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Inauguration of Calvin Coolidge as President - 1923

Hollywood couldn't have scripted a more dramatic or compelling opening to a presidency: The incumbent president, popular but facing a growing scandal, dies suddenly in California. A telegram is sent to notify the vice president, vacationing at the family home in an isolated hilltown in Vermont.

But with neither electricity nor telephone at the vice president's home, a messenger is forced to drive from a nearby town to deliver the telegram, arriving at the darkened house around midnight.

The vice president's father is awakened by the knocking; he reads the telegram and calls upstairs to his son. At 2:47 a.m., the father, a notary public, administers the oath of office to his son in a small rustic room by the light of a kerosene lamp.

This was how the presidency of Calvin Coolidge opened in 1923. It was unique: Coolidge is the only president to have taken the oath of office in his home and the only one to have received the oath from a family member. And it resonated with the voters: Coolidge's home, with no indoor plumbing or electricity, conjured up images of Abraham Lincoln's log cabin.

The inaugural ceremony seared in the minds of voters the image of a frugal New England Yankee, devoted to family and old-style values.