Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge

Grace Coolidge was the first first lady to earn a four-year undergraduate degree, and had a career teaching deaf children before marrying Calvin Coolidge. Mr. Coolidge was famously taciturn and traditional as a husband, and he regulated his wife’s clothes, speech, hobbies, and public appearances while she was first lady. In spite of this, Grace Coolidge retained her husband’s private respect for her wit and intellect and earned the respect of the public with her casual and earnest demeanor as well as her sense of humor. Though Calvin forbade her from giving interviews or expressing her policy opinions in public, she spent her 24 widowed years unafraid to speak on policy issues, chiefly American intervention in World War II and better education and opportunity for the deaf: her lifelong passion.