Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Last Friday evening, in a phone call shortly before he died, former President George H. W. Bush said goodbye,

and I love you, to his eldest son, former President George W. Bush.

The elder Bush then passed peacefully at 10.10 p.m. Texas time.

38 minutes later, Jim McGrath, his longtime spokesman, announced the news to the world via Twitter.

In the presidential annals of change, this is not how things went down in 1826, upon the death of John Adams, the only other father in American history, whose son also became president.

No, not even close.

Back then, the elder Adams was eulogized and buried before his son, the sitting president.

John Quincy Adams even knew about his death.

How that happened is primarily a story of technology.

For one thing, news traveled considerably slower than a tweet.

For another, there was no embalming or refrigeration,

which likely meant, sadly and somewhat grossly, that the body of the country's second president

could not wait for the arrival of the sixth. Adams died at age 90 on, of all days, July 4th, and incredibly on the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence.

Three days later, Pastor Peter Whitney presided over his funeral in Quincy, Massachusetts, a quick horseback ride from Boston.

He died in good old age, full of days in honor, Whitney said.

The elder Adams had not been present a year earlier when his son took office.

His health was already declining.

And yet, knowing his son had attained the highest office in the land,

seemed to brighten his otherwise dreary outlook,

and enliven his frail old bones.

Benjamin Waterhouse, a physician in Adam's old friend, wrote a letter to the president saying,

...