While volunteering at the Coolidge Room in Forbes Library recently, I learned that this past July 8 was the 60th anniversary of the death of Grace Coolidge.
The sole time I ever saw the former first lady was when I was 10 years old. A friend and I came out of the Winthrop Foster camera store on Main Street in Northampton (now the site of Dobra Tea) and a woman on the sidewalk stuck out her hand to us indicating that we should stand close to the storefront. “It’s Mrs. Coolidge,” she whispered.
I noticed that the pedestrians had cleared a path for a woman crossing Old South Street. She had a small shopping bag in one hand and directly behind her was a man carrying a garment box. She looked around and gave a little smile as if she was embarrassed by the adulation. The two got into a big black car — a Buick, I think — that was parked directly in front of the camera store. They were soon on their way and the street returned to normal.
My short glimpse of Northampton’s most famous resident happened in 1950 when I was in the fifth grade. I had no idea she was alive or lived in town. The only reason I recognized the name was because a teacher once had inadvertently mentioned she had taken part in a parade when Northampton had a president. “We had a president?” someone asked. “Yes, his name was Calvin Coolidge and he lived here,” she replied. If not for that offhand remark, I would not have been familiar with the name.
The date of Grace Coolidge’s death was an obscure historical fact and there was no compelling reason for it to be noted. However, there are some upcoming dates in the career of Calvin Coolidge that deserve to be acknowledged here in Northampton.
Next November will mark the 100th anniversary of his election as governor of Massachusetts. I know this will coincide with the centennial celebration of the World War I Armistice, but surely the city can put aside one day earlier in the month to celebrate Coolidge’s success. His election brought a great sense of pride to the city, just as happened again with his re-election in 1919. But they were minor events compared to the excitement created by his election as vice president in 1920. Northampton should certainly commemorate all those milestones in the next few years.
Coolidge can’t catch a break from some historians and, as a result, his reputation has suffered. His predecessors in the White House — William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson — all had sent troops into Central American nations to quell uprisings.
Coolidge was determined to improve relations with our neighbors to the south. To demonstrate he was serious about that desire, Coolidge personally sailed to Havana on a Navy ship to attend a conference of Latin American nations. One historian, loathe to give Coolidge credit for accomplishing anything positive, wrote that he talked of peace but arrived in a battleship. That compels me to ask, how else was he supposed to get to Havana? In 1928, there was no Air Force One. Was the president of the United States supposed to take a sailboat or row in a dinghy to the conference?
At the conclusion of World War I, Wilson sailed to the Paris Peace Conference on a battleship that was accompanied by five destroyers. I have never heard him criticized for that. I fail to see the significant difference in the two situations except that, until recently, Wilson was lauded as a visionary progressive leader while Coolidge was considered just another lackey of business interests and not as someone who genuinely wished to have nations cease warring with each other.
I am often told that Northampton has become too liberal a community to embrace even such a moderate conservative as Coolidge. But what has one’s political philosophy to do with honoring the man? After all, he was president and a very popular one.
I am a registered Democrat and I find Coolidge fascinating. With all the current talk about the need for people on the left and the right to start conversing with one another, I see the career of Coolidge as an avenue to begin such a dialogue. He would certainly endorse that idea.
Let’s start planning some appropriate celebrations to honor Calvin and Grace in the upcoming years.
Richard Szlosek, of Northampton, volunteers in the Calvin Coolidge Room at Forbes Library.