A man of conviction, resolve

By Robert A. Rankin
Knight Ridder Newspapers

MICHAEL EVANS / COURTESY OF RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY At his desk in the Oval Office, President Reagan prepares a speech for a joint session of Congress in 1981, his first year in office.

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Ronald Wilson Reagan was born Feb. 6, 1911, in Tampico, Ill., population 849. His father, John Edward Reagan, was an alcoholic shoe salesman with a flair for storytelling. His mother, Nelle, taught him to read at 5 and encouraged his interest in theater. He had one brother, Neil, two years older.

In 1920, the Reagans moved to a bigger Illinois town — Dixon, population 8,191 — which Ronald Reagan came to consider his hometown. There he displayed qualities that would mark his later life. A lifelong admirer of heroes, for example, Mr. Reagan participated in some heroics as a lifeguard for seven summers, and he claimed to have rescued 77 people.

He displayed an early knack for politics, winning election as president of his high-school student body. The motto beneath his senior-yearbook picture captured his smiling optimism: "Life is just one grand sweet song, so start the music."

An athletic scholarship in swimming and football helped Mr. Reagan enter nearby Eureka College, where he majored in economics and sociology and washed dishes to pay bills.

Hollywood beckons

Graduating in June 1932, Mr. Reagan found a part-time radio job announcing sports that autumn in nearby Davenport, Iowa. Soon he was working full time and before long was winning regional attention on WHO in Des Moines.

In 1937, he went to Hollywood for WHO to cover the Chicago Cubs in spring training. Upon his arrival, a friend introduced him to an agent, who got him a screen test, which won him a $200-a-week movie contract.

His athletic good looks and Midwestern sincerity helped make him a leading man. Among his most notable films were "Kings Row" (his favorite), "Brother Rat," "Dark Victory," "Knute Rockne — All American" and "Bedtime for Bonzo."

Weak eyesight kept him out of combat in World War II. He made Army training films while living at home with his actress wife, Jane Wyman, whom he married in 1940. After giving birth to daughter Maureen in 1941 and adopting son Michael in 1945, Wyman slowly grew distant from Mr. Reagan, divorcing him, to his great regret, in 1949.

One reason for their estrangement was Mr. Reagan's growing immersion in union politics. In 1947, he was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, a post he held for six terms. It put him in the center of union rivalries involving mobsters and communists and fueled his interest in public affairs. A Democrat then, he campaigned for Harry Truman in 1948.

He found the great love of his life, actress Nancy Davis, in 1951 and married her the following year. Daughter Patricia was born in 1952, son Ronald in 1958.

Mr. Reagan combined his interests in theater and public affairs in a new role with General Electric from 1954 to 1962. Every Sunday night, he was host of "GE Theater" on television, sometimes also starring in its productions. He toured company plants and communities as a GE spokesman, emerging as a champion of increasingly conservative political values. In 1962, he officially changed his party affiliation to Republican.

A stint as host of the Western TV series "Death Valley Days" from 1963 to 1965 closed out Mr. Reagan's entertainment career.

Mr. Governor

He became a national political force Oct. 27, 1964, when he gave a 30-minute evening TV address on behalf of Barry Goldwater's doomed candidacy for president. Mr. Reagan's eloquence transformed him from a fading actor into the rising leader of conservatives.

His message, honed in hundreds of speeches during his GE days, was the same one he would trumpet the rest of his career: Government had become too big, encroaching on individual freedom. It must be shrunk, taxes cut, business regulations eased. The people must take charge of their destiny to reinvigorate the United States.

He rode those themes to a landslide victory over incumbent California Gov. Pat Brown in 1966 and easily retained the office four years later.

His record as governor was centrist: restraining spending, reforming welfare, expanding parkland, liberalizing California's abortion law. But his image was more hard-line, stemming from his support of the Vietnam War and no-nonsense response to student protests.

An almost quixotic 11th-hour bid for the 1968 GOP presidential nomination fanned the flames of national attention. A deadly earnest struggle with incumbent President Ford brought Mr. Reagan within an eyelash of his party's top prize in 1976. During the next few years, radio commentaries, speeches and a newspaper column kept him in the public eye.

'There you go again'

In 1980, he rolled over George Bush, John Connally and Howard Baker to win the Republican nomination. That autumn, President Carter portrayed him as a reckless would-be warrior, but Mr. Reagan's genial warmth blunted the attack when they met in face-to-face debate a week before the election.

	DENNIS COOK / AP President Reagan gives an "OK" sign from his hospital-room window in Bethesda, Md., on July 18, 1985. He was recovering from intestinal surgery.

After one hyperbolic Carter attack on his character, Mr. Reagan replied mildly and memorably: "There you go again."

Reagan clinched the debate, and probably the election, with his summary question to voters: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" If not, he suggested, perhaps they should vote for change. A majority did.

Mr. Reagan won 51 percent to Carter's 41. Independent John Anderson captured 7 percent. Mr. Reagan also swept the Electoral College, 489 to 44 for Carter.

"Let us begin an era of national renewal," Mr. Reagan said in his first inaugural address. "We have every right to dream heroic dreams, and after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans."

'Honey, I forgot to duck'

Mr. Reagan's presidency was almost cut short March 30, 1981, when would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr., a 25-year-old drifter, shot him in the chest. The bullet came to rest an inch from his heart and caused massive internal bleeding.

As his life hung in the balance, Mr. Reagan's gallant emergency-room wit won the hearts of fellow citizens. "Honey, I forgot to duck," he told his worried wife, Nancy. "Please tell me you're Republicans," he cracked to doctors.

He survived and went on to dominate his decade as few presidents have, sweeping to a 49-state re-election in 1984 over Democrat Walter Mondale.

Early highlights of his presidency included his 1981 tax-and-spending cuts; his appointment of the first woman to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor; and his breaking of an air traffic controllers strike by outlawing their union.

He brought an actor's touch to his special gift for ceremony. He embodied the nation's grief after the Challenger space-shuttle disaster in 1986. And he moved people to tears when saluting the nation's D-Day heroes in Normandy 40 years after the great World War II invasion.

As commander in chief, he frequently exhibited machismo. He sent the World War II battleship New Jersey to shell Lebanon. He invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada. After Libya was caught sponsoring a terrorist attack on Americans in a Berlin discothèque, he bombed Moammar Gadhafi's capital city. And he supplied anti-communists in Central America, Afghanistan and elsewhere with a steady stream of military aid.

However, Mr. Reagan also took risks for peace. Overruling the arms-control establishment, he repeatedly challenged Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to agree to radical cuts in both powers' nuclear arsenals, eventually succeeding.

Despite widespread skepticism that it could work, he stubbornly insisted on pursuing his vision of building a shield to protect the United States from nuclear missiles, even offering to give Moscow the technology to lower the risk of war.

"A nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought," Mr. Reagan said time and again. The expensive quest for his space shield — the Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars" — was scaled back after he left power, but analysts credit his crusade for it as pivotal to persuading Moscow to end the Cold War.

Mr. Reagan's gravest error as president was the Iran-contra affair. It involved repeated sales of weapons to Iran from mid-1985 to late 1986, violating his prominent stand against arming nations that sponsor terrorism, especially Iran.

He hoped the arms sales would help free U.S. hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian terrorists and might ease relations with Iran. Instead, they led to more hostages being kidnapped than released.

The other half of the scandal involved diverting profits from the weapons sales to help finance anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua — the contras — despite a law ruling out U.S. aid to them.

After months of public denial, on March 4, 1987, Mr. Reagan admitted in a TV address that he had tried to swap arms for hostages. He termed it "a mistake." He always denied knowledge of the contra connection, however, and investigations never proved he knew of it. Nevertheless, the Iran-contra affair wounded his credibility and undermined his second term.

Mr. Reagan left the presidency to George Bush, his vice president, in January 1989 and avoided public life thereafter.

Sorrow greeted the release of a handwritten letter from him to "My fellow Americans" on Nov. 5, 1994, announcing he had Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's is an incurable neurological disorder that causes progressive memory loss, impairment of judgment, disorientation and personality change.

The letter expressed hope that by disclosing his malady, people might better understand the illness.

"I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience," Mr. Reagan wrote. "... I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life."