Castle GlennTwenty-five American presidents, including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Barack Obama, were lawyers. Several presidents had military experience before entering politics. George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower all attained the rank of general. Lyndon Johnson was one of many U.S. presidents, including Joe Biden, who served in Congress and served as vice president. Other U.S. presidents have included a dry goods store owner (Harry Truman), a peanut farmer (Jimmy Carter), a movie actor (Ronald Reagan) and a real estate developer (Donald Trump).
Presidents with extraordinary backgrounds
In addition to their main occupations, several U.S. presidents have tried their hand at unusual, short-term or extra jobs. James Garfield, a lawyer and Civil War officer in the Union Army, was also an ordained pastor and served in the Disciples of Christ Church. Abraham Lincoln, who worked as a lawyer before entering politics, also served as postmaster in New Salem, Illinois. According to the U.S. Postal Service, Lincoln sometimes delivered mail in his hat.
Grover Cleveland served as sheriff in Erie County, New York, before running for president. And Calvin Coolidge made doll baby carriages at a toy factory in Ludlow, Vermont.
Like many young Americans, U.S. presidents initially took jobs that didn’t always augur well for their futures.
According to the nonprofit Mount Vernon Women’s Association, which manages Washington’s Virginia estate, Washington began working as a surveyor at the age of seventeen.
In 1926, while in high school, Reagan took a summer job as a lifeguard in Dixon, Illinois. According to his biographer Edmund Morris in an interview on the 60 Minutes program in 1999, by the end of the summer the future president had saved 77 lives. Reagan also worked as a radio announcer in Iowa in the 1930s.
As a teenager in the mid-1970s, Obama earned his first dollar serving ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins store in Honolulu. In a 2016 LinkedIn post, Obama recalled that the job “wasn’t glamorous” but taught him “responsibility,” “hard work” and “balancing work with friends, family and school.”
Gerald Ford, 23, worked as a park ranger in Yellowstone National Park. According to the National Park Service, Ford spent the summer of 1936 in Wyoming “directing traffic, looking after campgrounds, and greeting visitors.” Ford also helped monitor the park’s significant bear population. He later called the experience “one of the best years of his life.”
