Coupla things have jogged me into writing this post. First was the finding an old “Reagan For Governor” button in one of my dresser drawers a few days ago. There are many things that have been lost for decades lurking within those drawers. Still looking for my German Volksmarsch medal I got for walking 25 km one Saturday along the Moselle (culminating with a beer and a bratwurst!) during my Army days so long ago.
Second was seeing the great biopic starring Dennis Quaid today that opened in theaters a week ago. The movie reminded me of a lot of Reagan stories that I had forgotten.
Such as his penchant for jelly beans. Not just any jelly beans, but Jelly Bellys, made just 40 minutes away in Fairfield, CA. He acquired that taste while governor in California. Another thing he took to the White House from his governor days was his wine advisor at Corti Brothers Market. I was trying to google his name (Darrell Corti?) and didn’t know that he had another Sacramento wine advisor. He didn’t really “take them” but many a White House dinner had wine shipped from our local Corti Brothers store.
I remember that, like his first Presidential run, his winning was considered to be a long-shot. California had a popular Democratic Governor, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown (father of Jerry), who was responsible for a lot of great projects in California, such as our aqueduct system (it has always been so that So California needs water and No California generally has it. The fight continues to this day.
I remember a funny campaign back-and-forth even to this day.
The Brown people asked the electorate, “Why vote for Reagan? He’s just an actor”.
To which the Reagan people replied, “Why not an actor? We’ve had a clown for 8 years!”.
When he won the election in 1966, Nancy refused to live in the old Governor’s Mansion, calling it a fire trap. (My opinion, it was, and is, being a state park today). When Jerry Brown won the election 8 years later in 1974, he chose to call a mattress on the floor in an apartment home.
The legislature approved the building of a new 30,000 sf mansion in nearby Carmichael, but Brown Jr refused to live in it, calling it a “Taj Mahal”. (he might have been right, too). It was eventually sold off and to this day the California Governor has had no residence he can call a “Governor’s Mansion”.
In Reagan’s case, some sympathetic backers rented him a suitable home in an area we call the “Fabulous Forties” – on 45th Street. I can still remember the security hut on the front yard.
The movie brought out a funny story I had forgotten about his time when he was thinking of running for Governor. He knocked on the homes of his neighbors, asking what they thought. One homeowner didn’t know who he was (his acting days were eclipsed by his time in the Screen Actor’s Guild and spokesman for GE (and the host of the old series Death Valley Days, for those old enough to remember).
Anyway, the homeowner didn’t recognize him, and when Nancy gave her a hint that his initials were “RR”, well, I don’t want to spoil if for you if you want to see the movie.
After his Sacramento days, daughter Maureen continued to live here.
I have a couple of very minor connections with the Reagans. The first was when I was a student at UVA, and I read in the paper that back home wife Nancy was getting very despondent over some political attacks. What it was about I can’t even remember, but I was moved to write her a letter. For some years when I was moved enough I wrote letters, another to General Creighton Abrams, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As an Army Pfc no less!
Anyway I told Mrs. Reagan to take heart, as I could see him in National office. To which she replied and thanked me, and assured me that her husband read the letter.
I hope that I don’t sound so presumptions as to suggest that this letter changed anything (I suspect the die had been cast long before), but I have liked to think that it offered some encouragement.
As a sidebar, in the case of General Abrams, an Army friend of mine hadn’t been paid in 6 months and I was getting fed up with the situation. One evening in a pique I sat down and wrote a letter to him, telling him that I was getting “fed up with the Army bureaucracy”. It was addressed simply to “The Pentagon”. I figured he could be found there.
Only after a few days with time to reflect did I consider that there might be some repercussions. Jumping the chain of command is frowned on in the military (as any large organization). And I certainly jumped the chain just a bit. But a couple of weeks went by with nothing and the letter receded from my mind.
Until one day I received a letter with 5 gold stars.
I opened it with some trepidation but the first sentence read: “Dear Pfc Brandt: I want you to know that the bureaucracy gets to me, too. But as soldiers we must persevere. “.
Amazingly my friend got his pay problem straightened out soon after and I heard nothing more.
I should have kept those letters.
My other contact with Reagan was seeing him in San Diego at probably his last campaign stop for the 1980 election. If I remember correctly, he was supposed to arrive around 1800. The pundits all said that the race would be close, but I went to the Mission Valley shopping center to a parking lot with a makeshift stage. He was 2 hours late, but we were entertained by Donnie and Marie Osmond (who, being 2 hours late, were undoubtedly working overtime). When he finally did arrive, I was standing literally 20 feet from him. In his speech, he said that he had learned by internal polling that this was going to be a good night. Then he left for Los Angeles to watch the returns.
It may seem surprising to some that he was even friends with some of his political foes. I remember him saying to then House Majority Leader Thomas “Tipp” O’Neil that “we may fight during the day, but that ends at 6 o’clock”. After 6 o’clock we are just 2 Irishmen having a beer”.
Which they did on occasion.
I think what drove his detractors nuts was that fact that he just ignored them. Didn’t feel the need to go swinging at anyone who said disparaging things about him. And the term “dunce”, “actor”, or “cowboy” were pretty common things said about him. He just ignored them.
The movie was pretty accurate going over his life from the time he was a boy, living with an alcoholic father.
A good friend of mine was a photographer for our major Sacramento newspaper for 47 years. He’s met everyone from Jayne Mansfield to Diane Feinstein to….Ronald Reagan. I’ve told him that he should write a book.
He said that what we know as Reagan in public was pretty much the same man in private.
He remembers one story not published about him when he was riding a horse with reporters and politicians in the Sierras. He pointed out to a vista and told them “They want to build a highway out there, but I won’t let them”.
Besides the movie, a book that I can recommend is “Riding With Reagan”, by John Barletta. Barletta was a Secret Service Agent assigned to Reagan because he was the only one who could ride a horse. He has some stories, and is also mentioned in the movie. I didn’t realize this before reading the book, but Reagan was quite an equestrian, who had horses in his life for decades.
And Dennis Quaid reminded me with a tour of the Reagan Ranch near Santa Barbara (which he bought after his time as Governor in 1974) that he was not a wealthy man.
The movie was great, the theater was ¾ full on a Tuesday afternoon. And not one person left until the credits were finished.
As a framework the movie has throughout a talk with a young Russian and an old KGB spy who tells the young man how Reagan won the Cold War without a shot being fired.
For myself, he was the greatest President in my lifetime.
Cross Posted at The Lexicans
09-05-24 I had forgotten that I made a post about visiting the Ronald Reagan Library 10 years ago. I’ve been to half a dozen Presidential libraries, and this – and the Truman Library in Independence MO, are at my top.
Thank you for this post. Ronaldus Magnus was indeed the greatest President of my lifetime. (I’m 63.) Oh, that someone…anyone! would pick up his mantle.
Paul kengor who is one of the most incisive chroniclers is the source material for the film
Bill, I shared your post with a friend (a resident of Independence MO & big fan of Truman), who responded thusly:
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What a nice review! ? Don’t sound like no 14% rating(1). ?
Similar story to Mr. Reagan:
One day a California Republican answered the door and found a man who was asking directions. After giving the directions he said, “I’m sorry, but you look just like Harry Truman.” The man replied, “I’m sorry, I am Harry Truman.”
Getting lost driving an automobile was one of Mr. Truman’s talents.
I don’t know if I ever mentioned a short and very charming book, Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip.
Pull Quote Review:
On June 19, 1953, Harry Truman got up early, packed the trunk of his Chrysler New Yorker, and did something no other former president has done before or since: he hit the road. No Secret Service protection. No traveling press. Just Harry and his childhood sweetheart Bess, off to visit old friends, take in a Broadway play, celebrate their wedding anniversary in the Big Apple, and blow a bit of the money he’d just received to write his memoirs. Hopefully incognito. In this lively history, author Matthew Algeo meticulously details how Truman’s plan to blend in went wonderfully awry. Fellow diners, bellhops, cabbies, squealing teenagers at a Future Homemakers of America convention, and one very by-the-book Pennsylvania state trooper–all unknowingly conspired to blow his cover. Algeo revisits the Trumans’ route, staying at the same hotels and eating at the same diners, and takes readers on brief detours into topics such as the postwar American auto industry, McCarthyism, the nation’s highway system, and the decline of Main Street America. By the end of the 2,500-mile journey, you will have a new and heartfelt appreciation for America’s last citizen-president.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6304778-harry-truman-s-excellent-adventure
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(1) the Rotten Toes “critics” rating for the Reagan movie.
ColoComment
What a wonderful story about Truman! I stopped at his library a year or two ago and found that to be probably as interesting as the Reagan library.
A lot of things on display including a very historic letter where the secretary of war is telling him that he has a matter of utmost importance to talk about and please do not delay in contacting me
It was the letter for which he would notify him of the existence of the Manhattan project and atomic bomb
Everybody praises Roosevelt – and he deserves his due guiding us through World War II
But can you imagine keeping your vice president completely out of the loop particularly in that fourth term when he was so frail he knew he was going to die soon?
Imagine really knowing nothing about the strategies of the second world war and suddenly your boss dies and you were it
And then imagine right after the war the Soviets trying to topple friendly western European governments and how do you respond?
I would rank Truman right up there with Reagan. Truman contained the Soviet union and won the Pacific war probably saving hundreds of thousands of lives on the American side.
And Reagan defeated the Soviets
If you’re ever in independence Missouri, just outside Kansas City, I really recommend a visit to the Truman library
Oh and one funny story your friend may like. A friend of my mothers was telling me that that she and her husband stopped to visit the Truman library and had a delightful conversation with an elderly man
Only later did they find out it was Harry Truman who liked to talk with visitors to the museum
No Secret Service entourage – just a man who wanted to keep in touch with fellow citizens
I have “Riding with Reagan” and have reread it a few times. I also have a high regard for Truman and have his Memoirs. The “Truman Committee” of the Senate kept a tight rein on the bureaucracy, as it grew into the monster we call “The Deep State.” David Brinkley has a good book about that era called “Washington Goes To War.”
Bill & Mike, here’s another wordy note:
In May 2018, I spent two nights in Independence MO, at the “Campus RV Park,” on S. Pleasant Rd. (great location, btw, very near attractions!)
Met up with my fb friend* & his wife for a couple of meals, took the “Pioneer Trails” wagon tour of old Independence, spent an afternoon at the Truman Library and Museum and a lot of time just walking around.
https://www.campusrvpark.com/area-attractions
* my friend is/was a member of “The Baker Street Irregulars,” a group of ACD/Sherlock Holmes admirers, as is a cousin of mine, which is how we came to be in email contact. Kind of a digital version of that Kevin Bacon “6 degrees of separation” thing. :-) One of my goals in my 50k+ miles of RV travels (6 years of spring & fall trips) was to link up with “friends” whom I’d never met (like Bill B.!), and far-flung cousins whom I’d not seen in decades.
https://bakerstreetirregulars.com/
Truman had some good points certainly, he warily empowered the Deep State organs, like the Company, which he had some regrets about, the Marshall Plan was important, it has become a metaphor for unrelated things, like urban disemployment or the Russian economy, he did push for what would later become Medicare in embryo fashion,
but he had a certain distaste for the military, that was not only present in the Navy Carrier affair and in his confrontation with McArthur, Some have said McArthur was a little too full of himself and probably negligent in some ways, we can look at the Phillipines and the Crossing of the Yalu and what that would entail
MacArthur was a genius and a sociopath, a tough combination. His ego was even greater than his talents. His obsession with redeeming his reputation may have cost a million Filipinos their lives as that many died in the battle for Manila. Could they have been bypassed ? The Japanese were cruel occupiers but there is no way to know what would have happened.
Truman had a tough choice. MacA did a good job as viceroy of Japan. Maybe that role suited his talents better.
I think Formosa was the alternate path, to the Islands, one might consider MacArthur on insisting oh the Phillipines to fulfill a promise, one might argue the way the way he scapegoated General Yamashita was more problematic in that instance, Willoughby and Sutherland were always on his command staff it seems