Quote from Forum Archives on June 9, 2004, 4:54 pm

Posted by: Bigguyhereagain <Bigguyhereagain@...>

Todays paper is in Rememberance Of President Ronald Reagan and tomorrow there will be no paper as we will spend the day in remembering  his life.

Ronald Wilson Reagan 1911 - 2004

 

Remembering Ronald Reagan 

 

Despite hardship, a happy childhood

For much of Ronald Reagan's life, the words next to his high-school yearbook photo rang true. Lifeguard, athlete, movie star, governor, president -- there wasn't much that he did not do in his lifetime.

 

The possibilities must have seemed endless for the little boy nicknamed Dutch growing up in the small town of Dixon, Illinois.

 

"The world was one vast opportunity for Ronald Wilson Reagan," biographer Lou Cannon wrote in "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime."

 

A shoe salesman's son
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born February 6, 1911, to John Edward (Jack) and Nelle Reagan in a second-floor apartment in Tampico, Illinois. His brother, John Neil, was two years older.

 

Jack Reagan was a restless man. Not content with his job as a shoe salesman in Tampico's general store, he moved his family several times during Dutch's early life, always chasing the dream of a better job and a better life.

 

When Dutch was nine, the Reagans settled in Dixon, a small town where Jack achieved a part of his dream -- partnership in the Fashion Boot Shop.

But troubles continued for the elder Reagan. He went on to spend years fighting the vagaries of the economy and his own alcoholism.

 

What little money Jack earned at the shoe shop was often squandered on drinking binges. He would disappear for hours or days at a time, leaving Nelle to make excuses for her husband and take in sewing to help the family's strained finances.

 

But Dutch displayed even then the willful optimism that he carried through life, dealing with his family's poverty and the hardships they faced with the belief that there were better times ahead.

 

Years later, Reagan recalled his early years in Dixon as idyllic. Summers were spent exploring the Rock River Valley; winters meant ice skating across the frozen Rock River. Dixon was where Reagan discovered a love of nature and the importance of small-town, traditional values.

 

Nelle Wilson Reagan was a devout Christian who, despite her own trying circumstances, devoted her self to the service of others. Having allowed Neil to be baptized in the Roman Catholic faith of his father, she encouraged Dutch to join her church.

 

At age 12, Dutch was baptized by the Disciples of Christ, a Midwestern Protestant group that preached temperance, salvation through good works and the idea that God has a plan for all things.

The church became a focal point of Dutch's life. He went to Bible classes, acted in church plays directed by his mother and helped clean and repair the church.

 

Dutch carried his early church teachings with him throughout his life. Many years later, he would recite hymns he learned as a boy and share with others his belief in God's unerring plan.

 

From his father Reagan inherited personal charm and a gift for storytelling. Despite his own employment difficulties, Jack taught his sons the value of ambition and hard work.

 

Big man on campus
As he grew older, Dutch set his sights on the all-American life, and by all accounts he succeeded. At Dixon High School, he was outgoing and active, serving as president of the student council and excelling in football, basketball and track.

 

It was clear early on that the young Reagan loved to perform. He participated in church skits and studied drama in high school, starring in several school plays.

 

But the most important moments in Dutch's Dixon years came at Lowell Park on Rock River. There, for six summers, he worked seven days a week as a lifeguard, commanding center stage on his stand. Dutch reportedly pulled 77 people from the river's swift currents over the years, putting a notch in a log for every one.

 

Decades later, Reagan would remember his lifeguard days at Lowell Park as the happiest of his life.

 

After high school, Reagan enrolled in Eureka College, a liberal arts college run by the Disciples of Christ. Strikingly handsome, poised and athletic, Reagan quickly earned a name at the small school, which had fewer than 250 students enrolled when he arrived in 1928.

 

He played on the Golden Tornado football team, became captain of the swim team and acted in college plays. It was at Eureka, that Reagan first imagined becoming a movie star, a dream he apparently kept to himself.

 

While dreaming of Hollywood, Reagan got his first taste of politics in college, first serving in the school senate and later becoming student body president.

As a freshman, the young New Deal Democrat, who would later become a conservative strike-buster, helped lead a campus strike protesting plans to cut faculty. In the process, the college president resigned and Reagan got an early and enticing brush with the spotlight.

 

"For the first time in my life, I felt my words reach out and grab an audience, and it was exhilarating," Reagan wrote in his autobiography.

 

For all of his achievements, Reagan was an ordinary guy to his peers.

 

"He was just one of us," his classmate Wilfred "Tubby" Muller recalled more than 60 years later in an interview with CNN. "It was a bigger surprise to us, probably than the people who didn't know him, to see how well he succeeded."

 

The Depression hits home
At college, Dutch supplemented his scholarship and summer lifeguarding salary by waiting tables at his Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity house. He also washed dishes for a women's dormitory.

 

Back in Dixon, Jack's Fashion Boot Shop fell victim to the Depression in 1930, sending him off to work as a traveling salesman. Nelle took a job at a dress shop, and the family subleased a portion of their house to raise much-needed money. When they could no longer afford to rent the house, the family moved to a smaller apartment.

 

Jack lost his job soon after, and Reagan secretly sent grocery money to his mother.

 

Later, when Jack developed a heart problem, the younger Reagan helped support his parents and sent his brother through Eureka College.

 

"He was a very conscientious boy and always tried to do the right thing," said Reagan family friend Marion Foster.

 

Reagan's father, one of the few Democrats in town, was appointed to administer some of Franklin Roosevelt's new federal relief programs in Dixon, giving his son a none-too-encouraging glimpse at the workings of federal government.

 

Reagan later recalled that welfare workers undermined his father's efforts, encouraging people not to take the work offered through the Works Progress Administration, but instead to rely on other benefits.

 

"I wasn't sophisticated enough to realize what I learned later: The first rule of a bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy," Reagan wrote. Challenging that idea became one of his central political tenets.

 

On to Hollywood
Reagan graduated from Eureka in 1932 with a degree in economics and sociology. He was a 21-year-old man with dreams of stardom in the depths of the Depression.

Although it was the heart of the Depression, the persistent Reagan found work as a radio sports announcer in Davenport, Iowa, and then Des Moines.

 

He spent five years in radio, perfecting his speaking style. An often repeated story recounts how he delivered play-by-play accounts of Chicago Cubs baseball games from his booth in Des Moines. His colorful reports were based solely on telegraph reports of the games in progress.

 

But his dream of Hollywood stardom persisted. In 1937, while in California to cover the Cubs' spring training, Dutch traveled to Los Angeles for a screen test. He was offered a seven-year Warner Brothers contract, with one proviso: "Dutch Reagan" wasn't right for the silver screen, he was told, but "Ronald Reagan" looked just fine.

 

So Ronald Reagan went back to Des Moines, packed all his possessions into a Nash convertible, and headed off for Hollywood.

 

Hollywood to Sacramento
 

An actor finds his voice
 Ronald Reagan came to Hollywood in 1937 as a small-town Democrat with little more than a good voice and natural charisma. He emerged three decades later as a staunch conservative with a national reputation.

 

Over two decades in Hollywood, the tall, tanned Reagan achieved a small measure of fame and fortune, but -- by his own admission -- he never became a top-tier star.

 

Like the lifeguard he was for so long, Reagan loved to play the hero. He starred in more than 50 films, but in only one (a made-for-television film called "The Killers") was he the villain. Instead, he preferred to play upstanding, all-American men -- characters with which he had identified since childhood.

 

One of Reagan's favorite nicknames in the White House came from the 1940 film "Knute Rockne -- All American," in which he played Notre Dame football star George "The Gipper" Gipp. In Washington, he used the character's line, "Win one for the Gipper," to rally Republican teammates.

 

Reagan considered his performance as Drake McHugh in the 1941 film "King's Row" to be his finest. Shocked to discover a vengeful surgeon has amputated his legs, he shouts, "Where's the rest of me?" He later used that line as the title of a 1965 autobiography.

 

Later, Reagan played opposite an ape in the 1951 movie "Bedtime for Bonzo"; he liked to joke that he was upstaged by his co-star.

 

Changing priorities
Reagan also owed his family life to Hollywood. In 1940, he married Jane Wyman, a promising young actress. The next year, Jane gave birth to a girl, Maureen Elizabeth. In 1945, they adopted a son, Michael Edward. Together, they were the model Hollywood family. Or so it seemed.

 

Reagan shared the benefits of his Hollywood success with his parents. He moved them from Dixon to California, bought them their first house, and gave his father a job fit for the proud parent he was -- handling his son's fan mail.

 

While delivering lines on-screen for a living, Reagan was also becoming interested in politics off-screen.

 

As a wary Hollywood became suspicious of Communist infiltration in the 1940s, Reagan's political beliefs -- first influenced by his Democrat father and by his Depression-era hero, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- were changing. He began to shift to the right, becoming more and more conservative.

 

During World War II, Reagan's poor eyesight kept him from combat, and he was assigned to make military training films. He was discharged as a Army captain in 1945, but not, he later said, before developing a disdain for the inefficiency of the military's bureaucracy.

 

Reagan also became increasingly anti-communist. He originally had dismissed the threat, but gradually became convinced it was real.

 

The charismatic Reagan began speaking out against fascism and communism, and became an outspoken ally of the anti-communism movement.

 

In 1947, he appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, naming groups within Hollywood that he believed were "following the tactics we associate with the Communist Party."

 

That same year, Reagan was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), a role he used to help defend colleagues he believed to be wrongly blacklisted.

 

"I do not believe that at any time, the Communist has been able to use the motion picture screen as a sounding board for his philosophy or ideology," he said.

 

Reagan's increasing role in SAG and his obsession with anti-communism took a toll on his personal life. In 1948, his marriage to Jane Wyman ended; she was unhappy with his growing political activism.

 

Deeply depressed over the divorce and unhappy with his flagging movie career, Reagan continued his association with SAG. He served as president of the group from 1947-52 and again from 1959-60, when he led a long and successful strike against studios to win pay for actors when their movies were put on television.

 

It was also through SAG that he met Nancy Davis, a young actress whose name had mistakenly appeared on Hollywood lists as a communist sympathizer. In 1949, she appealed to the SAG president for help in clearing her name.

 

Reagan was enchanted by the intelligent young woman. They began courting, and married in 1952. Patricia Ann was born that same year; Ronald Prescott came along six years later.

 

From the silver screen to the small screen
After 17 years in Hollywood, with choice roles no longer coming his way, Reagan turned to the new medium of television. From 1954-62, he hosted the weekly CBS series "The General Electric Theater." As spokesman for the company, he traveled extensively, speaking to thousands of G.E. plant workers across the country.

 

At first little more than entertaining Hollywood anecdotes, Reagan's speeches soon turned to the problems of big government and rising taxes -- issues with which many working Americans identified.

 

Over the years, the speeches gave Reagan the opportunity to hone his skills as a public speaker and gauge the sentiment of the nation. In 1960, he campaigned as a Democrat for Richard Nixon against John F. Kennedy. In 1962, the same year that Reagan registered as a Republican, he left G.E., emerging as a recognized conservative spokesman.

 

Finding a new voice
Campaigning for Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 while host of "Death Valley Days," his last Hollywood job, Reagan was asked to film a then-novel 30-minute television campaign commercial, a repeat of a speech he had delivered at a Republican fundraiser earlier that year.

 

The speech, "A Time for Choosing" was a condemnation of big government and a call for tax reform, themes that would become Reagan's conservative mantra for the next 24 years.

 

"There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability in the United States," Reagan told the television audience. "Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation."

 

Time magazine called the speech the "one bright spot in a dismal campaign." Goldwater ultimately lost, but the speech brought record contributions to the Republican Party and put Reagan squarely the national political spotlight.

 

Impressed with the impassioned speech and the charismatic man who made it, Reagan was pursuaded by several well-heeled Califonia Republicans to run for office. With the backing of California power brokers he met through his Hollywood contacts and work with the Republican Party, Reagan threw his hat into the governor's race.

 

He ran against five candidates in 1966 to win the Republican nomination. Californians embraced Reagan's genial image as a cowboy coming to their state's rescue with traditional values. His friendly, down-to-earth manner came across in the campaign speeches he wrote himself.

 

Months later, despite his lack of experience, Ronald Wilson Reagan beat out two-time Democratic incumbent Pat Brown to win the race by almost a million votes.

 

Ronald, Nancy and their children set off for Sacramento, and a life in the public eye. The man who had never held public office was about to learn the business of governance at the helm of the nation's most populous state.

 

California dreaming
 

Reagans pave road to the White House
 Reagan's first months in Sacramento would prove to be a crash course in the business of governing. Despite a slow start, Reagan went on to win a second term, refining his conservative ideology and building a political base that would carry him to Washington.

 

After arriving in the capital, Reagan set about immediately to fulfill campaign promises to lower taxes, cut spending and shrink the government.

 

With no governing experience and a staff of self-declared novices, Reagan's first decision as governor was a disaster. Facing a huge budget deficit and high state spending, Reagan instituted a 10 percent cut in government across the board.

 

When the hoped-for results didn't materialize, Reagan was forced to raise taxes by $1 billion.

 

The budget cuts angered students at the turbulent University of California at Berkeley, who protested in force. It was unsettling for Reagan, after years of playing the hero, to be cast as villain.

 

The student revolt reached a climax in the spring of 1969. Protesters had the campus paralyzed. Taking a hard line, Reagan sent in the California Highway Patrol, a move that heightened tensions and Reagan's disfavor among students.

 

But tired of the unruly demonstrations rampant in the '60s and '70s, Reagan stood up to the protesters with the slogan, "Observe the rules or get out."

 

In 1970, with little to show for his first term, Reagan ran for re-election and easily won.

 

If confrontation marked his first term, collaboration was key in his second.

 

Reagan's tax hike paid off, and he was able to give the public several tax rebates.

 

He also pushed through substantive welfare reform, which tightened eligibility and gave welfare recipients work while increasing payments to the neediest. More than 300,000 names were removed from the welfare rolls.

 

In the process, Reagan cultivated a loyal following of influential and well-heeled supporters whose help would be integral in getting him to Washington. It also gave him the confidence to continue in politics.

 

A steep learning curve
Biographer Lou Cannon chronicles in "Reagan" the political education by trial and error of a governor who "had goals, but no programs ... (and) did not know how government functioned or the processes by which it reached its objectives."

 

The future president, Cannon wrote, learned the ropes of leadership "at taxpayers' expense during which California's much maligned and highly professional state government bureaucracy did the actual governing."

 

Leaving the details to aides became a Reagan hallmark, sometimes with mixed results. But he stood by his style.

 

"I don't believe a chief executive should supervise every detail of what goes on in his organization," Reagan wrote in "An American Life," defending the management style he employed in California and, later, in Washington.

 

While leaving policy implementation to others, Reagan's ideology was of his own making.

 

Media charm
Even in his early political years, Reagan showed he could keep the upper hand with the media, controlling access while being charming.

 

Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who wrote speeches for Reagan in the White House, recalls a night in the governor's yard in the 1960s. A rookie reporter was hoping for an interview for a small wire service.

 

Nancy asked him to leave, but Reagan followed him down the driveway. With shaving cream on his face, Reagan said, "If you can spend the night in my back lawn, I can spend five minutes with you. Now what's the problem?"

 

While he knew how to charm them, Reagan also found ways to circumvent reporters. In a nod to the fireside chats of his early political hero, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, took his case straight to the American people via radio and television.

 

That approach "worked better than I ever dreamed it would" in winning over public opinion, Reagan boasted in his autobiography.

 

White House ambitions
All the while Reagan was in Sacramento, he had his eye on the White House. In 1968, just 18 months after he was elected to lead California, Reagan announced his intention to run for the presidency at the Republican National Convention. It was too late to take the Republican nomination from Richard Nixon but it put the party on notice of his ambitions.

 

Reagan sat out 1972, but in 1975 he left the governorship on a groundswell of support for another run at the White House.

 

The Reagans also bought their beloved Rancho del Cielo near Santa Barbara, which later served as a retreat from the pressures of Washington.

 

In 1976, Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination. Trounced in the early primaries, Reagan held his ground, refusing to throw in the towel.

 

Looking for an issue to ignite the campaign, Reagan settled on one familiar to him -- the threat of a new communist menace.

 

He lost the candidacy by just 60 delegates, establishing himself as a viable candidate for a future run.

 

Four years later, Reagan tried again, this time easily winning the GOP nomination. He chose as his running mate a defeated rival and party stalwart, George Bush, who had been a Texas congressman, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and CIA director.

 

Reagan's platform called for a return to so-called American values, a reduced federal government, and tax cuts to stimulate economic growth, in keeping with a supply-side theory of growth. Reagan also promised to balance the budget. The conservative agenda included reduced business regulation, voluntary school prayer and opposition to abortion.

 

In the final pre-election debate, Reagan deflected President Jimmy Carter's attacks on his policies by suggesting distortions with the refrain, "There you go again." And he delivered the memorable closing line, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

 

Public frustration with high inflation and the Iranian hostage crisis tipped the scales in Reagan's favor. He won 51 percent of the popular vote, and 44 states, to Carter's 41 percent and six states. At age 69, he also became the oldest man ever elected president.

 

As Reagan moved to the White House, he was poised to parlay his landslide into one of the most popular presidencies of the 20th century.

 

The White House years

 

 

A conservative legacy
President Reagan entered office in 1981 with two primary goals: to shrink government and to "make America strong again" by boosting the military.

 

"Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem," Reagan said at his inauguration, signaling a challenge to what he called the "unnecessary and excessive growth of government."

 

And, putting the international community, and particularly the Soviet Union, on notice, he warned, "Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will."

 

With these ideas in mind, he set about drastically cutting taxes and government spending while building up the country's military.

 

Reagan also pursued plans to pare down federal regulations and addressed trade issues, including problems created by the flood of Japanese auto imports.

 

In February, 1981, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart announced his intention to retire making room for fulfillment of Reagan's campaign pledge to appoint a woman to the court. Later that year, Reagan nominated Arizona Appeals Court Judge Sandra Day O'Connor.

 

Reagan had barely settled into office when an assassination attempt threatened to stop the so-called "Reagan Revolution" before it got off the ground.

 

During an appearance at a Washington hotel, Reagan was shot by John Hinkley Jr., who later said he was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster by killing the president.

 

With a bullet lodged just inches from his heart, Reagan handled the crisis with his trademark wit and self assurance. Upon meeting the doctor who was to remove the bullet, Reagan is said to have quipped, "I hope you're a Republican."

 

Reagan recovered rapidly, boosting his image as a strong and resilient leader. No sooner was he back at work than he pursued his economic policies at full throttle.

 

The economy sinks then rebounds
Americans had elected Reagan to fix the problems of double-digit inflation, high unemployment and high interest rates.

 

With the cooperation of the Democratic Congress, Reagan cut taxes and government spending at the same time, a combination meant to stimulate growth in a "trickle-down" way from the rich to the rest.

 

The immediate results of "supply-side" economics were mixed. The 1981 tax cuts, 25 percent phased in over three years, were the largest in history. Inflation dropped, but the nation lapsed into a deep recession that forced a tax increase -- also the largest ever at the time.

 

With recession at hand, Reagan's fiscal policies, dubbed "Reagonomics," by critics, drew heavy fire. Unemployment was on the rise and Reagan's blue-collar supporters were defecting.

 

Reagan urged Americans to "stay the course," and indeed, the economy did rebound. Wall Street surged and by early 1983, the economy was moving forward at a healthy clip. The recovery would last an unprecedented eight years.

 

It was just the boost Reagan needed as he began to campaign for re-election. He ran against former Vice President Walter Mondale with a platform that played on America's renewed confidence. His campaign ads proclaimed, "It's morning again in America," and voters believed it.

 

The election was a landslide. Reagan won every state except Mondale's home state of Minnesota becoming, at 73, the oldest person to be elected president.

 

Reagan continued to pursue conservative fiscal policies in his second term. In 1986, he sold Congress on an overhaul of the income tax code, eliminating numerous deductions and exempting millions of low-income people.

 

He also slashed social programs, including Aid to Families with Dependent Children, school lunches and subsidized housing, earning him critics among advocates of the poor, who likened him to Herbert Hoover.

 

But Reagan didn't see it that way. By most accounts, he genuinely believed he was creating opportunity for the disadvantaged. He spared Social Security and promised to maintain a "safety net," for the elderly, disabled and needy. Still, by the time he left office, the disparity between rich and poor Americans was at an all-time high.

 

Taming the Bear
  

While Reagan cut social programs, he dramatically increased defense spending in the belief that the way to prevent a nuclear war was to have more weapons than the enemy -- in this case the Soviet Union. From a position of strength, he said, he would negotiate the end of nuclear weapons buildup. It was a theory that many Americans did not share.

 

Thousands held protests across the country, worried that the arms race would lead to disaster. But Reagan held firm, and defense spending grew 35 percent for the nation's largest-ever peacetime buildup.

 

Reagan also invested in his Strategic Defense Initiative, which promised to deflect incoming missiles with shields in space. Scientists derided the idea, calling it "Star Wars," but Reagan insisted on research.

 

Tax cuts and the largest military buildup in peacetime history did not come without a price. The federal deficit ballooned under Reagan's leadership, a situation the president blamed on Congress for not doing enough to cut federal spending.

 

While Reagan viewed himself as a champion of Everyman, he did much to please the business barons, removing government regulations said to be stifling growth and firing illegally striking air traffic controllers in 1981.

 

While deregulation had been one of the primary objectives of the Reagan Administration, results were mixed, with many of the targeted regulations dealing with health and safety standards being restored by the courts.

 

Results were also mixed on social issues. Whether or not it was owing to Nancy Reagan's much-maligned "Just Say No," campaign, drug use among high school students was declining as Reagan left office. AIDS, however, was on the rise, a trend some health officials blamed on a lack of White House leadership on the issue. Crime levels remained more or less the same.

 

"He was modest about his achievements and willing to share the credit with others, but he refused to acknowledge mistakes," biographer Lou Cannon observed.

 

Preaching and pushing democracy abroad
If Reagan's first term was defined by economic issues, his second was defined by his efforts to end the Cold War.

 

Reagan's international policies were based on an abiding antipathy for communism and a belief in the United States as a moral compass.

 

The defense buildup was a key component of the attempt to stare down what Reagan termed the "evil empire" -- the Soviet Union. That obsessive passion of anti-communism had been with the president since his days in Hollywood.

 

Amid the tough talk, Reagan met several times with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1987, the men signed a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

 

Reagan's international record was hardly without controversy. He persisted in 1985 with a planned visit to a German cemetery where some Nazi secret police were buried, despite criticism from Jewish groups.

 

Reagan also relied on the military to respond to international problems -- sometimes with mixed results.

 

He sent Marines into Lebanon as peacekeepers. But in 1983, the peacekeepers themselves were attacked; a bombing at their Beirut barracks killed 241 troops. When Reagan left office in 1988, extremists still held Americans hostage in Lebanon.

 

Also in 1983, American troops were called on to squelch a communist coup on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Critics claimed it was a risky overreaction.

 

Libya also proved problematic. In 1986, Reagan ordered a bombing raid on Libya after evidence emerged that Libyan terrorists attacked U.S. soldiers at a West Berlin nightclub.

 

And in 1988, near the end of Reagan's tenure, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Scotland, killing 270 people. Again, Libyans were blamed.

 

Reagan also carried his anti-communist push into Central America, where he sent arms and advisers to counter the Soviet Union's aid to the government in Nicaragua and rebels in El Salvador.

 

The Iran-Contra Affair
It was Reagan's ideological push south, combined with his management style of leaving policy details to advisers, that led to the scandal of his career.

 

"Reagan lacked a technical grasp of any issue, and he was usually bored by briefings. ... Most of his aides thought of him as intelligent, but many also considered him intellectually lazy," Cannon wrote.

 

Reagan had directed aides to find ways to help the Contras, Nicaraguan rebels fighting the leftist Sandinista government, after Congress barred further aid. He had authorized a CIA operation in Nicaragua in 1981. But, as usual, the specifics of implementation were left to others.

 

Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North and others in the administration operated the secret arms pipeline, which collapsed with public disclosure in 1986. Money from illegal arms sales to Iran was used to help finance covert support of the Contras.

 

Arms sales were also made to Iran in an attempt to win its influence in Lebanon to negotiate the release of American hostages.

 

Reagan had categorically denied he would ever trade arms for hostages, and said after the Iran-Contra scandal emerged that he never knew of diversion of funds to the Contras or even that excess funds existed.

 

Independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh concluded in 1994 that there was no evidence Reagan or Vice President George Bush had broken the law, or that they knew of the diversion of money.

 

But Walsh said Reagan "knowingly participated or at least acquiesced" in the cover-up, and that Bush withheld evidence and "was fully aware of the Iran arms sales."

 

Despite the Iran-Contra scandal and the 1987 stock market crash, the Reagan Revolution didn't end with his second term. Bush rode his boss's coattails into the Oval Office in 1988.

 

In assessing the Reagan's presidential legacy, biographer Lou Cannon wrote, " Reagan may not have been a great president, but he was a great American with a compelling vision of his country. "

 

Historians will no doubt continue to debate the effectiveness of Reagan's policies, but few will dispute the patriotism and personal charm of one of America's most popular presidents.

 

The 'long goodbye'
 

Golden years marred by illness
 Ronald Reagan left the Oval Office after 1988 to return to the good life in California, a life that was undermined in his later years by Alzheimer's disease.

 

Much of the nation still looked to the former president to fill his character role: a kind of national grandfather who offered the reassurance of old-fashioned values balanced with gentle humor.

 

True to form, he largely delivered on their expectations. But it was not an entirely gentle ride into the sunset at Rancho del Cielo, his and Nancy's beloved ranch near Santa Barbara.

 

Shortly after leaving office, Reagan was criticized for pocketing an estimated $2 million for two brief speeches as the guest of the Fujisankei Communications Group in Japan. He appeared to be trading on the status of his public office.

 

Reagan also lived long enough to hear the public criticize key points of his administration's legacy, including the high federal deficit, the Iran-Contra controversy and even whether the massive defense build-up made any difference in hastening the Soviet Union's demise.

 

The GOP's grandfather
  

After he left the White House, Reagan still had a job to do in politics, serving as his party's elder statesman. He gave his former vice president and successor, George Bush, a welcome boost by endorsing him at the 1992 Republican convention.

 

Still, his convention speech did little to help Bush's cause nationally, and Reagan seemed aware at the time that it was doubling as his own farewell address.

 

"Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone," he said, "I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts."

 

In April 1994, the Reagans sat with then-President and Mrs. Clinton and former Presidents Bush, Carter and Ford and their wives at the funeral for former President Richard Nixon. It was to be one of Reagan's last appearances at a major public event.

 

Illness descends
  

Later that same year, in a handwritten letter to the public, Reagan announced he had been diagnosed with the brain disorder Alzheimer's disease.

 

"In opening our hearts, we hope this might promote greater awareness of this condition. Perhaps it will encourage a clearer understanding of the individuals and families who are affected by it," Reagan wrote.

 

The announcement did what the couple hoped it would, raising public awareness of the debilitating disease, which causes progressive memory loss. They established the Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute with the Alzheimer's Association.

 

Reagan made only rare appearances after that, though under wife Nancy's care and guidance, he continued to go to his Los Angeles office and meet with friends and select associates.

 

As the disease progressed, the former first lady stepped in to represent her husband at events. She spoke at the 1996 GOP convention, and attended the volunteerism summit chaired by retired Gen. Colin Powell in 1997.

 

'The sunset of my life'
Closer to home, the Reagans' children worked to put past differences with their parents aside, and enjoyed renewed closeness as a family.

 

In December 1999, Nancy Reagan told C-SPAN that the former president's condition had deteriorated to the point that he could not carry on a coherent conversation any more. A few months earlier, he had stopped going to his Los Angeles offices every day.

 

In January 2001, Reagan broke his hip in a fall at home. Doctors rebuilt the joint in a 65-minute operation using a pin, a plate and screws, and doctors expressed surprise at the speed of Reagan's recovery. While he was in the hospital, his daughter Maureen, an Alzheimer's activist and frequent family spokesperson, was in the same hospital receiving treatment for malignant melanoma.

 

Reagan, the oldest man ever elected president, turned 90 on February 6, 2001. Only three other U.S. presidents ever reached 90 -- John Adams, Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford, who will turn 91 next month.

 

In an interview broadcast on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Reagan's 90th birthday, Nancy Reagan said she and her husband could no longer have discussions.

 

"It's sad to see somebody you love and have been married for so long (with Alzheimer's) and you can't share memories. That's the sad part," Mrs. Reagan said.

 

When King suggested that there are hospitals set up to treat Alzheimer's patients, she responded: "Oh, no. Oh, no. Never. Never. No, no. He's going to stay at home."

 

Despite the Alzheimer's diagnosis, Reagan displayed his characteristic optimism in the 1994 letter announcing his condition.

 

"In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president," Reagan wrote in announcing his Alzheimer's diagnosis.

 

"When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.

 

"I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead."

 

 

Have a Blessed Day

Dave and Barbara

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