prairie point

i remember ronald reagan

One of my favorite things in high school was working on the school newspaper. It was fun trying to put words together to make a story but creative writing was out of the question for me. It was hard for me to drag anything personal out of myself but a lot easier to be a reporter of events. Most of the time I was assigned to report on sports, which was really something I knew little or nothing about. I scarcely even knew the rules for most of the games. I guess I was what today you would call a geek. I probably would have stayed at home if I hadn't had to write about the game, so being a reporter helped me get out of my shell and participate in events a little.

I don't know how it came about but one day our journalism teacher told me that she had selected me and my classmate Jenny to go to a press conference for Ronald Reagan. He was in town to speak at a fundraising dinner and had invited high school students to participate in the press conference. He was not the president yet; I think he was running for governor. I knew him from TV as the announcer on Death Valley Days, advertising "20 Mule Team Borax."

I wore my suit for the event and Jenny was wearing high heels. I remember the heels because they made her taller than me and I felt self-conscious walking next to her. We had press passes which allowed us into a small room where we sat around a table with Reagan at one end. There were a couple dozen reporters and we were the only high school students there. I can't remember any of the questions; they were probably about defense and taxes and things that kind of went over my head at that time. Toward the end he looked at us and asked specifically if we wanted to ask anything but neither Jenny or I had anything to ask. I had thought about questions ahead of time but I was too awestruck to speak up. He was the first famous person I had ever met. Afterwards he shook our hands and I got an autograph. We didn't get to go to the dinner or hear his speech.

It's become a cliche to say this but I was impressed by how warm and personable he was. Like a kindly grandfather or your favorite uncle. For me at that age what Reagan said on political issues made sense. The way he explained things made the solutions to problems seem so reasonable. I was attracted to the libertarian school of thought, which still influences a lot of my opinions. I had also just read Ayn Rand which had impressed me a great deal. Later in college my opinions changed considerably and by the time Reagan was president there was not much we would have agreed on.

For a while I dreamed of becoming a newspaper reporter. I called on the local paper to see about a summer job there but they told me they only hired children of employees or friends. In college I worked on the newspaper briefly. It was actually a smaller staff than my high school paper and run by a small clique. I quit after a semester and that was the end of my reporting career.

Posted by Bill Hopkins on June 9, 2004 10:31 PM