symbolic revenge against silver standard supporters, with whom he spent much time bickering.”

After McKinley, who was quite popular, was killed, support grew for naming the mountain after him, a movement that was formalized in 1917, when Congress designated the area around the mountain as Mt. McKinley National Park. From the outset, many people in Alaska opposed this decision. In 1975, the Alaska state legislature officially asked the Board of Geographic Names – a federal entity charged with making sure all federal entities use the same names for places – to drop the McKinley name in favor of Denali.

Here they ran into a small problem because US Representative Ralph Regula, who represented the district where McKinley grew up, came to mountain’s defense. He got all the members of the state congressional delegation to oppose the name change. Knowing that the Board of Geographic Names could consider any name changes regarding landmarks that are being considered by Congress, every two year he would introduce a resolution mandating that “the mountain…in the State of Alaska in the United States of America known as Mount McKinley, shall retain the name Mount McKinley in perpetuity as an appropriate and lasting tribute to the service of William McKinley to his country.”

McKinley] was a martyred president and a good one, I might add,” Regula said in 2001. Even though he retired in 2009, others took up the cause. Finally, in 2015 the Obama administration announced that the Interior Department was going forward with the name change. “In changing the name from Mount McKinley to Denali, we intend no disrespect to the legacy of President McKinley,” Interior Department officials wrote at that time. “We are simply reflecting the desire of most Alaskans to have an authentically Alaskan name for this iconic Alaskan feature.”

While the decision pleased many in Alaska it was criticized by leading Republicans from Ohio. “I am deeply disappointed,” said then House Speaker John Boehner. Then Governor John Kasich, claimed Obama “once again oversteps his bounds.” And Senator Rob Portman, who accused Obama of “going around Congress,” added “I now urge the administration to work with me to find alternative ways to preserve McKinley’s legacy somewhere else in the national park that once bore his name.”

But what exactly was McKinley’s legacy? Beloved when he died, his reputation faded quickly (in part because Theodore Roosevelt, his successor was so dynamic). Later historians resurrected his image, judging that he found quiet but effective ways to pursue a pro-business agenda and America’s emergence of a global and colonial power that had its own foreign colonies.

Assessing his record, historian Lewis Gould wrote on the Miller Center website that: “McKinley was not a charismatic leader, and he did not inject drama into presidential affairs like his successors…Nor did he try to use his office as a bully pulpit to rally Americans to his policies and programs-initiatives which, in themselves, were small in scale compared to those put forward by his successors. Rather, William McKinley was an affable man and an astute and patient politician whose political skills and confidence enabled him to make firm decisions even when they were not popular ones. He did not reinvent the presidency, but he did work very successfully within the prevailing limitations and conception of the office.”

In other words, he wasn’t as towering as Denali but possibly was worthy of a 7-cent stamp in 1927.

Be well, stay safe, be careful when naming mountains, fight for justice and work for peace.