Five days after Calvin Coolidge's election as mayor of Northampton by a margin of only 187 votes, he wrote to his father that the results showed that Calvin had received 400 Democratic votes, and added: "bless their honest Irish hearts." Who were these Irish-Americans who voted for Coolidge?

Certainly they included James Lucey, the Kerryman, cobbler and philosopher who befriended Coolidge when he was a sophomore at Amherst, and to whom Coolidge sent his first letter from the White House. In it, he wrote: "I want you to know that, if it were not for you, I should not be here, and I want to tell you how much I love you."

Invitations to the Coolidge home in Plymouth Notch were rare. When Charles G. Dawes, Coolidge's 1924 running mate, announced that he would be visiting the president at Plymouth, Dawes made sure that the world knew that it was at Coolidge's invitation.

However, Jim Lucey was invited to Sunday dinner there. When he failed to appear on time. the Coolidges simply waited and waited. He finally arrived with the comment that when he stopped for Mass at Annunciation Church in Ludlow, the only remaining service was at 11 and was a high Mass. No explanation needed. The family simply sat down for dinner.

Another Irish-American who supported Coolidge was Richard Rahar, at whose inn Coolidge roomed and boarded. That was enough to identify Coolidge as a "wet" during the 1910 race against Henry Bicknell who advocated Prohibition. Coolidge's identification came not so much from his own drinking habits, always temperate, but from the fact that he was general counsel for Springfield Breweries Co.

How did a young Northampton lawyer get that post from a company of which Michael Curley of Boston was president? Undoubtedly because Dick Rahar was vice-president. The hands-on treasurer and corporate secretary was another Northampton man, David Scates, longtime chairman of the Democratic City Committee. The other directors were named Flannagan, Doyle, Gibbons, Mannix and Glynn, bless their honest Irish hearts.

Under the circumstances, it is understandable that Irish saloon keepers would support Coolidge, but so did Jim Maloney who owned Maloney's Bakery. Like all youngsters in Northampton's Little Ireland where I lived, I grew up on Maloney's bread, always available at Joe Foley's and Nell Shea's stores. I knew the Gleason and Lynch families as stalwart Democrats, but they were Coolidge Democrats who persuaded their neighbors to join them.

The Northampton Irish-American who perhaps should he given first position here is John Kennedy, the only person who ever defeated Calvin Coolidge in a popular election. Before that voting in 1906 for School Committee, Kennedy told Coolidge that he would lose, and Coolidge responded that, either way, they would get a good man. Kennedy did win a three-year term and Coolidge supported him for re-election. He had to answer Republican critics by saying that Kennedy had a good record.

How did Coolidge know that Kennedy had such a record, which would justify Coolidge irritating his fellow Republicans by supporting John Kennedy? The answer is Miss Caroline Ardelia Yale, principal of Clarke School for the Deaf, a native Vermonter and close friend of the Goodhue family. It was she who persuaded Grace Goodhue to come to Northampton where she could train under Miss Yale to become a teacher of deaf children. Were it not for Miss Yale, it is unlikely Calvin Coolidge would have ever met his Grace on the campus of Clarke School.

Miss Yale was a member of the School Committee when John Kennedy arrived, and was still on it when he declined re-election nine years later and she thought he did a good job, and undoubtedly told that to Grace and Calvin.

While Coolidge was mayor, Father Joseph Gordian Daley, pastor of St. Mary's Church in Haydenville. a village of Williamsburg to the north of Northampton, began seeking in the Leeds section of Northampton a place to locate a mission church. Coolidge was so helpful that a quarter-page ad in the church's dedication booklet read simply: "Compliments and good wishes of Calvin Coolidge."

When Coolidge was lieutenant-governor, he came to the celebration of Father Daley's silver jubilee as a priest. When Williamsburg was marking its 150th anniversary as a town several years later, people there knew that if Father Daley would invite then Vice-President Coolidge to be the speaker, he would come.

On the appointed day, Father Daley introduced his guest but as the vice-president rose to speak, the overcrowded platform collapsed, sending him tumbling to the ground. He landed atop Father Daley, but they were more shaken and disheveled than hurt. The program resumed.

Back at the rectory, young Eleanor Mansfield was waiting with her flowers and her rehearsed speech of welcome to the vice-president. However, when the guests arrived, Father Daley whispered to her: "Add to your greeting ... 'and we all thank God you were not hurt when the platform collapsed.'" When I interviewed her 45 years later, her memory of that detail was still green.

What did these two men have in common? They both shared a love of Latin and Greek, modern languages and history. Coolidge must also have appreciated his honest Irish heart.

Democrat Michael FitzGerald followed Republican Calvin Coolidge as Ward 2 Councilman, Ward 2 Alderman, and state representative. When he was in the latter post, he commuted with State Senator Coolidge on the Massachusetts Central train from Northampton to Boston. When FitzGerald was running for re-election, his Republican opponent was Attorney William Feiker who had followed Coolidge into the mayor's chair and was trying to make a comeback.

A few days before the December balloting, Republicans received a letter from Chauncey Pierce, a friend and neighbor of Coolidge's who had also once held the Ward 2 Alderman's seat. In the letter, he urged his fellow Republicans to support Michael FitzGerald whom Calvin Coolidge had called "my worthy successor as mayor."

Coolidge had indeed used those words, but only in acknowledging the mayor's generous introduction of him at Northampton's "Notification" ceremonies marking the delivery of the notification that Coolidge had been nominated for vice-president.

Feiker publicly demanded that Coolidge repudiate Pierce's letter and endorse Feiker, but Coolidge answered only by deep silence. When the votes were counted, FitzGerald had won and Feiker called a news conference at which he branded Coolidge, the vice-president-elect, as "a traitor to the Republican Party."

Coolidge made no direct response, but perhaps his view was revealed by the family dinner in his residential suite at the Willard Hotel on the eve of his inauguration. Seated around the table were Coolidge, his wife and their two sons, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Stearns and Mike FitzGerald, bless his honest Irish heart.