Historical reenactor Tracy Messer MA’83 brings 30th president back to life.
People called President Calvin Coolidge “Silent Cal,” but now he has someone to speak up for him. Historical reenactor Tracy Messer MA’83 is giving the 30th president an image makeover. He wants to prove that the often-overlooked president was far more successful than people realize.
Trim and tall like his role model, Messer cuts a dapper figure in his straw boater hat, round glasses, and light-tan, double-breasted suit. “I feel like I was born to play this role,” says Messer.
While Lincoln reenactors are so plentiful they have their own association, Messer believes he is currently the only person who keeps Coolidge’s memory alive on stage.
He had a lifelong interest in Coolidge and first began appearing as the 30th president as a hobby, but when the chair of the Coolidge Foundation heard his recitation of the Coolidge autobiography in character, Messer got offered the role for pay. Now as its Coolidge ambassador and administrator, he tours the nation giving speeches at libraries, historical societies, colleges, and churches as the president’s alter ego.
The foundation wants to dispel the image of Coolidge as a figurehead who blithely presided over the 1920s economic boom. “We believe he was a masterful communicator, an eloquent speaker, and an eloquent listener,” says Messer.
An accredited public relations executive, he is quick to list Coolidge’s achievements: “He significantly reduced the national debt that had grown during the first World War. He cut the tax rate from 58% to 25%. He helped the American Red Cross raise $10 million in charitable funds for relief efforts after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. He supported the Indian Citizenship Act, which gave Native Americans full citizenship rights. He has been called ‘our first radio president’ and gave more press conferences on the radio than any president before or since.”
This year marks the centennial of Coolidge’s taking the Oath of Office following President Warren Harding’s death. On Aug. 3 Messer reenacted the event with Coolidge’s descendants the moment it happened at 2:47 a.m. in the place where it occurred — his boyhood home in Plymouth Notch, Vt., now a state historic site.
Coolidge’s reputation suffered, according to Messer, because he died of a heart attack only four years after leaving office, and no one managed his reputation post-death. He acknowledges that while Coolidge was alive, the former president could have done a better job promoting his achievements. “When he was ex-president and was asked what he felt was his most significant contribution as president, he responded, ‘Minding my own business,’” says Messer.
While Coolidge did have a dry sense of humor, Messer, who did his thesis on humor and psychotherapy for his master’s in counseling, puts to rest a joke often attributed to Coolidge: A socialite supposedly made a bet that she could get the taciturn New Englander to say more than two words. When she told Coolidge of the wager, he is said to have replied, “You lose.” It never happened, according to Messer.
Audiences often ask Messer’s Coolidge to comment on current events, but he always stays mum on modern controversies. Instead, he shares this quote from a speech Coolidge gave in 1925: “We are not likely to improve our own condition or help humanity very much until we come to the sympathetic understanding that human nature is about the same everywhere, that it is rather evenly distributed over the surface of the earth, and that we are all united in common brotherhood.”
Messer feels a lifelong connection with Coolidge because his family’s lives crossed paths with the former president:
- The Coolidge homestead in Plymouth, Vt., is located on Messer Hill Road; the reenactor and his alter ego are eighth cousins, once removed.
- Messer was born and raised in the Washington, D.C., area, where his maternal grandfather worked for the United States Department of Agriculture, starting with the Coolidge administration.
- When Messer’s mother was a little girl, she joined in the annual Easter celebrations on the White House lawn where President and Mrs. Coolidge welcomed the children.