Getting Out the Vote | Timeless New England– Classic Images of Our Region
When Calvin Coolidge hit the campaign trail, his portrait came along for the ride.
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) inspects a campaign truck painted with images of Coolidge, his running mate, Charles G. Dawes (1865-1951), and Coolidge’s birthplace in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Coolidge, who became president when Warren G. Harding died in 1923, won the November 1924 election to continue as America’s 30th president.
Photo Credit : FPG/Getty Images
Photo Credit : FPG/Getty Images
As we close in on the finish line of one of the loudest presidential campaigns in our history, let’s step back and spend a quiet moment with “Silent Cal”—John Calvin Coolidge, farm-born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, who as vice president, was sworn in by his father by the light of a kerosene lantern at the family homestead on August 3, 1923, upon the sudden death of President Warren G. Harding. Though famous for his taciturn ways, Coolidge became one of our most photographed politicians, and often sought out what today we call “photo ops.” Voters saw him wearing a Native American headdress or mowing his family’s farmstead, posing, in fact, pretty much any time a friendly camera pointed his way. Here, on the cusp of the 1924 election, his father surveys his son’s visage and that of his running mate, Charles G. Dawes, with whom he maintained a frosty alliance, on a campaign truck that would wend its way along the byways of the land, carrying his message to “Keep Cool with Coolidge.” He was victorious and continued as the 30th president of the United States. His Vermont family homestead today is maintained and open to the public as the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site. — Mel Allen
