Coolidge Makes Handshaking an Art
President Calvin Coolidge was so into shaking people's hands that a 1925 New York Times Magazine article estimated he would have shaken "a million or two" by the end of his presidency.
The journalist P.W. Wilson wrote:
The president's very courteous secretary, Edward T. Clark, told me last week that on a quiet day the president shakes hands with at least 200 callers, while in summer or at a season like Easter, when children need amusing, the number runs into thousands. What is holiday for boys and girls thus becomes overtime for the Chief Executive, and when his term of office is complete, the president's handshakes will have totaled a million or two.
Guinness World Records cites President Theodore Roosevelt shaking 8,513 hands at the White House's 1907 New Year's Day reception as the most handshakes in a single day by a nation's head of state, whether a U.S. president or otherwise.
That's only the record by a national head of state. Atlantic City, New Jersey Mayor Joseph Lazarow broke a world record by shaking more than 11,000 hands during a 1977 publicity stunt. (That stat would even become the opening line of his 2008 obituary.)
I'm reminded of the time my paternal grandmother met the governor of her state at a county fair, and ended up getting into a conversation with him for several minutes. My grandfather asked: "Did you shake his hand?" My grandmother thought about it for a moment and said: "Ummm.... no?" My grandfather just crossed his arms and replied: "Then it didn't count."
Coolidge Makes Handshaking an Art: The Bane of Other Presidents' Lives Seems to Be Favorite Form of Exercise of Present Occupant of White House – He Sets a Record in Greeting Callers
Published: Sunday, April 19, 1925