All of our Presidents, except for eight who died in office, have had periods of retirement after their years in the Presidency.
Some have had very short periods of retirement, periods of less than ten years, including George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James K, Polk, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Chester Alan Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
So fully half of our Presidents either died in office or had periods of retirement less than ten years.
On the other hand, the following Presidents had particularly long periods of retirement of fifteen or more years: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush.
The following Presidents had between ten and fifteen years of retirement: Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Ronald Reagan.
Bill Clinton has had 13 years out of office, and George W. Bush has had five years out of office at this time.
With the retirement periods of all of these Presidents listed above, the question that arises is which Presidents made major contributions in their post Presidency years.
That list is a short one:
John Quincy Adams
Martin Van Buren
Theodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Herbert Hoover
Richard Nixon
Jimmy Carter
Bill Clinton
Adams served nearly eighteen years in Congress.
Van Buren ran for President on the Free Soil Party line in 1848.
Roosevelt ran for President on the Progressive Party line in 1912, and went on an African safari, and explored the Amazon River basin in Brazil.
Taft served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for nine years.
Hoover wrote books and served as an adviser to President Truman on reorganization of the executive branch of government.
Nixon wrote about ten books and remained an adviser on diplomacy in his nearly twenty years in retirement.
Carter has written nearly twenty books, and engaged in diplomacy, promotion of democracy, fought diseases, and built housing through the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity.
Clinton has done similar good deeds through his Clinton Initiative, and also worked on relief for the Haitian earthquake and the Pacific Tsunami with George H. W. Bush.
The contributions of these former Presidents have had a major impact on America, and are worthy of remembrance!