Calvin Coolidge - Retirement and Death

Retirement and Death

After his presidency, Coolidge retired to the modest rented house on residential Massasoit Street in Northampton before moving to a more spacious mansion, "The Beeches." He kept a Hacker runabout boat on the Connecticut River and was often observed on the water by local boating enthusiasts. During this period he also served as chairman of the non-partisan Railroad Commission, as honorary president of the American Foundation for the Blind, as a director of New York Life Insurance Company, as president of the American Antiquarian Society, and as a trustee of Amherst College. Coolidge received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

Coolidge published his autobiography in 1929 and wrote a syndicated newspaper column, "Calvin Coolidge Says," from 1930 to 1931. Faced with looming defeat in 1932, some Republicans spoke of rejecting Herbert Hoover as their party's nominee, and instead drafting Coolidge to run, but the former President made it clear that he was not interested in running again, and that he would publicly repudiate any effort to draft him, should it come about. Hoover was renominated, and Coolidge made several radio addresses in support of him.

He died suddenly of a heart attack at "The Beeches," at 12:45 pm, January 5, 1933. Shortly before his death, Coolidge confided to an old friend: "I feel I no longer fit in with these times."

Coolidge is buried beneath a simple headstone in Notch Cemetery, Plymouth Notch, Vermont, where the family home is maintained as one of the original buildings on the site, all of which comprise the Calvin Coolidge Homestead District. The State of Vermont dedicated a new visitors' center nearby to mark Coolidge's 100th birthday on July 4, 1972. Calvin Coolidge's "Brave Little State of Vermont speech" is memorialized in the Hall of Inscriptions at the Vermont State House in Montpelier, Vermont.