WASHINGTON — Family advocates lost one of their own with the death of David Orgon Coolidge on March 10.

Coolidge, who founded the Marriage Law Project at Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law, died after a battle with brain cancer. On March 15, Coolidge's family, colleagues and friends gathered in St. John's Catholic Church in McLean, Va. to say farewell to a man who had dedicated his life to defending the Church's teachings on the sanctity of marriage.

Coolidge's colleague, Robert Destro, of the Columbus School of Law told the Register that Coolidge was instrumental in bringing the Marriage Law Project to the law school.

Destro said that the idea for the program came about after they saw the movement toward same-sex marriage gaining ground, and Coolidge “put together the first team.” The Marriage Law Project had added to the corpus of legal writings on the subject of marriage. Destro said that prior to the inception of the project, there was a lack of legal literature regarding the nature of marriage.

Under Coolidge's direction, the program played a pivotal role in defeating Vermont's attempt to legalize same-sex marriage — though the “civil unions” compromise, Coolidge pointed out, was nearly as bad.

According to Wendy Herdlein, a staff attorney with the Marriage Law Project, Coolidge played a major role in the battle over same-sex marriage in Vermont. Herdlein said that the Vermont Supreme Court's decision “was a direct challenge to Vermont's marriage laws.” Coolidge drafted one of the amicus briefs that were filed by the Diocese of Burlington, which urged the court to defend traditional marriage. Although in its final decision, the court “did not strike the marriage statutes” according to Herdlein, the court did say, “it was unconstitutional to only give marital benefits to only male-female couples”.

Coolidge spent several months in Vermont working with local groups who sought to defend traditional marriage. By all accounts, the Marriage Law Project was not merely an intellectual exercise for Coolidge but a vocation. He not only defended the traditional family, he sought to live it out in his own life.

“One thing he did the last year before he got sick was he started to work from home two days a week in order to spend time with his kids. It showed a great commitment to his family,” Herdlein said. “He and Joanie had a very deep and sweet marriage. It made his legal arguments more authentic because he lived it out everyday. It was not just a legal project, it was very personal mission. The Marriage Law Project was very much his calling.”

Bob Laird, the director of the Family Life office for the Diocese of Arlington in Virginia worked closely with Coolidge when the County of Arlington decided to enact a domestic partnership ordinance in 1997. Laird recounted Coolidge and his Marriage Law Project colleague, Bill Duncan. “God bless them, they spent their Thanksgiving weekend working on this. Dave was absolutely incredible on this,” Laird told the Register.

Laird said that Coolidge did not go around “putting out little bonfires, he was going around the world putting out major forest fires” regarding marriage. “There were major attacks on the family.”

Laird recalled Coolidge's work for the U.S. Catholic Conference. “He fought the big one in Hawaii,” Laird said referring to the amicus brief that Coolidge drafted for the diocese of Honolulu. “His passing really causes a void in this area of law.”

Other voices have added to the chorus of people who praise Coolidge's work. “David Coolidge was a gifted Christian attorney who made immense contributions to the legal battle to protect marriage and the traditional family,” said Jan LaRue, senior director of Legal Studies at the Family Research Council. “David's intelligent advocacy was always seasoned with love, grace and humility. We will all miss him very much. Our prayers are with his family.”

Un-Eulogy

At the funeral, Catholic author George Weigel delivered what he called the “un-eulogy”. “We don't give eulogies in the Catholic Church,” he told the Register.

In his remarks during Coolidge's Mass of Christian Burial, Weigel said, “David Coolidge's life is a model of witness. David was a faithful witness, whose faith in Christ, through the grace of Christ, made him the man who lives in Christ today. David was a witness to the power of love to transform lives and to bring new life into being. He was a witness to hope, who lived his professional life as a vocation, not merely a career. He was a witness to truth — to the truth about the dignity and value of every human life.”

Weigel pointed out how Coolidge embodied the Catholic notion of striving to affect the world for good. “David could and did speak the truth in ways that invited others into conversation. In doing that, David embodied in a rare and precious way the Catholic conviction that our commitment to the truth does not close us off from the world; rather, it opens us up to genuine dialogue with others.”

At the end of his life, in spite of being wracked with tremendous pain, Coolidge and his wife continued to provide a warm and loving home for their young children. Herdlein said that the last six months were very difficult for the family.

“He was diagnosed with brain cancer in early August of last year,” Herdlein recalled. “At first, he started to have speech problems. He then had two surgeries to shrink the tumor. After the second surgery, it was downhill from there. During the last month, it was difficult for him to speak. Throughout all of this, he was always mentally there. It was very frustrating for him that people could only speak to him and he could not respond. He was a great talker.”

Herdlein said that the end for Coolidge came quickly and calmly. “The morning they realized that he was going to die, the family and some close friends gathered around his bed.

Joanie Coolidge told her children “it was time for Daddy to go to heaven now.” The children then starting signing Dona Nobis Pacem (Give Us Your Peace). His breath was labored, then it stopped.

“He died,” said Herdlein, “while his kids were singing to him.”

Maria Elena Kennedy writes from Covina, California.