For her "fine personal influence exerted as First Lady of the Land," Grace
Coolidge received a gold medal from the National Institute of Social Sciences.
In 1931 she was voted one of America's twelve greatest living women.

She had grown up in the Green Mountain city of Burlington, Vermont, only child
of Andrew and Lemira B. Goodhue, born in 1879. While still a girl she heard of
a school for deaf children in Northampton, Massachusetts, and eventually
decided to share its challenging work. She graduated from the University of
Vermont in 1902 and went to teach at the Clarke School for the Deaf that
autumn.

In Northampton she met Calvin Coolidge; they belonged to the same boating,
picnicking, whist-club set, composed largely of members of the local
Congregational Church. In October 1905 they were married at her parents' home.
They lived modestly; they moved into half of a duplex two weeks before their
first son was born, and she budgeted expenses well within the income of a
struggling small-town lawyer.

To Grace Coolidge may be credited a full share in her husband's rise in
politics. She worked hard, kept up appearances, took her part in town
activities, attended her church, and offset his shyness with a gay
friendliness. She bore a second son in 1908, and it was she who played backyard
baseball with the boys. As Coolidge was rising to the rank of governor, the
family kept the duplex; he rented a dollar-and-a-half room in Boston and came
home on weekends.

In 1921, as wife of the Vice President, Grace Coolidge went from her
housewife's routine into Washington society and quickly became the most popular
woman in the capital. Her zest for life and her innate simplicity charmed even
the most critical. Stylish clothes--a frugal husband's one indulgence--set off
her good looks.

After Harding's death, she planned the new administration's social life as her
husband wanted it: unpretentious but dignified. Her time and her friendliness
now belonged to the nation, and she was generous with both. As she wrote later,
she was "I, and yet, not I--this was the wife of the President of the United
States and she took precedence over me...." Under the sorrow of her younger
son's sudden death at 16, she never let grief interfere with her duties as
First Lady. Tact and gaiety made her one of the most popular hostesses of the
White House, and she left Washington in 1929 with the country's respect and
love.

For greater privacy in Northampton, the Coolidges bought "The Beeches," a large
house with spacious grounds. Calvin Coolidge died there in 1933. He had summed
up their marriage in his Autobiography: "For almost a quarter of a century she
was borne with my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces." After his
death she sold The Beeches, bought a smaller house, and in time undertook new
ventures she had longed to try: her first airplane ride, her first trip to
Europe. She kept her aversion to publicity and her sense of fun until her death
in 1957. Her chief activity as she grew older was serving as a trustee of the
Clarke School; her great pleasure was the family of her surviving son, John.