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On January 17, 1929, approximately six weeks before he would leave office, President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) met with the men in charge of our nation’s lighthouses and they posed for this historic photograph. We have been unable to find out what the purpose of the meeting was. However, the newspaper caption for this photo stated, “The Superintendents of Uncle Sam’s many lighthouses were received by President Coolidge at the White House today.” Pictured in the front row, left to right, are Secretary of Commerce William F. Whiting; President Calvin Coolidge; and Commissioner of Lighthouses, George R. Putnam. We can only assume that the other men pictured may have been Superintendents of the various lighthouse districts. Perhaps some of our readers can identify the other men pictured. During the Coolidge administration, the U. S. Bureau of Lighthouses was under the auspices of the Department of Commerce, which would explain why Secretary of Commerce Whiting was in attendance at the meeting with the president. It is highly probable that the meeting centered on the expanding role of the Airways Division of the United States Lighthouse Service, which President Coolidge had been closely monitoring ever since he signed the Air Commerce Act of 1926 into law.
On August 2, 1923, upon the sudden death of President Warren G. Harding, Vice-President Coolidge become president and was later, in 1924, elected in his own right as president. While on vacation in 1927, he surprised the nation when he said that he would not run again. He was also no stranger to lighthouses. As reported and shown with photographs in the September/October issue of Lighthouse Digest, President Coolidge visited and picnicked in 1928 at Wisconsin’s Devils Island Lighthouse. While there, he spent a goodly amount of time with the lighthouse keeper. After his retirement from the presidency in 1929 he vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts and at least once he stayed at the island home of U.S. Senator William H. Butler in Lambert’s Cove. While there, he visited the Gay Head Lighthouse and took a tour of the light station with lighthouse keeper Charles W. Vanderhoop.
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