Even before he graduated from high school, Kurt Deion '16 (Cranston, RI) had visited the resting places of all

38 deceased U.S. presidents. Since then, he's visited every vice presidential burial site as well.

Deion’s interest in presidents started with a book he read when he was 7. He visited his first four presidential

gravesites in 2003 at age 8. The next year, after learning that C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb, inspired by

historian Richard Norton Smith, had visited every single presidential grave, Deion decided to do the same.


This year, Deion wrote to Lamb about how he influenced him, and Lamb quickly replied. “It seemed almost as

if he was more excited to meet me than I was to meet him,” Deion says.


In early August, Lamb interviewed Deion for an hour. Their conversation aired on C-SPAN’s Q & A Sun.,

Aug. 23, at 8 p.m., with a rebroadcast at 11 p.m. and on Monday, Aug. 24, at 6 a.m.


The C-SPAN interview isn’t the only highlight of Deion’s summer. He spent 10 weeks interning in Washington,

D.C., with the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. He learned about the internship through the Amica Center for

Career Education. During his internship, he worked on the society’s annual calendar which is filled with facts

from 200 years ago. “Most of my time was spent researching James Monroe and the year 1818, for the

upcoming 2018 calendar.”


“Bryant has really emphasized to me the importance of primary sources and conducting research,” says

Deion, a history major who minors in management.  “What I’ve learned in the classroom about how history is

taught will be valuable to me in the future.”


Deion is considering graduate school after he graduates in May, and aspires to one day be a director at a

presidential library.