Sunday, September 10, 2017

The Greatest Grief

            "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated men. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."


            To most people, Calvin Coolidge is little more than punch line. He may be best known for his reply to a woman who approached him at a White House dinner. She said, "My husband bet me I couldn't get you to say three words." Coolidge told her, "You lose."
            Though Coolidge is little remembered, Ronald Reagan had good things to say about his fellow Republican. "I'd always thought of Coolidge as one of our most underrated presidents," Reagan said. "He came into office after World War I facing a mountain of war debt but instead of raising taxes, he cut the tax rate and government revenues increased, permitting him to eliminate the wartime debt and proving that the principle…about lower taxes meaning greater tax revenues still worked in the modern world."
            Coolidge was a notorious skin-flint, even in the days when government spent far less on few fewer programs. He and his budget chief determined that federal workers would only be issued one pencil. Every employee was told to use his pencil down to its stub before asking for a new one. "Our item of expense for pencils is materially less," a federal report proudly stated.
            Though the U.S. experienced boom times during his presidency from 1923 to 1929, he had to contend with a woe far more intractable than debt.

Like Crimson Lightning

            His son Calvin Jr. died while he was in office.
            Even his older brother John admitted he was his father's favorite. He had inherited his father's dry wit and stone-faced expression.
            At age 16, he was a strong young man. The summer before, he had worked as a farm-hand on a Connecticut tobacco farm. He was "full of pranks" and lover of books.
            On June 30, 1924, he and John, 17, played tennis on the White House lawn. A blood blister rose on the middle toe of his right foot. Calvin Jr. hadn't been wearing socks. At first, he didn't think much of it and told no one. Soon he was limping, and he developed a fever of 102. Red streaks went up his leg like crimson lightning.
            He had a sepsis (blood poisoning) caused by the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus. In those days, it caused many deaths. Penicillin or another antibiotic would have likely easily cured him, but such wonder drugs had yet to be discovered.
            A few days later doctors admitted him to the nearby Walter Reed Medical Center, home to some of the nation's best physicians. Calvin Jr. received blood transfusions and even had an operation.
            The Fourth of July was the President's birthday. He used the occasion to write his father in Vermont, saying "Calvin is very sick, so this is not a happy day for me….Of course he has all that medical science can give but he may have a long sickness with ulcers then again he may be better in a few days."
            Calvin Jr. drifted in and out of consciousness, at one point blurting out on July 7 "Come on, help!" as if he were leading a cavalry charge. Then he relaxed and said, "We surrender!" His doctor said, "Don't surrender." Calvin Jr. said "Yes" and died.         


            His doctor remembered, "It is commonly stated that President Coolidge is 'cold as ice, but I had the opportunity of seeing him in his hour of grief and to know quite otherwise. Indeed, it was the most touching and heart-rending experience of my whole professional career."
            (Not since Lincoln's son William died of typhoid fever in 1862 had such a tragedy befallen a President. "He was too good for this earth," Lincoln wrote. "It is hard, hard to have him die.")
            The Presidential election campaign was underway. When Calvin Jr. died the Democrats convention was in its second sweltering week in Madison Square Garden. An announcement came over the loudspeakers. There was a "low, prolonged moan, almost a sob. Rancor ceased and a wave of common sympathy swept over the vast audience."
            Coolidge lost interest in campaigning. For weeks, he was always wore black armband. Many historians believe Coolidge fell into a depression which never lifted and may have even contributed to his death four years after leaving office.

"Such a Price"

            In his autobiography, Coolidge acknowledged that a bright spark in his life had been extinguished. "The greatest grief that can come to a boy came to me," he wrote. "Life was never to seem the same again."
            Most notably, he added "When [my son] went, the power and glory of the Presidency went with him." Perhaps Coolidge thought he was destined for ill fate. "I do not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House," he wrote.
            Was Coolidge's presidency ruined by this tragedy? Biographer Amity Shlaes thinks not. "Like Lincoln too, Coolidge lost a son while in office; like Lincoln, he pushed ahead and achieved much despite the loss," including fighting corruption and improving government services. Historian Robert Gilbert, the author of a psycho-biography of Coolidge, disagrees writing that he "declined to use his powers as president to achieve his goals."
            Whatever the truth, depression and grief were not as well understood—or treated—in the 1920s as they are today. Calvin Coolidge could have resigned the presidency. He did not. Coolidge, whatever one thinks of his political beliefs or accomplishments, upheld his duties as president to the best of his abilities.

MORAL: Fight the good fight.


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