On Life, Death and Fatherhood

April 14, 2013April 14, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

Yesterday, April 13, marked the birthday of Calvin Coolidge Jr., the second son of the Coolidges, who came into the world in 1908. As Margaret Fischer notes in her book on Calvin Jr., “As Calvin was born near Easter his parents called him ‘Bunny’ until a name was chosen. After some weeks Mrs. Coolidge told her husband she thought it time the baby was given ‘a fit and Christian name.’ ‘I was just waiting to see if he knew anything before we call him Calvin,’ he responded. So Calvin it was. But while he was small his father, always given to nicknames, often called him ‘Bunny,’ or ‘Little Bun,’ or ‘Benjamin Bun.’ The little family into which Calvin had been born was a close and devoted one…As a father [Mr. Coolidge]…was a strict disciplinarian, expecting unquestioning obedience, and, preoccupied by serious matters, was usually rather formal with his sons, but he was ever thoughtful and considerate with them. And despite his formality with them he sometimes had a great deal of fun teasing them. But Calvin, Jr., as his mother once wrote, ‘usually caught a joke in the making and sidetracked it with a laugh,’ leading her husband to say there was no use trying his fun there. Mr. Coolidge enjoyed taking the boys on long walks and he occasionally played Authors, Parcheesi or some other game with them. And in his undemonstrative way he was intensely proud of them.”

A reporter from The Washington Star wrote after a visit with young Calvin during his work in the tobacco fields in August 1923, “Calvin Jr. is a powerful reminder of his father, slender, taciturn, and with a love of the economy of speech that has marked his namesake. He flashes the same evanescent smile that comes and goes so quickly that one wonders whether it really has happened, but, as is the case with the President the smile lingers in the bright blue eyes.”

The headmaster of the Academy at which the Coolidge boys studied said of Calvin Jr., “Calvin, like his father, was quiet and taciturn, but under that calm, reserved exterior there was fire and eagerness and tenderness, hidden from mere acquaintances but which won the love and admiration of all who knew him well.”

When sixteen year old Calvin died from blood poisoning in July 1924, the loss of such a good and hard-working boy struck the entire country. There is no question that it profoundly grieved the family. The President told Chief Justice Taft that summer, “I believe he possessed great power for good that would have made itself felt had he lived.”

Even in the midst of that deep sorrow, the Coolidges demonstrated a strength toward death that left an enduring impression on those who were there. The White House social secretary, Mary Randolph, observed, “In all the great East Room,” where the service was held at the White House, “there were few who did not weep. But the President and Mrs. Coolidge and John were dry-eyed. Their dignity and courage never broke–never even wavered. They commanded the loving admiration and respect of everyone there.”

He remained, as his father would write years later, “[p]rivileged, by the grace of God, to be a boy throughout eternity.”

On the Purpose of Education

April 10, 2013April 10, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Amherst College, with teachers like Charles E. Garman and Anson D. Morse, stood preeminent in the country during the period in which Calvin Coolidge studied there. This was not merely due to the caliber of the men who taught here or its classical curriculum but it was due to the fact that Amherst remained true to the goal of education. It was distinguished in a time when a high number of excellent educational institutions proliferated the country. In our time, it is a serious lack of stewardship that good schools are increasingly difficult to find. Hillsdale College founded twenty-three years after Amherst remains one such haven of classical education. Delivering the commencement address at Amherst on June 18, 1919, Governor Coolidge outlined the purpose of education as it is to be faithfully passed on: “Civilization depends not only upon the knowledge of the people, but upon the use they make of it. If knowledge be wrongfully used, civilization commits suicide. Broadly speaking, the college is not to educate the individual, but to educate society. The individual may be ignorant and vicious. If society have learning and virtue, that will sustain him. If society lacks learning and virtue, if perishes. Education must give not only power but direction. It must minister to the whole man or it fails. Such an education considered from the position of society does not come from science. That provides power alone, but not direction. Give a savage tribe firearms and a distillery, and their members will exterminate each other. They have science all right, but misuse it. They lack ideals.”

Living with the spectre of the Great War, which had not yet formally ended, all those listening to Coolidge speak knew well the horrors of what man, equipped with science severed from morals, could mete out on the world. Over 37 million lay dead around the globe with millions more missing and grieving over the lives forever changed as a result.

As Vice President, Coolidge would continue to explain what education was meant to accomplish, “Unless we are to be content with the superficial, the cynical, and the immature, something more substantial than this is needed to bring out the best that there is in life. The real constructive power of the mind must be sought. It is necessary to provide a training which will enable the student to assemble facts, draw conclusions, and weigh evidence. Education must bring out these higher powers of the mind, if the result is to be real manhood and real character. The goal is not to be the lower reaches of mere animal existence but the higher reaches of beings endowed with reason. Such result can only be secured by long and tireless discipline.”

Of what would this curriculum consist? “Gender” and “minority studies” disguised as history courses? Sexual-education seminars cloaked behind philosophy classes? Narrow subjects at the expense of understanding the whole picture? No, Coolidge answers, “[c]ourses of study must be pursued which require close application, accurate observation, precise comparison, and logical conclusion.” All things foreign to far too many modern schools. Coolidge continues, “I know of no courses which have supplied these requirements better than the study of mathematics, Latin, and Greek when they are supplemented by contemplation of the great truths of philosophy and a generous knowledge of history. The ideal of education must be not a special training leading to a one-sided development but a broad and liberal culture which will bring into operation the whole power of the individual. We have witnessed a falling away from this ideal…Unless education can be based on a belief in mankind and in the power of the race as a whole to develop by response to the teachings of the truth, education might as well be abandoned.”

Coolidge kept going to make the point even plainer, “In education the whole being must be taken into consideration. It is not enough to train the hand, the eye, to quicken the perception of the senses, develop the quickness of the intellect, and leave out of consideration the building up of character, the aspirations of the soul.” A solid training in historical perspective, more than just peripheral, is essential. “There is the most urgent necessity for a broader understanding of the teachings of history and the comprehension of the height and breadth of human nature, if we are to maintain society, if we are to support civilization. Much of the unrest of the present day, many of the unwise proposals for change in the way of laws, and the large amount of criticism of our government would be completely answered if there were a better general knowledge of history.” It is because history is not actually taught any longer than schools are turning out ignorant and impressionable students. Departing from the aim of education, control over what people are allowed to think has taken its place. Thereby sweeping social and political transformation can be achieved without, or in spite of, an informed citizenry.

As a result, the proper understanding of our form of government is lost. The goal of education becomes no longer building mature men and women who become responsible citizens but instead is the deliberate perpetuation of childish expectations, outlooks and attitudes. The literacy rate in this country is even to demonstrate education is no longer the goal of too many modern schools. In the end, though, “[t]here is no such thing as liberty without responsibility. My rights are always represented by the duties of others. My freedom is always represented by the obedience of others. Their rights and their freedom are represented by my duties and my obedience…Any attempt to maintain rights, to secure freedom and liberty for ourselves without the observance of duties and the rendering of obedience toward others, is a contradiction of terms. It defeats itself.” It is that suicidal legacy that confronts us now.

“But the chief end of it all, the teaching of how to think and how to live, must never be forgotten. All of this points to the same conclusion, the necessity of a foundation of liberal culture, and the requirement for broadening and increasing the amount of moral intellectual training to meet the increasing needs of a complicated civilization.” As President, Coolidge would adhere to that same conclusion, “All of our learning and science, our culture and our arts, will be of little avail, unless they are supported by high character, unless there be honor, truth, and justice. Unless our material resources are supported by moral and spiritual resources, there is no foundation for progress. A trained intelligence can do much, but there is no substitute for morality, character, and religious convictions. Unless these abide, American citizenship will be found unequal to the task.” Such is both the challenge and the opportunity to restore genuine education, rearing children into mature adults, encouraging teachers of character, preparing responsible citizens and morally equipping the nation for the future.

On “Father” Coolidge

March 18, 2013March 19, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

It was on this day in the cold of March eighty-seven years ago that “Colonel” John Coolidge, the father of the President, died. His oldest grandson and namesake, would recall the words of Calvin Coolidge spoken in an interview six months after “Grandfather Coolidge” passed. The thirtieth president had this to say about the man popularly known around the nation as “Colonel” Coolidge, the notary who had sworn in his son three years before:

“My father had qualities that were greater than any I possess. He was a man of untiring industry and great tenacity of purpose…He always stuck to the truth. It always seemed possible for him to form an unerring judgment of men and things. I can not recall that I ever knew of his doing a wrong thing. He would classed as decidedly a man of character. I have no doubt he is representative of a great mass of Americans who are known only to their local neighbors; nevertheless, they are really great. It would be difficult to say that he had a happy life. He never seemed to be seeking happiness. He was a firm believer in hard work. Death visited the family often. But I have no doubt he took a satisfaction in accomplishment and always stood ready to meet any duty that came to him. He did not fear the end of life, but looked forward to it as a reunion with all he had loved and lost.”

Such regard for the qualities of men like Calvin’s father deserve both mention and honor. They are no less imperative if a proper perspective of the family and society is to be preserved. In the haste to jettison all that is masculine in culture, an irreplaceable and detrimental cavity has been opened. Devoid of the particular kind of strength supplied by fathers, like John, homes are compromised and civilization, without these crucial pillars, collapses underneath the weight of its own weakness.