Calvin Coolidge, by then (just barely) ex-president, and his election to the board of the New York Life Insurance Company served as the inspiration for a short New Yorker poem by E.B. White in the magazine’s April 20, 1929 edition:
I Want To Be Insured By Calvin Coolidge
I want to be insured by Calvin Coolidge,
Oh let me buy a policy from silent Cal!
I want to get the benefit of Calvin’s knowledge
In taking out a twenty-thousand mu-tu-al.
I want to pay my premiums to Calvin Coolidge,
I want to take them person’ly to North-amp-ton,
I want to build my character and save for college,
And leave my heirs a pretty pence when life is done.
I wouldn’t get insured by Darwin Kingsley*,
Or Lawrence F. Abbott, or Willard King,
When I can get insured by Calvin Coolidge…
And life will lose its hollowness and death its sting.
