I realized this morning that the two U.S. Presidents whose homes I visited died on January 5 and January 6, in different years. The Calvin Coolidge homestead is in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. It is the boyhood home of the 30th President, an initiate of the Phi Gamma Delta chapter at Amherst College.
On the morning of January 5, 1933, 60-year-old President Coolidge left for his office at 25 Main Street in Northampton. The chauffeur brought the President and his secretary, Harry Ross, back to the house a short time later. The January 6, 1933 New York Times gave details of the President’s death. In the article, Ross recounted the morning’s events:
We drove out to The Beeches, and went into his study on the ground floor. Mrs. Coolidge was getting ready to go downtown for her regular morning shopping. She came into the study and chatted with us awhile. As she got up to go out the door without calling the car, Mr. Coolidge said: ‘Don’t you want the car?’
‘No,’ she replied, ‘It’s such a nice day, I’d rather walk than ride.’ These were their last words together.
When the First Lady returned from her trip to town, she went upstairs to call her husband to lunch. That is when she found him dead on the floor.
The funeral services took place at the Edwards Congregational Church on Main Street, in Northampton, Massachusetts, where the Coolidges were faithful members. The President was buried in the family plot in the small cemetery in Plymouth, Vermont.
As a child growing up on Long Island, I often visited Sagamore Hill, the summer White House during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. A Harvard alumnus, he was an initiate of the Alpha Chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon. The 26th President died in his sleep on January 6, 1919. He died at age 60 of a coronary embolism.
Sagamore Hill is in Oyster Bay on Long Island’s north shore overlooking the Long Island Sound. As I toured Sagamore Hill during my childhood and later when I took my own children there, it was easy to envision President Roosevelt walking the property or carrying on business in the house.
After a simple church service at Christ Church in Oyster Bay on January 8, the President was laid to rest at Youngs Memorial Cemetery, near Sagamore Hill. According to the Youngs Memorial Cemetery’s website, “Family members and dignitaries made their way up the steep snow-dusted hill, and a bugler blew taps. When the ceremony ended, one mourner stayed behind. Former President William Howard Taft—by turns a political ally and a foe—stood by the grave weeping. As he later wrote to Edith Roosevelt, ‘I loved him always and cherish his memory.’ America felt the same.”
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All rights reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
