Here is an awesome half-hour presentation of the life and landmark accomplishments of Calvin Coolidge by superb scholar Jerry Wallace to the Wichita Pachyderm Club. His irreplaceable volume Calvin Coolidge: Our First Radio President has contributed so much toward shattering the myth that Cal was too inept and silent to make use of the new medium of radio. In fact, Mr. Wallace explains that far from being a failure, Calvin Coolidge bequeaths an historic legacy as not only a masterful communicator but effectual doer and successful President. This is well worth the listen!
property
“Bless Their Honest Irish Hearts” by Charles C. Johnson
“Bless Their Honest Irish Hearts” by Charles C. Johnson
Before St. Patrick’s Day comes to a close, it is useful to consider the contributions of one individual, not native to the Emerald Isle but, despite being a Congregationalist Yankee, did much toward welcoming and assimilating Ireland’s immigrants to a place of respect and honor in one of the most Irish-heavy areas of America, the city of Boston. Rather than enhancing racial or religious bigotry by demanding instant results, Coolidge diffused tensions through mutual respect and patient education. Treating the Irish no differently than anyone else who came here to work hard, live honestly and become citizens, he taught what being American is all about, free of hyphens, committed to liberty, grounded in Christian forbearance and confident enough to hold faith in our founding ideals. In this way, he did more to establish the Irish (and immigrants of all countries) as full-fledged Americans than most recognize. Coolidge would experience an unbroken series of political victories as a result, thanks in part to these “Coolidge Democrats” who understood that for immigration to benefit everyone, the responsibilities of citizenship must be taken just as soberly as its rewards. Character came first and it was that very insistence on standards, despite the career risks for Coolidge personally, that prevailed at the ballot box. Coolidge did not need a herd of consultants to validate the Golden Rule for him. As he would observe later in life: The person who is right makes his own luck. Cal points the way toward the Founder’s vision for an assimilated, prosperous and peaceful people preserved through an incremental, not immediate, process; a pathway to citizenship earned by obedience, not bestowed by political calculation for electoral advantage.
“A rarer specimen than Davis’ recent great discovery, Honesty” by “Ding” Darling, The Des Moines Register 8-31-1924
Julius Caesar…Coolidge and Family
In observance of the Ides of March, here is an old offering from the Coolidge family album: a photo of Julius Caesar Coolidge (far left) as a boy, the President’s uncle, taken with his family: father, Calvin Galusha; mother, Almeda Brewer; and brother, John Calvin (far right). While Calvin Coolidge never met Julius, who died two years before the future President was born, he experienced much the same mixture of joy and sorrow, play and hard work of which Calvin later summarized from his own experience:
“It would be hard to imagine better surroundings for the development of a boy than those which I had. While a wider breadth of training and knowledge could have been presented to me, there was a daily contact with many new ideas, and the mind was given sufficient opportunity thoroughly to digest all that came to it. Country life does not always have breadth, but it has depth. It is neither artificial nor superficial, but is kept close to the realities” (The Autobiography, p.33).
Like many families of the early nineteenth century, the courageous deeds of heroes from antiquity intermixed with the unshakeable convictions of religious heroes from the Reformation and Great Awakening to be perpetuated in the choice of names for babies born to those early pioneers of Vermont and beyond. What better way to evoke great things for new lives than to name one for the brave conqueror and another for the stalwart reformer?
The Importance of the Obvious 