This shot, snapping the Dykaar bust completed for Amherst College and presented to the school by the New York Alumni Association in 1928, captures Amherst’s greatest alumnus looking out over the West Reading Room of Converse Library.
Author: gouverneurmorris
“Now we will have some real fun”
These busts, sculpted by the Lithuanian Moses Dykaar, who is here displaying his work, began from both the President and First Lady sitting for him over the course of a few months, late in 1923. They were unveiled in January 1924. The artist was known for expecting his subjects to be expressive and lively during such sittings. Coolidge, predictably, was not so obliging. But as Dykaar prepared to carve the finishing touches on Coolidge’s bust, he began to hear the President recount a series of jokes, even engaging in “pleasantries” with the sculptor Suddenly, the President said, “Now we will have some real fun,” at which Dykaar looked up just in time to see the President practicing various grimaces and wiggling his ears! How is that for expressiveness?!
This story, recounted in The New Yorker (September 8, 1928 issue) was repeated in May 1931 by David Schwartz in the National Jewish Ledger. It is interesting that Dykaar was not actually commissioned to complete the sculpting in marble until 1926. He would complete the work the following year and it was not until 1929 that the only bust to feature a living person was quietly installed in the Capitol. Ironically, one of the bust’s ears was damaged and promptly repaired twice, once when first installed and again in 1943. Dykaar would produce copies for both Amherst College and Forbes Library.
On Scandals
As the details became known of what had transpired when government officials used patronage on friends in favored businesses, President Coolidge would set the tone, in February 1924. Coolidge would explain how he and those under his authority would act to restore integrity, punish the guilty and represent all, not merely a preferred few, Americans,
“Character is the only secure foundation of the state. We know well that all plans for improving the machinery of government and all measures for social betterment miserably fail, and the hopes of progress wither, when corruption touches administration. At the revelation of greed making its subtle approaches to public officers, of the prostitution of high place to private profit, we are filled with scorn and indignation. We have a deep sense of humiliation at such gross betrayal of trust, and we lament the undermining of public confidence in official integrity. But we cannot rest with righteous wrath; still less can we permit ourselves to give way to cynicism. The heart of the American people is sound…For us, we propose to follow the clear, open path of justice. There will be immediate, adequate, unshrinking prosecution, criminal and civil, to punish the guilty and to protect every national interest. In this effort there will be no politics, no partisanship. It will be speedy, it will be just. I am a Republican but I cannot on that account shield any one because he is a Republican. I am a Republican, but I cannot on that account prosecute any one because he is a Democrat…Distressing as this situation has been, it has its reassuring side. The high moral standards of the people were revealed by their instant reaction against wrongdoing.”
The same high standards are maintained when we, the sovereign people, hold our officials to account for mismanagement and dereliction of their sworn duties. Coolidge did more than outline what needed to be done, he did it by appointing a special counsel team to investigate and prosecute both civil and criminal wrongs, by issuing executive orders commanding entire departments be turned upside down to provide all the information investigators requested, by firing his Attorney General for refusing to comply, and welcoming the start of litigation well before the elections of 1924, even when it could have destroyed his chances for election. His clarity in both word and deed demonstrated the right way to handle government abuse of authority, even when it concerned inherited circumstances. Contrary to Hillary Clinton, it still makes a difference at this point.
The Importance of the Obvious 