Perhaps one of the best ways to spend Tax Day, April 15, was observed this past Wednesday at Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida, with the dedication of a bronze statue of President Calvin Coolidge by Governor Ron DeSantis. Honoring not only Cal’s Sunshine State connections but his highly underrated accomplishments as POTUS #30, the occasion was marked by a well-attended gathering of Coolidge friends, Secretary of State Cord Byrd, Bok Tower leaders, representatives of the FDOT, Polk County educators, the Chairman and Board representatives from the Coolidge Presidential Foundation, and other honored guests. The Governor furnished a detailed consideration of Cal’s career and lasting legacy with the reasons for so deserving a distinction struck in such an enduring and masterful form by sculptor Austin Weishel. The Governor sees in Coolidge a President whom, more than any other in the last hundred years, the Founders would have identified as the most powerful representative of the vital and equitable balance encapsulated in constitutionalist leadership.

The care and precision with which Mr. Weishel crafted the work is but a part of the affecting impression his active bronze of Cal imprints upon the viewer. We are confident this statue — capturing Coolidge in motion — completed with the beauty and exactness of the lost wax method, will accomplish what all great public monuments should, as the sculptor himself puts it, “preserve memory” and “inspire learning.”

That spirit pervaded the event on Wednesday. Cal, ever a unifier, brought together this diverse gathering around the emphasis upon restoring civic literacy in K-12 and an informed, elevated public discourse from the educational landscape upward. These were, after all, priorities that Coolidge cherished and embodied through more than a quarter century of service in local, state, and national government. They have a needed place again as we have entered this 250th anniversary since Independence, an initiative underscored by the Governor and Secretary of State Byrd in their remarks following the statue’s unveiling.

It was likewise fitting that while Florida leads such efforts to take inventory of who we are as a nation, what principles and values need renewed practice, and how a recommitment to engaged civic participation and respectful debate can and will raise the caliber of future Americans across the country. It can be only the beginning of an American renewal at the start of the next 250 years of this experiment in self-governance. Governor Jim Douglas of Coolidge’s home state of Vermont followed with a superb tribute to Cal and the partnership around principles that bring Americans together, underscoring Governor DeSantis’ encouragement to break free of the staleness of political tribalism and educational orthodoxy answering Coolidge’s summons to a higher citizenship.

Suitably, Eithan Ackerman, Coolidge Cup Declamation Winner, presented a moving performance of Cal’s Bok Tower dedication as the event neared conclusion. The performance by Geert D’hollander, the carillonneur at Mr. Bok’s Tower, of “Yankee Doodle” at the close of the dedication was another remarkable gift to an incredible day commemorating an incredible statesman.

A “fireside chat” between Governor DeSantis and Amity Shlaes, the Chairman of the Coolidge Presidential Foundation, well-attended by a room of many of Cal’s remarkable friends, followed the dedication. It was a wonderful way to observe Tax Day, in honor of the last President to leave a budget surplus every year he was in office while simultaneously paying down the national debt by one-third. The magic of this beautiful place atop Florida’s highest point, Iron Ridge, certainly captures us every visit and remains a fitting place for the thirtieth President to continue his ongoing work, elevating our citizenship and challenging us all to leave America better than we found it.

Reflecting on this day eighty-five years ago, former President Calvin Coolidge wrote:

“So far reaching has been this event, so wide has become the realm of Christendom, that it would be difficult to find anywhere on earth a human being whose life has not been modified in some degree by the influence of the Christian religion. Outside the teachings of religion there is no answer to the problems of life. Our international and social relations cannot be solved by material forces. Armaments, wages, profits are not mere questions of quantity. They are questions of quality. Changing and fixing their amount will afford no final solution. What is needed is a change of mind, a change of attitude toward the use of these material things and toward each othert. The real problems of the world are not material, but spiritual.

“Easter teaches us the reality of the things that are unseen and the power of the spirit. A risen Saviour established a new faith in the world that showed the reason and authority of service and sacrifice.”

Quid quaeritis viventem cum mortuis? Non est hic; sed surrexit (‘Why seek you the living with the dead? He is not here, but is risen,’ from Luke 24.5-6, Vulgate)

Without Irish-born Jim Lucey, whose shop on Gothic Street in Northampton, Massachusetts, frequently enjoyed the visit of young Calvin Coolidge, it is fair to say a very different, even quietly anonymous, life awaited the Amherst student. Without Lucey, craftsman, philosopher, and friend, Cal’s life would have been all the more meager. Most of us can identify such a force in our own life’s pathway but not all of them expressed their wisdom in poetry. Lucey, gifted with his island’s aoibh [eev], once wrote:

Look any old way you will;

Life is merely the thing we make it.

This is the truth about good or ill;

It all depends on how we take it.

…

Life is not a month or year;

Worth not merely one triumph splendid.

Many and strange are the pitfalls here

‘Til fame and the struggle for it are ended.

Luck can fatten the purse in a day,

But luck won’t teach us a thing worth learning

Wisdom is something day by day

We have to gain for ourselves by earning.

To read more, pick up a copy of Salient Cal’s America: Reappraising the Harding & Coolidge Era.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh!