Reagan: The Hollywood Years by Marc Eliot

 

Reagan - The Hollywood Years

by Marc Eliot

While visiting Springfield, Illinois in the summer of 2023 and seeing sites relating to Abraham Lincoln with my family, we wondered into a very nice used bookstore that was just amazing. I thought "I wonder what books they have on Reagan" since Reagan is the only President born in the state of Illinois (That's correct, look it up!). I found Marc Eliot's book on the years of Reagan's life in Hollywood of interest. There were several other books on Ronald Reagan, but I have a fairly substantial collection of Reagan works.

Eliot is not writing from a political perspective but more of a media and film viewpoint. Eliot has written several best selling New York Times biographies. His views of Reagan's politics does make the paper, but it easy to disregard those matters. He traces through Reagan's career in Hollywood as a struggling actor, his time of serving during WW2 in the film industry, and his work with the Screen Actors Guild. There are certainly other works that seek to exploit Reagan's missteps, and this book does make mention of those. Still, it's focus is more of the development of his life during his formative years in Hollywood. I am very fond of Ronald Reagan, so I do not care for books that are merely "hit pieces" against a man whom I realize had the proverbial "feet of clay."

Reagan was a part of the golden years of Hollywood film which would be challenged by television. Reagan's ability to use media effectively spans from his beginnings a radio announcer, then film star, then TV personality. Eliot's treatment explains some of the challenges actors faced through these periods. Some actors and actresses did not survive these changes in the world of multi-media but Reagan weathered these changes navigating through some very rocky waters.

I found Marc Eliot's book interesting. There were details and commentary I did not appreciate due to my admiration of Reagan. At times, Eliot seems overly critical and fails to realize this period provided Reagan skills that would serve him as one of the greatest Presidents of the United States. Still, the work presents a glimpse into a period of Americana that has faded into the sunset while Ronald Reagan was able to ride on! In closing, I think it best to remember what Reagan was fond of stating "Trust, but verify." That would include certain elements of this book.

Bill O’Reilly and the Fanciful, Unbelievable, Farfetched Magical Mystery Tour de Farce, 'Killing Reagan' by Craig Shirley

 

Bill O’Reilly and the Fanciful, Unbelievable, Farfetched Magical Mystery Tour de Farce, 'Killing Reagan'

  

By Craig Shirley

November 12, 2015

 

 

A hundred years from now, when future historians are rooting around the monumental life and times of Ronald Reagan, they will begin with his two auto biographies, Where’s The Rest of Me? and An American Life.
 

They will then move on to Lou Cannon’s five excellent books covering various aspects of Ronald Reagan’s life. Then, they will turn to the books edited by Marty and Annelise Anderson and Kiron Skinner, A Life In Letters and In His Own Hand, two wonderfully long books of chosen letters of the Gipper. They also wrote a book of Reagan’s radio broadcasts, also important.

Other important books will include those by Stephen Hayward, Paul Kengor, Ed Meese, Nancy Reagan and, if I am lucky, my books on Reagan.

But they will never, ever pick up or waste time with Bill O’Reilly’s new error strewn book, Killing Reagan. Fortunately, many who were alive and who worked for Reagan and many historians have stepped forward to denounce the book as “garbage,” as Reagan’s favorite national security advisor, Dick Allen called it.

I go out of my way to say that Dick was Reagan’s favorite national security advisor because O’Reilly ridiculously called Al Haig his favorite. If he was such a favorite, then why did Reagan fire him shortly into the first term? Haig was there as a sop to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. He was their cat’s-paw and to get them on Reagan’s side publically as he rejected Nixonian détente with the Soviets.

The day Haig left, Reagan derisively wrote in his diaries, “The only disagreement we had was who was president.” Never ever did Reagan express anything approaching a kinship with Haig.

It’s not just one error of fact. There are literally dozens of errors, made up stories, canards, prevarications in Killing Reagan. He writes that Reagan spent his days watching soap operas. Really? History shows otherwise, including ushering in the most sweeping tax reform in 30 years in his second term and spending hours going toe to toe with Gorbachev, bringing about the first real reduction in nuclear arms since the beginning of the Cold War. And there were big speeches, big ideas, big campaigns, big legislation, big debates, all in his supposedly befuddled second term.

When future historians are researching Reagan, they will go to the National Archives at the Reagan Library and Foundation in Simi Valley, Calif., where the papers of Ed Meese and Mike Deaver and others are. They will go to the Hoover Institute where the papers of Peter Hannaford and others are stored. They will go to the Reagan Ranch where other papers, including those of his fan club, are kept. They will find in each a bright and erudite and sophisticated man, all through his presidency. They will find no records of Reagan watching soap operas all day, nor records of Nancy Reagan running the White House or foreign policy, or acting as her husband’s gatekeeper.

Others, so far, who have denounced the O’Reilly book include the estimable historians Skinner, Hayward and Kengor. So, too, has Ed Meese, Reagan’s closest aide and friend from Sacramento to Washington; John Heubusch, head of the Reagan Library and Foundation; Frank Donatelli, Reagan’s White House Political Director and longtime campaign strategist; Allen, Reagan’s National Security Advisor; A.B. Culvahouse, Reagan White House Counsel; and, of course, George Will, who knew Ronald and Nancy Reagan as well as any conservative columnist and better than most, save the legendary Bill Buckley.

Thus, we have these historians and Reagan experts all arrayed against the O’Reilly book. But that’s not enough. (He also lifted heavily and mistakenly from my books including falsely claiming that Nancy Reagan knew about the purloined Carter briefing books in the fall of 1980, or that Stu Spencer told me he thought that Reagan thought Jimmy Carter was a “little shit,” but not that he called Carter that, as O’Reilly falsely claims.

But I digress.

So far, not one of the thousands of Reagan White House aides has come forward to corroborate O’Reilly’s retelling of history. If O’Reilly was even close to the truth, wouldn’t there be just one staffer to come forward and support Killing Reagan?

So, who you going to believe? Bill O’Reilly or the lying eyes of 1,000 people who worked up close and personal with the Gipper?

If Bill O’Reilly wrote the facts of Ronald Reagan, wouldn’t he be invited to speak at the Reagan Library, or the Reagan Ranch, or Eureka College, or the Hoover Institute, or the Buckley Center at Yale? He hasn’t and he won’t. The silence is deafening.

Reagan biographers and historians are often asked about this or that, and they find themselves fixing history, often. Washingtonian Magazine recently mistakenly wrote that Reagan himself moved the inaugural platform from the East Façade of the Capitol to the West in 1981 when in fact the decision had been made months earlier by Senator Mark Hatfield, to save money and to accommodate more people. Reagan, in this instance, was simply the lucky beneficiary of Hatfield’s decision.

But we find ourselves cleaning up bigger messes, too. Like O’Reilly’s book. George Will wrote that O’Reilly has “made a mess of history.”

And how.

__________

Craig Shirley is a Reagan biographer, having written four books on the Gipper including his newest, Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan.

SOURCE: http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/craig-shirley/bill-oreilly-and-fanciful-unbelievable-farfetched-magical-mystery-tour-de       

Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan by Del Quentin Wilber

I well remember March 30, 1981.  That was the day that shots were reported fired at the Washington Hilton Hotel where Ronald Reagan was giving a speech.

I remember vividly rushing home from school to watch ABC News with Frank Reynolds giving the latest news about the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan's life.  I remember Reynolds bursting in anger of the misreporting of James Brady's death.  This would not be the only piece of misinformation to be broadcasted, but I admired Frank Reynolds for his being upset that such horrible news was given out that was actually false.  It was a chaotic time, just look at what happened to Alexander Haig. 

Ronald Reagan's code name was Rawhide.

When I look back on this horrible tragedy, I am reminded of the efforts Ronald Reagan made to assure the nation of his condition in spite of the fact that he nearly, very nearly, died.  There were many acts of heroism from this event, such as the quick thinking of Jerry S. Parr, the Secret Service agent who saved Reagan's life.  There were tremendous stories to be heard even though many of these where in the background due to the crisis at hand.

This book is an accurate telling and reveals many details that I was not aware of until the book was released.  I especially enjoyed the audio version of the book too.  There is also a great website to go along with the book too at http://rawhidedown.com/

I highly recommend Rawhide Down  -- The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan to all who were thankful that the word "Near" was to be in the title of the book!

Jerry S. Parr Secret Service Agent Who Helped Save Reagan Passed Away on October 9, 2015

Saddened to hear of the passing of Jerry S. Parr who saved Ronald Reagan's life on the dark day in 1981.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/us/jerry-parr-secret-service-agent-who-helped-save-reagan-dies-at-85.html?_r=0

What Bill O’Reilly’s New Book on Ronald Reagan Gets Wrong About Ronald Reagan By Craig Shirley, Kiron K. Skinner, Paul Kengor, and Steven F. Hayward

What Bill O’Reilly’s New Book on Ronald Reagan Gets Wrong About Ronald Reagan

By Craig Shirley, Kiron K. Skinner, Paul Kengor, and Steven F. Hayward

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The Washington Post.

“Killing Reagan,” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, is supposed to be a book of new scholarship on the Reagan presidency. Instead, it restates old claims and rumors, virtually all of which have been discredited by the historical record.

In this best-selling book, there are no endnotes, no bibliography, no long list of interviewees and only a smattering of footnotes. There is a section titled “Sources,” but it is only two-and-a-half pages long. It includes about two dozen sources, but that is not adequate for a subject, Ronald Reagan, who has been the focus of thousands of books and articles and who was one of the most consequential political figures of the 20^th century. The works of three of us are not noted at all, and between the four of us, we have written 19 books on Reagan, not to mention countless articles. The sources section does, however, reference long-questionable works, including the sensational 1991 attack by Kitty Kelley — which is clearly incorporated throughout the book — and the 1999 biography by Edmund Morris, roundly criticized for its intermingling of fact and fiction.

To the authors’ credit, the sources section notes the use of excellent archives such as the Reagan Library, the Reagan Ranch Center and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. And yet, the acknowledgment of those archives is somewhat puzzling, given that the archives make clear that Reagan was a far more hands-on, engaged and all-around deeply involved president than many of the partisan accounts alleged in their unfair caricatures of him in the 1980s. Frankly, we had thought that demeaning, flawed caricature — Reagan as the doodling old fool who spent too much time sleeping at Cabinet meetings and watching old movies — had been permanently put to rest by recent scholarship.

Unfortunately, “Killing Reagan” shows that the old misinformation (if not disinformation) still remains with us, like a demon that cannot be exorcised. It regurgitates and resurrects much material that we had thought (and hoped) was dead and done.

There are small and large mistakes throughout “Killing Reagan.” Repeatedly, Ronald Prescott Reagan is referred to as “Ron Jr,” a minor matter but a revealing one. The book states that Reagan’s radio broadcasts of the late 1970s were once a week, but they were delivered five times a week. There are dozens of Kelley-type references to horoscope readers, astrologers, an imperious Nancy running the country and generally a persistent, clueless and oblivious Ronald Reagan — addle-brained, out of touch, dangerously uninformed. The most common word used to describe Reagan is probably “confused.”

A large part of the storyline refers to the erroneous contention that there was serious consideration about removing Reagan from office via the 25^th Amendment after John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate him in 1981. What’s so remarkable about the 11 days Reagan spent in the hospital recovering from his wounds is that beyond the standard discussion of temporary presidential disability among some of the president’s closest aides, none of these aides or cabinet members attempted to invoke the 25^th Amendment or succession laws. Former Attorney General Ed Meese, who was not interviewed for this book but who served as Reagan’s closest aide and friend for many years, was dismissive of the allegation about the 25^th Amendment as utterly and completely false. We four have interviewed Meese often, and some of us have talked to him about this book and its sourcing.

Read: When President Reagan Was Shot

It speaks volumes that none of the hundreds of former Reagan White House staffers has stepped forward to corroborate the story. Reagan’s national security adviser, Richard V. Allen, told us flatly that “Killing Reagan” is “garbage.” Allen was also there the day Reagan was shot, but again, neither O’Reilly nor Dugard spoke to him. They list only four people interviewed, including Lesley Stahl — a CBS journalist who was not a primary source and who was always extremely dismissive of Reagan’s cognitive abilities.

As far as Reagan’s mental acuity, which this book presents as nose-diving very early in his presidency, only in 1994 did Reagan’s doctors at the Mayo Clinic find evidence of Alzheimer’s, six years after he left office, and they issued a statement at the time stating such. By all accounts, the hundreds of people who interacted with Reagan on a daily basis found a bright, erudite and engaged man.

Among the most scandalizing material in the book are the early sections which show Reagan to be sexually very promiscuous, a callous cad robbing young starlets of their virginity. In the book, his sexual encounters went on not only between marriages but in the early years of his marriage to Nancy — including literally as Nancy was in labor giving birth to their daughter.

In a recent interview with the Daily Caller, O’Reilly answered questions about his sources for lurid statements about Reagan’s use of women. (The book’s publisher did not respond to a request for comment for this article.)

We double-sourced everything with names. We didn’t use any blind sources at all. And it’s all in the book, in the back of the book, where it came from. Everything is there. There really wasn’t any deniability about it. You know, Nancy mentioned it to friends. Friends wrote about it. Friends put their names on it.

But there is no citation in the back of the book. If the source for that section is in the back of the book, then it could be Kitty Kelley, because these are the kind of claims she has made. The book itself does not make the source clear. This kind of shocking material must be clearly sourced.

Elsewhere, O’Reilly states definitively that Nancy was concerned about the 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter, and that she worried “Ronnie would say something foolish.” Yet again, no source is provided. We can state categorically that Nancy was worried about what Carter, with his reputation for meanness, might do to Reagan, but she never worried about what Reagan might do to himself.

There is also this claim from the 1980 campaign, during which a copy of Carter’s debate briefing book came into the Reagan campaign’s possession: “To Nancy, gaining access to Carter’s playbook is a windfall to the Reagan campaign, not a crime.” This is not correct. For one, Nancy knew nothing of the purloined Carter playbook. And Reagan gained no advantage in the debates from the briefing books, because they were never used. As one of us wrote in a 2009 book, they were deemed worthless by Jim Baker and his debate prep team, as all they contained was a recitation of Reagan’s positions on issues. Reagan did not “know in advance how Carter will respond to every question,” as O’Reilly-Dugard mistakenly write. Besides, Carter himself has said the outcome of the debate didn’t damage his campaign.

We do not expect O’Reilly and Dugard to know every detail, but such is the problem with consulting only a very limited number of sources, and citing even fewer.

Finally, the most objectionable claim in the book is also a thematic one. The claim is that there was a White House coup in the making due to Reagan’s supposed inability to do his job. That claim is based on a deeply flawed memo written by James Cannon, an aide to former Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), called in late in the Reagan years to clean up the mess created by controversial Chief of Staff Don Regan. In the memo, Cannon claimed that Reagan was “out of it” as of his second term, spending his days bemused in front of a television. (As O’Reilly put it in the Daily Caller interview, “Cannon came in and said, ‘You know what, a lot of days he’s not able to do his job. He doesn’t even come down from the residence. He watches soap operas all day long.’”)

In reality, Regan was being tossed out of the White House for his perceived ineffectiveness in the Reagan administration — for his sizable ego — and he had aides whose loyalty was to him and not Reagan. Cannon put various assessments by some of Regan’s aides in a single, discredited memo. On this single source, O’Reilly and Dugard seem to have based the centrality of the book’s thesis. To the Daily Caller, O’Reilly called it the “centerpiece of the book.”

Who discredited the memo? Cannon himself, as he related in the 1988 book “Landslide,” by Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus. He doubled back after writing the memo, saying Reagan was fit as a fiddle.

Perhaps Donald Regan’s henchmen had exaggerated the president’s frailties, [Cannon] thought. Perhaps they were trying to justify an internal coup… Could the president they described — the inattentive, incurious man who watched television rather than attend to the affairs of state — be the same as the genial, charming man across the table? What the hell is going on here? Cannon wondered. The old fella looks just dandy.

The O’Reilly-Dugard treatment also continually fails to balance such claims with more recent information that has since repeatedly invalidated the original bad sources.

And alas, the book concludes with a mysterious line stating that “there are those who contend” that the ghost of Ronald Reagan today haunts his ranch. Most of us have been to the ranch many times, and we’ve never heard this tale. We checked with the Reagan Ranch Center itself. The staff is likewise perplexed with this claim. They referred us to an odd article that appeared “out of the blue” in L.A. Weekly about 10 years ago, titled “The Gipper’s Ghost,” but otherwise have no knowledge of any supernatural activity. “No one with any credibility has ever attested to this,” the ranch told us. In many ways, this enigmatic anecdote is a fitting capstone to “Killing Reagan” and its shortcomings: Sure, “sources” can be found for this Reagan “ghost” story. But that does not mean that the sources — or the book — are worthwhile.

— Craig Shirley is the author of four books on Ronald Reagan, including the newly released “Last Act: The Final Years and Enduring Legacy of Ronald Reagan.” Kiron K. Skinner directs Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College, whose latest book on Ronald Reagan is “Reagan’s Legacy in a World Transformed.” Steven F. Hayward is a Ronald Reagan distinguished visiting professor of public policy at Pepperdine University.


SOURCE:  http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/10/what-bill-oreillys-new-book-on-ronald-reagan-gets-wrong-about-ronald-reagan/?hsCtaTracking=5a38400d-7109-4162-8412-53b6e8e25090%7C4f5d4455-d2e1-4566-84fc-bf7a2d14ff7c&utm_campaign=V%26V+-+Concise&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9Onwj9kaaRNUJhf1jI1rlhy7RVhyaPi44u2LePfXcvjkCIGEOFZSXpLn03jQwwS9CUMmfXS9UawgVJVQuPO8hes3IW3g&_hsmi=23192792&utm_source=hs_email&utm_content=23192792

Ronald Reagan’s City of God by Paul G. Kengor

Paul G. Kengor, Ph. D.

Ronald Reagan’s City of God by Paul G. Kengor

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Paul Kengor’s new book 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative. Among the principles is faith. A version of this article first appeared at RealClearReligion.org.

Conservatives constantly talk of freedom.

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Go to any gathering of conservatives, and you will hear a freedom mantra. They speak of “freedom” almost as if it were a one-word synonym for conservatism, a slogan for the movement. At times, they do so in an almost trite way.

Ronald Reagan likewise spoke constantly of freedom. Mankind, from “the swamps to the stars,” as he said in his seminal October 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech, longed to be free. The global Cold War struggle of Reagan’s life represented the arc of that longing, of that crisis. Obviously, the communist world hungered for freedom. But even the free world didn’t always appreciate it. Free people needed always to be reminded of their freedom and the need to understand and reassert it. That included Americans. Reagan said that freedom is always under assault; every generation must fight to preserve it.

Yet, in truth, as Reagan understood, to invoke freedom alone is a mistake. Freedom by itself, isolated, is libertarianism, not conservatism. For the conservative, freedom requires faith; it should never be decoupled from faith. Freedom not rooted in faith can lead to moral anarchy, which, in turn, creates social and cultural chaos. Freedom without faith is the Las Vegas Strip, not the City of God. Freedom without faith begets license, and invites vice rather than virtue. Faith infuses the soul with a sanctifying grace that allows humans in a free society to love and serve their neighbors, to think about more than themselves. We aspire to our better angels when our faith nurtures and elevates our free will.

Genuine freedom—and certainly the Christian conception of freedom—is not license. To a practicing Christian, freedom cannot be practiced without faith. As noted by Pope John Paul II, with whom Reagan had an excellent relationship of strong mutual respect and collaboration, without the rock and rudder of faith, freedom can become confused, perverse, and can even lead to the destruction of freedom for others. John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, said that the West suffers from a “confused ideology of freedom,” one that has unleashed a modern “dictatorship of relativism.”

In the New Testament, Galatians 5:13-14 states: “For you were called for freedom, brothers. But do not use your freedom as opportunities for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

The great conservative thinker Russell Kirk, in his 1974 classic, The Roots of American Order, spoke of “ordered liberty.” Kirk talked of the need for “inner order” by American citizens before they and their countrymen and country could successfully govern through “outer order.” Ordering ourselves internally was critical to the nation’s external order. The nation’s first president, George Washington, argued the same, stressing the need for citizens to self-govern themselves before they could self-govern their nation.

Without faith to steer our freedom, we can become reckless. We can become lost amid the waves of the culture and tumult of the times. We can become what G.K. Chesterton called mere “children of our age,” succumbing to whatever new dictates or fancies the cultural zeitgeist serves up for the day. We are a people who need God.

Ronald Reagan believed this wholeheartedly. He felt that God provided the route to goodness and wisdom; only through reliance in Divine Providence could America’s leaders achieve goodness and wisdom. One of Reagan’s favorite images was that of George Washington kneeling in the snow in prayer at Valley Forge, which Reagan called the “most sublime image in American history.” Washington kneeling in prayer, said Reagan in a radio address in December 1983, “personified a people who knew it was not enough to depend on their own courage and goodness; they must also seek help from God, their Father and their Preserver.”

It was God, Reagan maintained, “from whom all knowledge springs.” “When we open ourselves to Him,” Reagan told a group of public-school students, “we gain not only moral courage but also intellectual strength.” The light of faith enlightens the intellect and our reason. Reagan had expressed this sentiment for years, long before the presidency.

Such a divine source, Reagan reckoned, ought to be tapped.

Quite the contrary, Reagan was earnestly afraid of what happens to free, democratic societies when they scrap religious faith. To that end, one of Reagan’s best speeches, and arguably one of the most forgotten, was an October 1988 address marking the bicentennial of Georgetown University. “At its full flowering, freedom is the first principle of society; this society, Western society,” Reagan told students at Georgetown. “And yet freedom cannot exist alone. And that’s why the theme for your bicentennial is so very apt: learning, faith, and freedom. Each reinforces the others, each makes the others possible. For what are they without each other?”

He asked his audience to pray that America be guided by learning, faith, and freedom. He quoted Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the 19th century classic, Democracy in America: “Tocqueville said it in 1835, and it’s as true today as it was then: ‘Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is more needed in democratic societies than in any other.’” With a nod to his academic audience, Reagan warned, “Learning is a good thing, but unless it’s tempered by faith and a love of freedom, it can be very dangerous indeed. The names of many intellectuals are recorded on the rolls of infamy, from Robespierre to Lenin to Ho Chi Minh to Pol Pot.”

Reagan contended that one thing that “must never change” for America is that men and women must “seek Divine guidance in the policies of their government and the promulgation of their laws.” They must, he urged, “make our laws and government not only a model to mankind, but a testament to the wisdom and mercy of God.”

Conservatives today quote a particular Reagan remark on freedom: “Freedom is never more than a generation from extinction…. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on.” So popular is this Reagan quotation that I own a coffee mug from a conservative organization with those words etched into the ceramic. Yes, Reagan said those words, and agreed with them, but Reagan did not want those generations fighting that fight without the shepherd of faith. Despots might attempt to govern without faith, but Americans should not. Faith and freedom reinforce one another, each making the other possible.

Reagan felt that learning was about learning this crucial relationship. It is telling that many of these Reagan remarks on the bond between faith and freedom were shared with students; that is, with those engaged in the process of learning. So, too, learning about and understanding conservatism—especially Reagan conservatism—is about knowing this reinforcing relationship.

More, learning about and understanding America, too, was about knowing this relationship. It is the “twin beacons of faith and freedom,” proclaimed Reagan, that have “brightened the American sky.”

And finally, to learn about and understand conservatism is to understand that both faith and freedom—not one of the two, but both—form its bedrock. They were the rudder that navigated Ronald Reagan through the tumult of his times and should likewise continue to guide conservatives today.

SOURCE: http://www.visionandvalues.org/2014/03/ronald-reagans-city-of-god/?hsCtaTracking=eb2472e6-cd96-4deb-b2fb-be7d10001433%7Cfa4e4814-9057-431c-8ee8-45ccf63a3b9e&utm_content=12207707&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9IU4-dDGuUuhnLUqVAQGw8NdFleVB7qRw7P7orOwrY6UypPxZ1MzwP4BsL-jvLksikbl37o71_KLGbRWLjMdHrvMZBIA&utm_medium=email&utm_source=hs_email&_hsmi=12207707

Ronald Reagan Statue in Dixon, IL

This statue is in Dixon, IL and celebrates their favorite son, Ronald Wilson Reagan.  It was dedicated August 14, 2009 and celebrates his love of horses.  Reagan once said "There is nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse."