Today, January 3, is the birthday of First Lady Grace Goodhue Coolidge. As a student at the University of Vermont, she was one of the charter members of the Vermont Beta Chapter of Pi Beta Phi. In fact, the chapter was installed in her family’s home, now part of Champlain College. She attended Pi Phi’s 1901 convention as her chapter’s delegate and some of the friendships she made there lasted her whole life through. I’ve asked my friend, Cyndy Bittinger, whom I consider the foremost authority on Grace Coolidge, to write today’s post. Several years ago, Cyndy was an alumna initiate of Grace’s Pi Phi chapter. Cyndy, along with Calvin Coolidge biographer, Amity Shlaes, did the on-air commentary to the CSPAN episode mentioned in the post.
For one of First Lady Grace Coolidge’s birthdays on January 3, the bell ringer at Edwards Congregational Church in Northampton, Massachusetts rang out “Happy Birthday” to honor her on her special day. That was an unusual tribute to a first lady who never really did want to call attention to herself. She would have been surprised that CSPAN has for the past year has been showing a series on first ladies entitled First Ladies: Influence and Image and that she was given one and a half hours of air time for herself just as the very famous Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson and Jacqueline Kennedy had their time.
How did she compare with other first ladies? The answer is more that she was very popular for her time period and that tragedy struck her family in the worst way and she bravely held her head up and courageously carried on. This was the 1920s and she and Calvin Coolidge followed the Hardings, two who had flaunted morality and ethics while in the White House. Calvin wanted to restore prior traditions and decorum before the drinking parties and card games brought in by the Hardings.
When her son, Calvin Jr., died from an infected blister that had festered into septicemia, Grace could have taken to her rooms at the White House like New Hampshire’s Jane Pierce did over the death of her son, little Benny, but she chose instead to smile and take joy in her husband’s accomplishments and her older son’s life.
Grace Coolidge wanted to contribute as first lady, but before Eleanor Roosevelt’s time, the role was traditionally in the background. So Grace presided over banquets and musical concerts. She reached out to veterans as Florence Harding had done. However, she showed innovation when she used the radio to showcase choirs singing Christmas carols at the White House and encouraged a sing along for the public by arranging for newspapers to print the carols they sang. She collected antiques for rooms at the White House and appointed a committee to oversee its historic furniture. When the White House needed renovation, she designed a sun parlor for the rooftop thus ensuring privacy and solitude for the presidential couple.
During the 1920s, Grace Coolidge reigned at a White House where staff wanted to warm up the president’s image and decided to entertain the movie stars of the era. So she met Will Rogers, the comedian who had imitated her husband on the radio. She kidded Rogers that she could do a better impersonation. He replied, “I believe it, but look what you had to go through to learn it.”
The legacy of Grace Coolidge is linked with baseball. Her pastime was also the nation’s pastime. She was an avid fan right up until her death in 1957 at the age of 78. The American League gave her passes each year in elegant purses. When her son John, during the 1990’s when he was in his late eighties, asked me to drive one of these from his home in Plymouth to the University of Vermont’s Grace Coolidge Room, I was pleased to add this artifact to their collection. Of course it did not outshine the baseball signed by both Babe Ruth atnd Lou Gehrig!
In the newly commissioned poll judging first ladies completed by historians, Grace Coolidge probably will not rank high as far as influence goes since her husband did not include her in his administration as Jimmy Carter did with Rosalyn nor did she comment on public affairs as Betty Ford and many others did. Instead, she stayed true to herself with her strong sense of religion and family. She reached out to those with disabilities drawing on her skill of teaching deaf students that she had done right out of college.
The University of Vermont has a dormitory named for Mrs. Coolidge and designated a room in her honor at Waterman Hall. Champlain College has saved the home where she was married to Calvin in 1905, but her birthplace and first home in Burlington remain unmarked. With presidential libraries from Herbert Hoover’s to George W. Bush’s being built, more emphasis has been on first ladies and their roles. At Plymouth Notch, Vermont the Coolidge education center featured an exhibit on Grace’s love of baseball last season. So her legacy is being secured.
Grace Coolidge in her official First Lady portrait
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Cyndy Bittinger is the author of several books. Her latest book is Vermont Women, Native American and African Americans. https://www.historypress.net/catalogue/bookstore/books/Location/New%20England/Vermont/Vermont-Women,-Native-Americans-AND-African-Americans/9781609492625
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To read more on Grace Coolidge, see my post at http://wp.me/P20I1i-16 or click on the Grace Coolidge category on the right hand side of this blog for other posts about her. Her husband, Phi Gamma Delta Calvin Coolidge has his own category, too.
(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2014. All Rights Reserved.
