I’m a junior.
Cal Skinner, Jr., son of Calvin L. Skinner.
Visiting my grandmother Addie Louise Watling-Skinner, I asked why she named my father Calvin.
Was it because of Calvin College?
No, he wasn’t known in 1916 when my father was born.
How about John Calvin, the Swiss religious leader?
I got a negative reply there, too.
“I just liked the name,” she said.
When I moved to Crystal Lake at age 16, I decided I wanted to lose the “vin.”
At age 65, to my dismay, the Federal government forced it back onto me.
Medicare, don’t you know, demands your birth name.
Stimulating these thoughts was an essay by Carl Cannon of Real Clear Politics.
He quoted Calvin Cooledge:
“After all, the chief business of the American people is business,” Coolidge said in his 1925 speech.
Then the president added this: “Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. We want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization.
“The chief ideal of the American people,” Calvin Coolidge concluded, “is idealism.”
When I took Latin my first two years at Middletown (NY) High School, I learned that :Calvin” is drived from the Latin adjective “calvus, -a, um.”
It means “bald.”
How fitting for one who now has little hair.
Calvin Coolidge didn’t have a lot of hair either.
