![]() ![]() He returned to Washington the following day. As notary public was one of many local offices held by the elder Coolidge, the new president was able to promptly take the oath of office in his father's parlor at 2:47 a.m. ![]() The vice president was in Vermont visiting his father, far from telephones and electricity, when he received a telegram in the early morning of August 3, 1923, announcing President Harding's sudden death in San Francisco. He looked then precisely as though he had been weaned on a pickle." Yet comedian Will Rogers noted that Coolidge "had more subtle humor than almost any public man I ever met." Vice President, I made a bet with my friends that I could get you to say at least three words this evening." Coolidge fixed a steely glare on her and said: "You lose." Alice Roosevelt Longworth observed of Coolidge: "When he wished he were elsewhere, he pursed his lips, folded his arms, and said nothing. When asked why they attended so many social functions, Calvin Coolidge replied, "Got to eat somewhere." Within Washington amusing stories soon arose about the vice president's withdrawn nature perhaps the most famous concerned a society matron who told Coolidge at a dinner party: "Mr. The Coolidges kept an $8 a day suite in the Willard Hotel and dined out often. Harding, Coolidge had little to do aside from presiding over the Senate, although the gracious Harding invited him to regularly attend cabinet meetings. He achieved national fame during the 1919 Boston police officers strike with his assertion: "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time." In the turbulent atmosphere of post-World War I America, many saw Coolidge as a symbol of law and order, and his stance during the strike contributed to his surprise selection by the Republican National Convention for vice president in 1920.Īs vice president to President Warren G. In 1918 he was elected governor and supported some mildly progressive measures. A conservative Republican who believed in limited government and reduction of debt, Coolidge broke with some in his party and came out in favor of women's suffrage. He served as mayor of Northampton and in 1915 was elected lieutenant governor. Extraordinarily reserved for a politician, he won respect for his thoroughness, diligence, and fair-mindedness. They married in 1905 and had two sons, John born in 1906 and Calvin born in 1908.ĭuring the 1890s and early 1900s Coolidge efficiently rose through the ranks of the local and state Republican Party: serving on Northampton's council, as city solicitor, as clerk of courts for Hampshire County, and as a representative in the Massachusetts House and State Senate. "Having taught the deaf to hear," the taciturn Coolidge wryly observed to a friend, "Miss Goodhue might cause the mute to speak." Her wit and charm were to be powerful assets to Coolidge's political career. In 1905, his landlord introduced him to Grace Anna Goodhue, a 1902 graduate of the University of Vermont and a teacher at the Clarke School for the Deaf. Admitted to the bar in 1897, he began his own practice the next year and soon established himself as a conscientious, meticulous lawyer. After graduating from Amherst College in 1895, Calvin Coolidge studied law through apprenticeships with two attorneys in Northampton, Massachusetts. The young Calvin lost his mother Victoria Josephine Moore to what may have been tuberculosis when he was twelve when he was seventeen, his younger sister and only sibling, Abigail Grace, died from what was probably appendicitis. His father John Calvin Coolidge farmed in Windsor County, Vermont. ![]() John Calvin Coolidge (he rapidly let go of "John") was born on the Fourth of July in 1872 to an old New England family. ![]()
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