The popularity of “Ike” is encapsulated in his nickname…just as it is with “Cal.” These two enjoyed a height of popular admiration among regular folks that others just haven’t known. Initials for our Presidents may give tribute to a kind of giant personality – maybe a way of nodding to their mega presence in their times – but they had big enemies and never quite reached the humanity or pervasive likeability that “Cal” and “Ike” experienced and embodied. These two (Coolidge & Eisenhower) were easily identified as “regular Americans” chosen for a time to the highest office in the land. There just isn’t that human quality in Hoover. Even in TR (whose zeal and energy cannot but earn respect) hated the personable “Teddy” for himself (while loving cartoonist Berryman’s depiction of the cuddly bear TR declined to shoot that gave life to the world-renowned “Teddy Bear”), FDR, JFK (who is highly admired but retains a certain nostalgic distance or unapproachability), and LBJ (for all of their massive legacies) just don’t speak to the “regular American” the way Cal and Ike do.

The calming effect their public personalities conveyed contrasted sharply with the frenetic management styles of their predecessors. Regular Americans needed that restful quality and got it in both men. Nations do not benefit from constant upheaval, transformation or revolution. The times to pause, slow down and take stock of things are just as, if not more, important.

It is also telling that Ike was the last President to put budget surpluses together consecutively for two of his eight years, 1956-57. Of course, Cal did it six times, every year of his tenure but Ike was the last President to date to prevent a deficit and present a surplus. The tax policy that fueled the substantial growth across the economic spectrum during the 1920s served to inspire both Ike and JFK to emulate Cal’s twofold example: (1) Reduce federal spending, resisting the temptation to prop up thereby wasteful uses of capital; and (2) Cut marginal rates for those least able to afford high taxation while incentivizing investment, job creation, and innovation. It was the abandonment of those two pillars of Cal’s example which led to economic collapse and prolonged depression in the 1930s and 1970s.

What was Christmas like for Calvin as a boy?

As the late Hendrik Booraem noted, Christmas had grown in importance with the passing of years after the War had ended in 1865. Those of Colonel Coolidge’s generation witnessed the holiday take full place alongside Thanksgiving, having not grown up as children of the 1840s and 50s with much that could be called the holiday we now know. Winter always being the most socially full season of the year for neighborhoods like Plymouth Notch, with the crops harvested, the cows dry, and large projects awaiting warmer temperatures, the calendar became quite full with dances, skating, indoor and outdoor parties, spelling bees, and singing practice for adults and children alike. Of course, many of the carols we sing today had yet to enter the repertoire.

Calvin’s younger sister Abbie, who was described by a cousin as “one of the sweetest girls I ever knew. Laughed as easily as anyone I ever saw, fat and jolly…she was wonderful company” (Booraem [1994], The Provincial, 222 n.14).

Young Calvin and his little sister Abbie took part in most of them, with Calvin abstaining when it came to dances. Recitations, readings from various poems or other texts, performed by students of all ages were a highlight of the season. Organized by the school teacher, this exhibition brought in neighbors from the Union and points even further away. This was largely enabled by heavy snowfall, that provided a kind of paved road for easier travel via horse-drawn sleigh. In 1885, Abbie read “The Three Wishes” while Calvin delivered “The Grey Cold Christmas.”

By the 1870s and 80s, a large tree usually found its way into the church building, amply decorated and adorned with gifts for just about everyone in the area. Often it was either Christmas Eve or the following night when the families of that country gathered to be together and share the occasion beside the tree inside the richly-carved room. There was always a generous place for pranks and other joke-gifts given and received – with most items personal and handmade. It was only well into the 1880s, after Calvin had begun studies at Black River Academy in Ludlow, that the arrival of a Sears, Roebuck catalogue in the mail at Cilley’s Store, began to herald the shopping season. Cal, accompanying his father across the street to the store to get the mail in the evenings, would sometimes see a lanky older boy there with his father, the boy most knew as “Gary,” the future Attorney General of the United States, John Garibaldi Sargent.

Families certainly decorated at home too, as Calvin describes, “Christmas was a sacrament observed with the exchange of gifts, when the stockings were hung, and the spruce tree was lighted in the symbol of Christian faith and love. While there was plenty of hard work, there was no lack of pleasurable diversion.”

One of Calvin’s favorite diversions was “sliding” (or as we know it, sledding), both during recess and once the chores were done, with one of the best spots being Schoolhouse Hill, up the rise from, you guessed it, the stone block schoolhouse and the cheese factory below it. No different from the latter day beloved comic strip, young Calvin carried his sled up that hill and routes like it countless times, perfecting the technique well into his teens, braving the numerous hazards of snowy embankments, wooded obstacles, rocks, ice, and unpredictable depths between his father’s house and Cal’s second home, the farm of his grandparents. In 1885, when he was 13, Christmas came and went with lots of rain. The long-awaited snowfall, in requisite quantities, finally came in mid-January of 1886 and so Cal was off, crisscrossing the expanse, about to begin a new life chapter that would take him to Ludlow and beyond.

Being fortunate to visit Plymouth Notch this past summer, I walked those hills and roads he knew so well. Blanketed with snow now, they undoubtedly welcome the memories of many years ago when a young boy looked out his window to see a thrilling canvas of possibilities in which to carve adventure.

Graham McNamee covering the World Series, October 5, 1924. Photo credit: Library of Congress.

Before Walter Cronkite there was Edward R. Murrow. Before Murrow, however, there were the legends who created radio newscasting during the 1920s: Graham McNamee, Floyd Gibbons, Lowell Thomas and Hans von Kaltenborn.

McNamee of WEAF was especially instrumental in those early days of radio coverage for both Presidents Harding and Coolidge. He covered Coolidge’s first, and arguably, his most important Annual Message to Congress in December 1923. McNamee was there for the growing number of speeches that would be delivered by “Silent Cal” as America’s First Radio President. Coolidge reveled in the use of this medium at a time when ‘real’ news reporting was jealously guarded by newsprint editors and correspondents.  It was feared radio would kill print. Television, with just the faintest of pictures at the close of the decade, would later challenge radio as it would continue challenging print.

President Coolidge delivering his first Annual Message before both houses of Congress, December 6, 1923. Covered by Graham McNamee on WEAF, McNamee took the unprecedented initiative of summarizing the basic points of the President’s message following its completion for listeners tuning in late. The summary was praised by listeners at the time as a helpful innovation but was nixed in the future for sounding too close to news reporting, the exclusive jurisdiction of print media at that early date. Photo credit: Library of Congress.

Just a week after the broadcast of President Coolidge’s speech, Cal was giving another with McNamee and the technical team of WEAF setting up from directly inside the White House. McNamee, interacting with them both on many occasions, had this to say three years later about the President and his lovely lady, Grace:

“Before the start, Mrs. Coolidge watched our movements with intense interest, asking in her sweet, gracious way many questions about the apparatus and its working. Characteristically enough, the President himself put no questions to us. I have observed him closely on many occasions and rarely indeed have I heard him ask any. He seems to take everything in with his eyes. This very day I watched him as he stood with [GOP Chairman William M.] Butler and other prominent people, having innumerable queries shot at him, but seldom did he speak himself, just stood there, listening, thinking, absorbing. I could not help but wonder at his poise and calm, and the wise shrewdness of those eyes which, you can depend upon it, were all the time taking in something” (You’re On the Air [1926], 70).

It reminds us of that old rhyme which hung in the Coolidge family home:

A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?