July 11, 2008

Historic alumni keep turning up

Three men who graduated from Amherst College in the 1880s and 1890s were the subject of some writing in recent weeks.

The Springfield Republican, for example, yesterday reviewed a biography of Charles Swan Walker (Class of 1885, according to the Biographical Record). According to the article, Walker was “the only person ever to earn a doctorate of philosophy from Amherst College.”

But perhaps the strangest twist in Walker’s life occurred while he was a professor of mental science and chaplain at the Massachusetts Agriculture College, which was commonly known as Mass Aggie and later became the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. One day while giving a sermon at the school’s chapel, a student named Harlan Fisk Stone led a rush out of the chapel, Fatherley said during a recent interview. Walker tried to stop the students, but Stone hit Walker and successfully led the students out of the chapel.

Walker succeeded in having Stone expelled from the college, Fatherley said. Stone then went on to Amherst College, where he befriended Calvin Coolidge. The connection eventually led to Stone becoming chief justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is the first I’d read of Stone 1894 having spent time at Mass Aggie, but clearly meeting Coolidge 1895 was an important point in Stone’s life—and apparently it was Walker who precipitated that meeting, however indirectly.

Coolidge himself was the subject of a retrospective in the Rutland Herald last week written by Cyndy Bittinger, executive director of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. On the occasion of Coolidge’s 136th birthday (he was born July 4, 1872), Bittinger writes,

His mother gave birth to him in a simple dwelling attached to the store his father ran for the local farmers. Not many U.S. presidents come from such humble dwellings. …in this top-heavy, powerful, executive-run government, we expect only those who have come from well-connected, wealthy parents to run the gauntlet and succeed. You need a leg up, an advantage, a genealogy that places you among the elite. That is why the Coolidge story should resonate just as Obama’s now has become a best-seller on the New York Times book list.

Parker Morse '96 | July 11, 2008 01:46 PM | Alumni | History