From the Reagan Diaries:
Monday, March 16 [1981]
Jerry Lewis came to the Oval Office with the M.D. poster girl — a beautiful child who I learned would probably die before the next year ends. What a terrible disease. Jerry has for 29 years worked to raise more than $400 mil. for research of M.D.
Paul Laxalt came by & played Santa Claus with gifts he’d received for me — including the most beautiful western belt buckle I’ve ever seen. He had a letter from an Irishman in Nev. who complained because he didn’t think I knew the R.W. Service poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.“ We put in a call to Nevada and after I convinced him I really was who I said I was I recited the poem to him. He’s a Dem. who I think may now turn Repub.
–Ronald Reagan
[That’s a hell of a poem, by the way. If you don’t know it, you’re in for a treat.]
My other RW Service favorite is “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, and my repetitive reading and reciting of it in an effort to memorize it almost get me keelhauled when I was on the USS Midway (CV-41)…
20 years later I can recite almost the whole thing…
I remember parts of “The Ballad of Eskimo Nell”, but I don’t know anyone who can recite the whole thing.