COOLIDGE, 30th, 1923-29

A Harvard professor observed, Calvin Coolidge "was a small, hatchet-faced, colorless man, with a tight-shut, thin-lipped mouth; very chary of words, but with a gleam of understanding in his pretty keen eye." In appearance Coolidge was splendidly null, apparently deficient in red corpuscles, with a peaked, wire-drawn expression.

His speaking voice was likened to a quack.

Coolidge was agoraphobic and could not stand public speaking. He explained, "When I was a little fellow ... I would go into a panic if I heard strange voices in the kitchen. Every time I meet a stranger, I've got to go through the old kitchen door, back home, and it's not easy."

Recognizing the contrast between himself and his gregarious wife, Grace Goodhue, who taught at a school for the deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, Coolidge remarked, "having taught the deaf to hear, Miss Goodhue might perhaps cause the mute to speak." Coolidge was the first President to broadcast an inaugural address.

Coolidge slept 11 hours a day. He went to bed at 10, got up between 7 and 9, and always took an afternoon nap lasting two to four hours.

He proudly admitted that his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry. Her maiden name was Moor — a name commonly given at that time to Black Europeans.

A few days after Coolidge entered the White House, he wrote to Jim Lucey, a cobbler from his hometown with whom he shared confidences, "I want you to know, he said, that if it were not for you I should not be here and I want to tell you how much I love you."

Coolidge hated being photographed, but he was one of the most frequently snapped men of his era. He was once asked how he got his exercise: "Having my picture taken," he replied.

Upon leaving the White House he prided himself on the fact that he was in better physical condition than when he entered it, and better physically than most of his predecessors when they retired from the office. Coolidge died of sudden heart attack in his dressing room in his modest estate, "The Beeches." He was 60 years old. He was found lying on his back, with a calm expression on his face as if he had died without pain or suffering. He was in his shirtsleeves.

James Lucey, the aged Northampton cobbler to whom Coolidge once wrote, was heart broken. The old man stood in his shop pipe in hand, arm resting on the counter, and recalled the days when he and Calvin Coolidge used to exchange their views upon life. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He was the best friend I ever had," said the cobbler of the former President.

d. January 5, 1933 (Northampton, Massachusetts) at 60 of a coronary thrombosis.