First Lovebirds: Calvin and Grace Coolidge
Grace and Calvin Coolidge were a presidential couple with seemingly opposite personas. He was dour, quiet and serious, while she was gregarious and fun-loving. People cut Silent Cal a lot of slack, figuring that there must be something to him if Grace fell in love with him. Even the way they met says much about the quirky Zooey Deschannelish personality that Grace had. She first saw her husband through a bathroom window, watching him shave (how voyeuristic). They were a marvelous support for one another, though likely she was more of a support for him than the other way around.
She was born Grace Anna Goodhue, in Burlington, Vermont on January 3, 1879. Her father was Captain Andrew Isaachar Goodhue, a mechanical engineer and a Democrat. Her mother was Lemira Barrett Goodhue, who strongly opposed her daughter’s romance with attorney Calvin Coolidge and advised her to turn down his marriage proposal. Grace was an only child.
Grace took a training course for teachers at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Massachusetts, and became an adherent of the practice of “lip-reading” for the students, as a way of mainstreaming them into the hearing world, as opposed to “sign-language.” She worked as a teacher of deaf children but ceased teaching once she was married.
As a college student, Grace Goodhue dated a fellow young member of her church, Clarence Noyes, but after meeting Calvin Coolidge in 1903, during her second year of working as a teacher and their ensuing courtship, she ended her relationship with Noyes. For their first date, Coolidge took her to a Republican rally at Northampton City Hall.
At age 26, Grace married 33 year old Calvin on October 4, 1905 at her parents' home in Burlington. It was a plain ceremony and after their wedding ceremony, the Coolidges took a one-week honeymoon in Montreal, Quebec before settling in a rented home in Northampton. The marriage produced two sons: John Coolidge born September 7 1906, and Calvin Coolidge, Jr., born April 13, 1908.
Grace later commented that she and her husband had “vastly different temperaments and tastes,” and that she often curtailed her own inclinations in favor of those of her husband. She also confessed that her efforts to lighten his more dour personality were usually unsuccessful. When Calvin Coolidge was elected to the state legislature in 1907, he would spend the weekdays in Boston during his two consecutive one-year terms, his three consecutive one-year terms as Lieutenant-Governor and his one term as Governor of Massachusetts. All the while Grace remained at home raising their sons and managing the household.
During World War I, Grace served as the co-chair of the Northampton Women’s War Committee, helping to coordinate volunteer activities and food conservation drives. She also began her lifelong work with the Red Cross, organizing fundraisers to benefit local men who enlisted in the armed services. When her husband was Governor, the state of Massachusetts did not provide its governor and gubernatorial family any type of state residence. Her physical separation from her husband in Boston removed her from official duties, despite her being the First Lady of the state.
When she became the wife of the Vice-President, Grace Coolidge was abruptly thrust from a private life to a public one. She sought the advice of Lois Marshall, the wife of her husband’s immediate predecessor, Vice President Thomas Marshall, and became “president” of an informal organization known as “The Ladies of the Senate,” a regular but informal gathering of the wives of U.S. Senators. Since the Vice President presided as “president” of the Senate, his wife was invested with a parallel status among their wives and among them Grace Coolidge forged numerous bi-partisan friendships.
The Coolidges were at their Plymouth Notch, Vermont home when they were awoken in the early morning hours of August 3, 1923 with the news that President Harding had died. Grace Coolidge lit the kerosene lamp by which her husband repeated the presidential oath of office as administered to him by his father, a notary public. She and her husband returned to Washington for Harding’s funeral and to Marion, Ohio for his burial. In the days following the death and burial of President Harding, Grace Coolidge showed particular sensitivity towards the suddenly-widowed Florence Harding, assuring her that she should consider remaining in the White House for as long a period as she wished.
Grace Coolidge maintained a friendly relationship with two of her predecessors who also lived in Washington throughout her incumbency as First Lady: Helen “Nellie” Taft, whose husband, the former President, was by then the Chief Justice, and Edith Wilson, whose husband died six months after the Coolidge Administration began. She followed an informal tradition begun by Edith Roosevelt of hosting afternoon classical music concerts. A number of well-known artists performed at these, including Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Grace Coolidge is said to have never entered the President’s office if he was working and said that she “knew nothing of what took place there.” She never lobbied the President on any appointment or legislation. She said that all that she knew about the President’s policy and political decisions, she learned from the media.
One of the areas of tension in their marriage centered around Grace's adventurous streak, which her husband tried to curtail. He forbid her from driving her own car, or flying in an airplane even with Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh when the aviator-hero offered to pilot her first ride in the sky. She would always address her husband as “Mr. President” when others were in their presence.
By his own admission in remarks not published until some two decades after his death, Calvin Coolidge suffered from and intermittent but often severe social anxiety in which he was so overcome with self-consciousness that, among strangers, he simply fell into complete silence, unable or unwilling to even simply reply to small talk. In the presence of his extroverted wife, however, the President was much more at ease and Grace Coolidge often carried the thread of conversation with official guests, providing him relief from the duty of making small talk. As Grace said, “I thought I would get him to enjoy life and have fun but he was not very easy to instruct in that way.” Coolidge agrred with this, writing after their silver wedding anniversary that “she has borne with my infirmities…”
Grace Coolidge had a love of animals of all types. For example, when she was Vice President’s wife, she discovered a family of mice in their suite. Rather than seeing them as unsanitary vermin, she was amused by them and fed them crackers. She had a white collie and some Airedale dogs. Her frequent public appearances in Washington and at the White House with one of her numerous animal companions (including a raccoon, but more frequently one of two white collie dogs, Prudence Prim or Rob Roy) made popular with the press.She also enjoyed physical exercise, largely through rapid walking all over Washington, hiking in some of the remote regions of the country, and swimming. She also followed sporting events of the era, including tennis, football and baseball. She attended Washington Senators baseball games at Griffith Stadium and Army-Navy football games and listened to games on the radio. If she was unable to tune into a game on her own crystal-radio set with earphones, she often went to the White House telegraph room to keep up on scores.
The most significant event of Grace's tenure as first lady was the death of her 16 year old son Calvin Jr. in July of 1924. After playing tennis without socks, Calvin Jr. developed a blister on his toe and within four days he developed blood poisoning. In the two full days of his struggle to fight the infection, the First Lady remained at his bedside, initially at the White House and then at Walter Reed Hospital Two days before his death, the Coolidges had the crisis publicly disclosed. At the National Democratic Convention, then in session, bulletins on his condition were read to delegates and upon his death, and New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered a radio message of condolence for the family. Prayer vigils were held outside the White House and during his East Room funeral, the Coolidges permitted the gates to be opened to the public. The First Lady received thousands of sympathy letters, particularly from parents who had experienced a similar loss. She had a tree growing in Vermont near his place of burial brought to the White House, where she had it planted on the lawn near the tennis courts, with a memorial plaque. Five years later, on the anniversary of his death, Grace Coolidge penned an original poem, “The Open Door,” about the depth of spirituality the loss has given her and sent it for publication to Good Housekeeping magazine.
Grace Coolidge was also perceived by the press and public as a role model for young women pursuing higher education. Just after Boston University named its first woman dean, it also awarded the First Lady with an honorary degree.
Grace Coolidge figured in one so-called “scandal”, a minor incident which was sensationalized by the press. During the presidential vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota in the summer of 1927, Grace Coolidge took a hike deep into the woods with her unmarried Secret Service agent James Haley but they lost their bearings and were away for several hours longer than intended. Coolidge angrily ordered Haley off the First Lady’s protective detail. Many decades later, as documented in letters now in the Coolidge Presidential Center archives, it was revealed that Grace Coolidge felt so strongly that her husband’s rash decision had unfairly reflected poorly on Haley’s professionalism that it led her to assert this to the head of the Secret Service, without her husband ever knowing that she did this.
After leaving the White House, the Coolidges returned to live in their portion of the simple two-family home they had leased since the beginning of their marriage. After fifteen months of curious tourists driving past the house to catcha glimpse of them, they finally purchased a large, gabled home located on a seven acre plot on the Connecticut River, which afforded them more privacy. Three months after leaving the White House, Grace Coolidge was honored by Smith College with an honorary degree. A year later, the University of Vermont awarded her one as well. The couple took a western trip, visiting Hollywood studios, the estate San Simeon of William Randolph Hearst, and the dedication of Arizona’s Coolidge Dam where they were joined by Will Rogers.
Calvin Coolidge died of a heart attack on January 5, 1933. For the quarter of a century Grace lived as a widow. She placed much of their furniture up for auction to donate the proceeds to the Red Cross. In 1937, she was awarded a $5000 annual presidential widow’s pension. She joined the board of directors of the Clarke School for the Deaf and went on to serve as its president from 1935 to 1952. She arranged for the Boston Red Sox to play at least one game in which some of the ticket price was donated to Clarke School. She befriended a fellow Clarke School trustee and U.S. Senator named John F. Kennedy. She remained a loyal baseball fan of the Boston Red Sox, always given a place of honor when she attended games and coming to know many of the players. She made an extensive auto tour of Europe in 1936 with a friend and also finally made her first airplane ride. She had no interest in a second marriage although the widowed Everett Sanders, President Coolidge’s Chief of Staff, did propose to her.
It is said that Grace Coolidge "kept her sense of fun" right up until her death on July 8, 1957 at the age of 78. She is buried next to her husband in Plymouth, Vermont.
She was born Grace Anna Goodhue, in Burlington, Vermont on January 3, 1879. Her father was Captain Andrew Isaachar Goodhue, a mechanical engineer and a Democrat. Her mother was Lemira Barrett Goodhue, who strongly opposed her daughter’s romance with attorney Calvin Coolidge and advised her to turn down his marriage proposal. Grace was an only child.
Grace took a training course for teachers at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Massachusetts, and became an adherent of the practice of “lip-reading” for the students, as a way of mainstreaming them into the hearing world, as opposed to “sign-language.” She worked as a teacher of deaf children but ceased teaching once she was married.
As a college student, Grace Goodhue dated a fellow young member of her church, Clarence Noyes, but after meeting Calvin Coolidge in 1903, during her second year of working as a teacher and their ensuing courtship, she ended her relationship with Noyes. For their first date, Coolidge took her to a Republican rally at Northampton City Hall.
At age 26, Grace married 33 year old Calvin on October 4, 1905 at her parents' home in Burlington. It was a plain ceremony and after their wedding ceremony, the Coolidges took a one-week honeymoon in Montreal, Quebec before settling in a rented home in Northampton. The marriage produced two sons: John Coolidge born September 7 1906, and Calvin Coolidge, Jr., born April 13, 1908.
Grace later commented that she and her husband had “vastly different temperaments and tastes,” and that she often curtailed her own inclinations in favor of those of her husband. She also confessed that her efforts to lighten his more dour personality were usually unsuccessful. When Calvin Coolidge was elected to the state legislature in 1907, he would spend the weekdays in Boston during his two consecutive one-year terms, his three consecutive one-year terms as Lieutenant-Governor and his one term as Governor of Massachusetts. All the while Grace remained at home raising their sons and managing the household.
During World War I, Grace served as the co-chair of the Northampton Women’s War Committee, helping to coordinate volunteer activities and food conservation drives. She also began her lifelong work with the Red Cross, organizing fundraisers to benefit local men who enlisted in the armed services. When her husband was Governor, the state of Massachusetts did not provide its governor and gubernatorial family any type of state residence. Her physical separation from her husband in Boston removed her from official duties, despite her being the First Lady of the state.
When she became the wife of the Vice-President, Grace Coolidge was abruptly thrust from a private life to a public one. She sought the advice of Lois Marshall, the wife of her husband’s immediate predecessor, Vice President Thomas Marshall, and became “president” of an informal organization known as “The Ladies of the Senate,” a regular but informal gathering of the wives of U.S. Senators. Since the Vice President presided as “president” of the Senate, his wife was invested with a parallel status among their wives and among them Grace Coolidge forged numerous bi-partisan friendships.
The Coolidges were at their Plymouth Notch, Vermont home when they were awoken in the early morning hours of August 3, 1923 with the news that President Harding had died. Grace Coolidge lit the kerosene lamp by which her husband repeated the presidential oath of office as administered to him by his father, a notary public. She and her husband returned to Washington for Harding’s funeral and to Marion, Ohio for his burial. In the days following the death and burial of President Harding, Grace Coolidge showed particular sensitivity towards the suddenly-widowed Florence Harding, assuring her that she should consider remaining in the White House for as long a period as she wished.
Grace Coolidge maintained a friendly relationship with two of her predecessors who also lived in Washington throughout her incumbency as First Lady: Helen “Nellie” Taft, whose husband, the former President, was by then the Chief Justice, and Edith Wilson, whose husband died six months after the Coolidge Administration began. She followed an informal tradition begun by Edith Roosevelt of hosting afternoon classical music concerts. A number of well-known artists performed at these, including Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Grace Coolidge is said to have never entered the President’s office if he was working and said that she “knew nothing of what took place there.” She never lobbied the President on any appointment or legislation. She said that all that she knew about the President’s policy and political decisions, she learned from the media.
One of the areas of tension in their marriage centered around Grace's adventurous streak, which her husband tried to curtail. He forbid her from driving her own car, or flying in an airplane even with Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh when the aviator-hero offered to pilot her first ride in the sky. She would always address her husband as “Mr. President” when others were in their presence.
By his own admission in remarks not published until some two decades after his death, Calvin Coolidge suffered from and intermittent but often severe social anxiety in which he was so overcome with self-consciousness that, among strangers, he simply fell into complete silence, unable or unwilling to even simply reply to small talk. In the presence of his extroverted wife, however, the President was much more at ease and Grace Coolidge often carried the thread of conversation with official guests, providing him relief from the duty of making small talk. As Grace said, “I thought I would get him to enjoy life and have fun but he was not very easy to instruct in that way.” Coolidge agrred with this, writing after their silver wedding anniversary that “she has borne with my infirmities…”
Grace Coolidge had a love of animals of all types. For example, when she was Vice President’s wife, she discovered a family of mice in their suite. Rather than seeing them as unsanitary vermin, she was amused by them and fed them crackers. She had a white collie and some Airedale dogs. Her frequent public appearances in Washington and at the White House with one of her numerous animal companions (including a raccoon, but more frequently one of two white collie dogs, Prudence Prim or Rob Roy) made popular with the press.She also enjoyed physical exercise, largely through rapid walking all over Washington, hiking in some of the remote regions of the country, and swimming. She also followed sporting events of the era, including tennis, football and baseball. She attended Washington Senators baseball games at Griffith Stadium and Army-Navy football games and listened to games on the radio. If she was unable to tune into a game on her own crystal-radio set with earphones, she often went to the White House telegraph room to keep up on scores.
The most significant event of Grace's tenure as first lady was the death of her 16 year old son Calvin Jr. in July of 1924. After playing tennis without socks, Calvin Jr. developed a blister on his toe and within four days he developed blood poisoning. In the two full days of his struggle to fight the infection, the First Lady remained at his bedside, initially at the White House and then at Walter Reed Hospital Two days before his death, the Coolidges had the crisis publicly disclosed. At the National Democratic Convention, then in session, bulletins on his condition were read to delegates and upon his death, and New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered a radio message of condolence for the family. Prayer vigils were held outside the White House and during his East Room funeral, the Coolidges permitted the gates to be opened to the public. The First Lady received thousands of sympathy letters, particularly from parents who had experienced a similar loss. She had a tree growing in Vermont near his place of burial brought to the White House, where she had it planted on the lawn near the tennis courts, with a memorial plaque. Five years later, on the anniversary of his death, Grace Coolidge penned an original poem, “The Open Door,” about the depth of spirituality the loss has given her and sent it for publication to Good Housekeeping magazine.
Grace Coolidge was also perceived by the press and public as a role model for young women pursuing higher education. Just after Boston University named its first woman dean, it also awarded the First Lady with an honorary degree.
Grace Coolidge figured in one so-called “scandal”, a minor incident which was sensationalized by the press. During the presidential vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota in the summer of 1927, Grace Coolidge took a hike deep into the woods with her unmarried Secret Service agent James Haley but they lost their bearings and were away for several hours longer than intended. Coolidge angrily ordered Haley off the First Lady’s protective detail. Many decades later, as documented in letters now in the Coolidge Presidential Center archives, it was revealed that Grace Coolidge felt so strongly that her husband’s rash decision had unfairly reflected poorly on Haley’s professionalism that it led her to assert this to the head of the Secret Service, without her husband ever knowing that she did this.
After leaving the White House, the Coolidges returned to live in their portion of the simple two-family home they had leased since the beginning of their marriage. After fifteen months of curious tourists driving past the house to catcha glimpse of them, they finally purchased a large, gabled home located on a seven acre plot on the Connecticut River, which afforded them more privacy. Three months after leaving the White House, Grace Coolidge was honored by Smith College with an honorary degree. A year later, the University of Vermont awarded her one as well. The couple took a western trip, visiting Hollywood studios, the estate San Simeon of William Randolph Hearst, and the dedication of Arizona’s Coolidge Dam where they were joined by Will Rogers.
Calvin Coolidge died of a heart attack on January 5, 1933. For the quarter of a century Grace lived as a widow. She placed much of their furniture up for auction to donate the proceeds to the Red Cross. In 1937, she was awarded a $5000 annual presidential widow’s pension. She joined the board of directors of the Clarke School for the Deaf and went on to serve as its president from 1935 to 1952. She arranged for the Boston Red Sox to play at least one game in which some of the ticket price was donated to Clarke School. She befriended a fellow Clarke School trustee and U.S. Senator named John F. Kennedy. She remained a loyal baseball fan of the Boston Red Sox, always given a place of honor when she attended games and coming to know many of the players. She made an extensive auto tour of Europe in 1936 with a friend and also finally made her first airplane ride. She had no interest in a second marriage although the widowed Everett Sanders, President Coolidge’s Chief of Staff, did propose to her.
It is said that Grace Coolidge "kept her sense of fun" right up until her death on July 8, 1957 at the age of 78. She is buried next to her husband in Plymouth, Vermont.