President Calvin Coolidge
In the summer of 1923, a small, spare bedroom in a Vermont farmhouse filled with the soft, uneven glow of lamplight. Outside, the village of Plymouth Notch slept under a sky pricked with stars. Inside, a middle-aged man in a simple nightshirt stood at attention beside the bed where his father, John Coolidge, a notary public and storekeeper, held an open Bible. A telegram lay nearby on a small table, its message as stark as ink on paper can be: the President of the United States, Warren G. Harding, was dead. The vice president, Calvin Coolidge—who had come home to visit his father and escape the Washington heat—was now, by law and by fate, the new president. There was no grand ceremony, no band, no cheering crowds. At 2:47 a.m. on August 3, 1923, in that quiet, lamp-lit bedroom, John Coolidge administered the oath of office to his son. Calvin placed his hand on the Bible, repeated the words of the presidential oath, and then, as later accounts have it, went back to bed.
