Books
“My Father at 100” by Ron Reagan (Viking, 228 pages, $25.95)
President Ronald Reagan would have celebrated his 100th birthday Feb. 6. Books are being issued to coincide with the centennial of “The Great Communicator’s” birth. President Reagan’s son Michael has published “The New Reagan Revolution — How Ronald Reagan’s Principles Can Restore America’s Greatness.”
Ronald Reagan’s 1991 autobiography, “An American Life,” is being reissued. The youngest of the four Reagan children, Ron Reagan, just published a memoir, “My Father at 100.” This book has ignited a bit of a firestorm between the two Reagan brothers, Michael and Ron.
Ron Reagan’s book asserts that their father could have been exhibiting some early signs of Alzheimer’s disease while he was still in the White House. Michael reportedly retaliated via Twitter that his brother is an “embarrassment,” that Ron wants to “sell out his father to sell books.”
With all this being said, let’s ignore their fraternal spat and consider Ron’s book. Clearly this was not a simple book to write. What can you say about Ronald Reagan that has not already been said? That was a challenge. Surprisingly, it was a challenge well met.
Ron went to his dad’s birthplace. He spent time by the river where the elder Reagan was a lifeguard. He stopped by the football field where his father once envisioned gridiron glory. The son’s research identified something crucial, an essential element of his dad’s boyhood personality, a desire to be a hero.
Ronald Reagan saved 77 lives during his seven summers as a lifeguard. He dreamed of stardom on the football field. That was not to be. His swimmer’s body couldn’t handle the brute force of football in those days.
That young dream of football heroism apparently still pervaded the elder Reagan’s subconscious mind. His son recounts that late in President Reagan’s life, while in the grip of Alzheimer’s disease, he awakened in the middle of the night insisting that he needed to go into the game, an imaginary football game, which seems to have epitomized those boyhood aspirations.
President Reagan established a heroic legacy, as a lifeguard, a movie star and as a president who took the existence of the Soviet Union as a personal challenge. He was the man who said to the people of West Berlin, “Tear down this wall.” And they did.
President Reagan didn’t immediately comprehend that an assassin’s bullet, “a type of exploding bullet charmingly marketed as a Devastator,” had hit him. That unexploded bullet was still inside him as Reagan joked to the doctors “please tell me you’re all Republicans.”
His humor, while shadowed by peril, reveals a key reason why many Americans admired the president; he didn’t take himself too seriously.
“Bleeding to death with a bullet in his chest, and he’s doing shtick. That was so Dad,” he says. “This may sound bizarre — and indeed it is — but anyone reading this who knew him will be nodding and thinking: He was embarrassed to be putting everyone out.”
Vick Mickunas interviews authors every Friday at 1:30 p.m. and on Sundays at 11 a.m. on WYSO-FM (91.3). For more information, visit www.wyso.org/BookNook.html. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.
About the Author