Tyler was also widowed and remarried while president, but I notice that the two Mrs. Tylers are both listed as Coin 10. I wonder if they’re both going to be on the same coin.
Franklin Pierce’s wife Jane was alive during his presidency but very rarely served at state functions because she was in mourning for their sons (the last surviving of whom was killed in a train accident she witnessed between her husband’s election and inauguration, so she was devastated). Several other women served in the First Lady role at official functions, most frequently Jefferson Davis’s wife, Varina.
Pierce had no VP in D.C. during his term; he was elected with William Rufus D. King as VP, but King died in the early days of the administration before ever reaching D.C. and he was never replaced. Ironically, King was known in his lifetime as “Mrs. Buchanan” (among other nicknames, including “Aunt Nancy”), while James Bucahanan was sometimes referred to as “Mrs. King” (among other nicknames). Gays would probably take more interest if Buchanan weren’t considered a bad and largely forgotten (and unattractive) president.
I’m tempted to say that I’ll never get used to not having a coin for Alice, but I doubt that anybody would remember that song.
But seriously . . .
Who? Who was this “somebody”? Who had nothing better to do with their life than to insert a non-First Lady into a First Lady coin series? Is this person proud of him/herself? “Whoa, I really kicked some ass there, threw my weight around and got Alice Paul right up there with all the biggies like Ida McKinley. Boo-yah!”
I have a theory. I think there’s this group of five hundred and thirty five people who hold meetings and run the country. It sounds crazy, I know, but I have evidence.
Well, I suspect 534 of them didn’t really care whether or not Paul got a coin. Presumably someone took some extra effort to have the requirement to include her put on the bill.
Given how these things usually work, I’d suspect a Senator or Rep. from New Jersey is the culprate, since that was Paul’s home state.
But I don’t share the OP’s rage. Having Paul on the coin doesn’t seem any more random then female “representations of liberty”. Plus I’d never heard of Paul before this, and now I have, so to the extent that the purpose was to publicize her life, it worked.
Not really rage. More like a sense that this was wrong.
Like I said, I admire Paul. But she wasn’t a First Spouse. I admire Benjamin Franklin too but I would have objected if somebody had decided to put him on one of the Presidential coins.