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How the Gipper Wanted to be Remembered

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Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty’s lamp guiding your steps and opportunity’s arm steadying your way.

–Ronald Wilson Reagan, Republican National Convention, Houston, 1992

Comments

  6. I was a floor runner during the RNC in Houston in 1992. I had a floor pass and the same credentials to get me into the Astrodome during the Gipper’s farewell address. (Two years later he would go public with his affliction of Alzheimer’s.)

    I remember telling my co-workers at the Dome that I would be staying after my shift specifically to hear Reagan speak. When asked why, I said, “I may not be able to hear him live and in person ever again.”

    Maybe I was prescient, but sitting in that darkened arena listening to the man I most admired (after my father), I couldn’t help but be proud to be an American. And yes, it was the last time he would give a public address in his lifetime.

    Then I recalled his funeral last decade. I couldn’t stop crying as I watched his coffin brought into the Capitol rotunda.

    God bless you, President Ronald Reagan. Hope you’re quaffing a few with Winston Churchill, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

    Regards,
    Peter H.