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Outside View: How Reagan Made My Day

By James E. Rogan
A UPI Outside View commentarybr>

Washington, DC, Jun. 9 (UPI) -- One afternoon in 1973 I was still in high school when I read that Gov. Ronald Reagan would be attending a luncheon at the Boundary Oaks Restaurant, located in nearby Walnut Creek, Calif. The cost of attending a private reception with Reagan, eating lunch and then hearing him speak was $6 - - tax and tip included.

Since I didn't have the six bucks, I snuck in when the door was momentarily left unattended.

Reagan had little chance to enjoy the lunch served that day: he spent most of his time shaking hands and signing autographs for admirers. I noticed something intriguing about the speech notes Reagan reviewed while awaiting his introduction: they were handwritten in blue ink on a stack of 4-by-6-inch index cards. I made up my mind to ask Reagan to give me his original speech notes when the luncheon was over.

When he finished his speech, he was whisked to a private room in the restaurant to huddle with a small delegation of state legislators. The luncheon guests lingering outside Reagan's meeting room gradually dwindled as the hours passed. Finally, only a 10-year old boy holding an old Brownie camera and I remained to meet Reagan.

Three hours after my stakeout began, the governor's aide told the boy and me that Reagan was about to leave and that his limousine had been brought around back. The aide suggested we wait in the rear parking lot to get our pictures. We took his advice and arrived just in time to see Reagan quickly walking to his car. The boy with the Brownie froze; his reflexes were too slow to snap Reagan's picture as the governor prepared to depart. Unaware of our presence, Reagan climbed into the limousine and the motorcade started pulling away.

Just then, Reagan looked over his shoulder and saw the boy holding the old camera, his face etched in disappointment. Reagan leaned forward and tapped the driver on his shoulder. The limousine stopped, backed up to where the boy stood, and Reagan rolled down his window.

"Hi, son!" Reagan called out. "Were you waiting to get a picture of me?" With no reporters or crowd around to witness his act of generosity, Reagan climbed out of the car, greeted the boy, posed for pictures with him, and thanked him for waiting.

When Reagan shook my hand, I told him about my growing political memorabilia collection, and then asked if he would autograph his speech notes and give them to me. Reagan grimaced at my request. "Well," he said with a heavy air of reluctance, "you see, I'll need to give this speech more than once, and I don't have another copy of it. My staff will kill me if I don't come back with it," he said, his voice fading.

Sensing my opportunity slipping away, and remembering how the sad-faced child with the Brownie camera played on Reagan's sympathy, I dropped my head and stuck out a pouting, protruding lower lip while rubbing my eyes as Reagan tried to turn me down. "I understand," I said with a heaving sigh. "It's all right. Don't worry about it ..."

Recognizing his defeat, Reagan conceded: "OK, OK," he exclaimed with a twinkle in his eye. "You win! You may not be able to make heads or tails out of my writing, but here they are." He produced the cards from his jacket pocket, penned his name on the last page, and turned over the set to me. Each speech card was handwritten on one side: on the other side were notes typed in large black font. Reagan explained that the typed side was his reading copy of a speech he delivered earlier to the California Highway Patrol.

Never one to waste paper, Reagan said he used the back of those typed cards for that day's address: "I sat in my hotel room last night and wrote out the speech I gave today on the back of the CHP speech," Reagan said. "So you're really getting two speeches for the price of one!"

Eight years later, Ronald Reagan was the United States' newly installed president, while I was a struggling law school student. A financial crisis hit and I needed about $1,500 to pay for tuition and expenses, or else I risked losing my seat in school.

Faced with the choice of being kicked out of school or selling the notes, I had no alternative but to part with the treasured Reagan gift. However, I refused to sell the entire set: I kept page one of Reagan's notes in my collection, and sold pages 2 through 8.

As Paul Harvey would say, here's the rest of the story: Almost 20 more years went by. About the time President Clinton's impeachment came to an end, I was sifting through part of my memorabilia collection when I came upon page 1 of Ronald Reagan's Boundary Oaks Restaurant speech notes.

I looked at it for a long time, thinking about the irony: if Ronald Reagan had not given me those notes in 1973, I might not have finished law school. That meant I never would have become a prosecutor, a judge, a state legislator, a member of Congress, or a House Manager in the impeachment trial of a U.S. president.

Still pining over the forced sale, I hoped that Reagan would forgive me if he knew I sold the notes to finish my education and use it for public service.

A week or so later, I was flipping through an auction catalog of political memorabilia for sale. I almost fell out of my chair when I turned the page and saw what constituted Auction Lot #73 in the sale: It was pages 2 through 8 of my old Reagan speech note cards! The original purchaser died, and his heirs were selling his collection. I placed my bid on Lot #73 and then stayed up late into the night of the auction tracking my progress.

When the sun rose the next morning, Auction Lot #73 - - Ronald Reagan's Boundary Oaks Restaurant speech notes from 1973 -- were once again mine.

There is an interesting footnote to this episode: Martin Anderson, a former aide to Reagan who has researched and written multiple books from Reagan's handwritten archives, told me that these notes are the only known complete set of Reagan's famous 4x6 handwritten speech cards outside the possession of the Reagan Library, and the only known set autographed by Reagan to exist. Apparently, nobody thought to ask Reagan to sign his speech cards before I came along, and nobody bothered to ask after.

Later this week, my family and I will stand along Constitution Avenue in downtown Washington with hundreds of thousands of other mourners. I'll watch a riderless horse escort a flag draped casket to the Capitol. When it passes, I'll remember that grimace I gave him when I was a kid, followed by the twinkle in his eye when he handed me that stack of note cards. Like others, I'll remember what he did for the United States, but I'll also remember what he did for me.