![]() “In later life, the Coffin children would half joke, half complain that they had never learned to conduct a marital quarrel civilly because they had so seldom witnessed their parents having one,” Maiman writes. Coffin is depicted throughout as extremely close to his wife and four children. Yet, for this reviewer, it is his sterling family life, in marked contrast with that he experienced in his own childhood, that shines forth. On the bench he acquitted himself with unusual distinction, serving for four decades, and eventually became one of Maine’s elder statesmen. ![]() He was elected a congressman, stood as his Party’s choice for governor, and in 1965 was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson as Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit. ![]() In the wake of World War II, Coffin joined Edmund Muskie, Lucia Cormier and others in founding the revitalized Democratic Party. The public life, which many readers will be familiar with at least in outline, is given in full, fresh detail. Navy and in 1942, after Ruth graduated from Bates, marriage. Then it was on to Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, a stint in the U.S. Within a few years she became his wife, mother of his children and his lifetime amanuensis.ĭouglas Coffin once aptly described his father as having been born “a little bit old.” While Coffin’s life would take unexpected twists and turns, “in most respects his personality, temperament and habits of mind were well formed by the time he collected his college degree and bid Lewiston a fond farewell for the first but not the last time,” Maiman writes. At Bates, Frank met fellow student Ruth Ulrich, who’d grown up in New Jersey. He was class Valedictorian, and his graduation speech argued that economic theory should be use more extensively in government. In 1936, Coffin entered Bates College, where he became the fourth graduate in school history to receive his degree Summa Cum Laude. Frank recalled a happy childhood with a small cohort of friends whose backgrounds reflected Lewiston’s ethnic (though not racial) diversity and Boy’s Camp in rural Maine where he was selected as “best all-around camper.” The same year saw the breakup of his parent’s marriage, a situation that sent the boy to live with his mother, “ripping out all trace of his father.” Somehow, Frank inured himself from the parental chaos, and the author describes these years as “a well examined life.” Indeed, Coffins’ own autobiographical writings and notes provide a basis for Maiman, along with strong support from Coffin’s wife, Ruth.Ī steady filament shines through all the public documentation of a real person. Lipez, the book traces Coffin from his early life to his last breath and is likely to be seen, along with the Judge’s own publications, as the source for all subsequent studies. Divided into 36 readable chapters with a solid, energizing foreword by Judge Kermit V.
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