One Hundred Years--Ronald Reagan

Reagan’s life
Born 2-6-1911
Died 6-5-2004

(All quotes in italics and surrounded by quote marks were from Ronald Reagan.)

He was born in Illinois and came to California as a sportscaster from the mid west, with the hope of acting in movies. He married Jane Wyman, had two daughters and adopted a son, did movies, had his first family break up and became the president of the Screen Actors Guild. While president, a young actress came to him because she shared a name with someone whose political views were exactly opposite of hers, and she was afraid it would affect her ability to get acting roles.

He and Nancy Davis may not have fallen in love at first sight, but after that first lunch, they shared their next bunch of meals together. He married her in North Hollywood, with William and Ardis Holden as their only guests. He and Nancy had two children, Patti and Ron, and his happiest times were at home. Nancy gave up her acting career and spent full-time being Mrs. Ronald Reagan. It was common knowledge that he was the dreamer, and she was the facilitator of his dreams. When he traveled for General Electric Theater, going all over the United States as their spokesperson and speaking at factories all over the United States, he wrote her some wonderful love letters, many on display at the museum.

Politically, he started out as a Liberal Democrat, and moved to the right in his views. He hated big government, loved small business, and was essentially Libertarian in his estimation of freedom. He was at his funniest when criticizing the federal government:

“Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

“The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.”

“Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.”

“One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.”

And, more seriously:

“Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.”

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”

“Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.”

In 1966, as governor of California, he cut back state funded programs ten percent, and raised taxes, resulting in a surplus that he channeled back into programs during the later part of his two terms. When running for president of the United States in 1980 at the age of 69, he campaigned with a platform of restoring faith in America. He became our oldest president, our only president to have ever been divorced, and was nicknamed “The Great Communicator.” Nancy Reagan believed in “dinner diplomacy,” and may have been the White House’s most gracious and hardest working first lady. Believing in proper presentation with no monetary waste, Air Force One china was bought from Pan Am when that airline collapsed. The White House had no official china when she became first lady and a prominent china maker donated china, allowing her to choose its pattern.

Reagan began his first term of office with a bang. While he was making his Inaugural Address, Iran released the fifty-two hostages they had held for fourteen months, giving his presidency and his message of renewed faith in America a first vote of confidence. Sixty-eight days later he was almost assassinated and a few months after that, on August 5th, he fired the air traffic controllers whose union had the audacity to put public safety at risk by walking out. While the only president who was a lifetime union member, (of the AFL-CIO), no union had the right to jeopardize the lives of American citizens by not doing their jobs. I will never forget the shock that I felt, and thousands of other citizens felt, as we listened to his short and to the point speech and asked ourselves, “Can he do that?” He could, and did. He broke that union.

He hated Communism and had many very serious quotes concerning his views during The Cold War, always a life and death matter to him, no matter what he quipped. He looked at it realistically, saw it as a force that had pitted itself against us and that was attempting world domination.

“How do you tell a Communist? A Communist is someone who reads Marx and Lenin. How do you tell an anti-Communist? An anti-Communist is someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”

One of his not so funny funniest moments came when he was sound testing a microphone and didn’t realize he was going out live to America. As a joke, he quipped:

“My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

It went out live, prompting quick emergency calls to world leaders to let them know it wasn’t so. He used words from Communist leaders to illustrate his points, became known as the “Teflon President” when even after the Iran-Contra Affair, when the World Court actually found the USA guilty of “war crimes against Nicaragua” for supplying rebels with arms, his popularity declined only briefly. In spite of this, he and Russian leader Gorbachev formed a bond later and were able to talk. A wonderful negotiator, Reagan was eventually able to boom, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” in Berlin, and then see it come down about a year later.

When I think of the marvelous things that happened during Reagan’s terms, I can understand the tears running down my cheeks, and Alan’s cheeks, as we looked at this man’s grave, on what would be his centennial year. We forget that these things happened while he was at the helm. He began with freeing the hostages in Iran, he ended with the dissolution of the Cold War and the ending of the Soviet Union. How could we forget? My tears don’t come from his historical significance, though.

I am remembering Nancy Reagan on the day of his funeral, tiny and fragile, mourning her ninety-four year old husband, whose memories had ended ten years before when the “Great Communicator’ developed Alzheimer’s, and bravely announced it to the world. I am remembering the several thousand ordinary Californians who skipped work and waited in line to say goodbye to him, before the lone hearse with the small military escort took his casket to the Reagan Library for the graveside service that laid him to rest on his library grounds. I saw that hearse roll by from the top of a bridge in Thousand Oaks, one of very few people who were in place to see it, a few moments of closure on The 101. (Closure for me as well as for the busy highway.) I remember listening to the guns from my apartment. We could hear them when they fired the salutes in Simi Valley, nine miles away, “as the crow flies.” I cry for the love he felt for Nancy, for his country, and for his dreams, which she helped him complete and make come true.

“There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.”

Article by Mari Sloan
copyright 4/2011