Dead Presidents

It is the 101st birthday of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th President of the United States, who was born on February 6, 1911 in the tiny town of Tampico, Illinois, near the Iowa border.

In a nation full of unlikely stories, Reagan’s is especially unique.  The son of an alcoholic father, Reagan worked his way through an unremarkable college, earning money by washing dishes and spending summers as a lifeguard on the Rock River, where 76 swimmers were rescued from drowning by a future President.  While other Presidents built careers in law, the military, or lesser political offices, Reagan started as a broadcaster and then moved on to Hollywood, where he signed a contract with Warner Brothers.

Reagan’s acting career was solid, even if he wasn’t winning Academy Awards left-and-right.  In California, Reagan also started dabbling in politics.  Interestingly enough, the man who is now an icon for Conservatives was a Democrat through his early life — a devoted supporter of FDR, the New Deal, and Harry Truman — and the leader of a labor union.  After Truman’s Administration, Reagan began shifting to the right, and joined Democrats For Eisenhower clubs in 1952 and 1956.  Still, the Republican hero was a registered Democrat until he change his party affiliation in 1962 — when he was 51 years old.

As Reagan’s acting career dried up, he was hired by General Electric to tour their factories throughout the United States and give speeches at GE plants.  During this time, Reagan began to distrust big government and become supportive of business and industry.  Traveling throughout the nation and learning more about businesses shaped Reagan’s Conservative thinking.  In 1964, just a few days before the Presidential election, Reagan was asked to give a televised 30-minute speech in support of Republican nominee Barry Goldwater’s campaign.  The speech was one of the only bright spots of the 1964 campaign for Republicans and it created a new national political star for the GOP.

In 1966, Reagan ran for Governor of California.  Initially, the Democrat incumbent, Pat Brown, and his advisers dismissed Reagan as a lightweight and washed-up actor.  Reagan trounced Brown on Election Day.  As Governor of California from 1967-1975, Reagan continued to sharpen his Conservative credentials and left a major impact on California’s state politics.  After eight years in Sacramento, Reagan shrunk the state government and the state’s budget deficit.

A year after leaving the Governor’s office, Reagan attempted the unthinkable — he challenged incumbent President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination.  In a long and brutal primary campaign, Reagan stayed close to Ford and was narrowly defeated at the 1976 Republican National Convention.  Ford, who was just 60 votes away from becoming the only incumbent President of the 20th Century to lost his bid to be renominated, was badly wounded by the challenge and later attributed some of the blame for his loss to Jimmy Carter in the general election to Ronald Reagan.

After four years of an unpopular Carter Administration, Reagan was the front-runner for the 1980 Republican nomination and easily defeated Carter in November.  Just a couple weeks shy of his 70th birthday on Inauguration Day 1981, Reagan was the oldest President in American History.  On March 30, 1981, Reagan was shot in the chest in an assassination attempt as he left the Washington Hilton.  Reagan was severely wounded, with injuries far more dangerous than those that killed President Garfield in 1881 and President McKinley in 1901.  The President walked into the hospital under his own power, but collapsed immediately upon getting inside.  Reagan’s resilience and good humor in the days after the shooting helped his popularity skyrocket.

The events of the next eight years are too plentiful to record here, but Reagan established a legacy that is revered by Republicans and he has almost reached a level of political sainthood to the GOP.  While Democrats disagree with Reagan’s greatness and politics, one thing is a fact: he truly was “the Great Communicator”.  Reagan spoke to the American people as if he knew what they needed to hear and as if he had known them forever.  With his soothing voice, his kind smile, and his ever-present sense of humor, Reagan was a comforting figure.  His true talents came at times of national tragedy when his words — and the way he delivered them — helped calm a troubled people.

In November 1994, the 83-year-old former President released a handwritten letter to the American people that revealed that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and in his simple, yet elegant way of writing, told the nation, “I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.”  Reagan was only seen in public on a handful of occasions following the announcement and never spoke to the American people again. 

Cared for by his beloved wife, Nancy, Ronald Reagan’s sunset lasted another 10 years.  Debilitated by Alzheimer’s, Americans caught one last glimpse of their former President — a photograph released of him on his 90th birthday, and still looking younger than his age (with barely any gray hair!).  On June 5, 2004, the 40th President of the United States died at his home in Los Angeles, at the age of 93.  After a state funeral in Washington, D.C. where thousands of mourners passed by his casket in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, Air Force Onebrought Reagan back to California one last time.  At his Presidential Library and Museum on a hill in Simi Valley, friends and family paid their last respects and he was buried as the sun set over Southern California.