“My dad had a picture of FDR on his mantle....later it was joined by a picture of Ronald Reagan. I use to point out the irony. He eventually conceded FDR wasn’t what he thought he was.”
There may not have been a reason for him to do so. Ronald Reagan voted for FDR and didn’t disavow that decision later in life:
” He readily admitted he had voted for FDR four times and in 1982 wrote in his diary that he was trying to “undo the Great Society,” not the New Deal. He always said that he had not left the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party had left him. He even quoted FDR directly in the 1964 television speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater that made him a national figure.”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/07/02/reagan_fdrs_true_heir_134354.html
Thanks for the link to the article. How nice that you have a diary of your father’s. About the only things my father wrote were the nightly railroad reports on track problems, and repairs he and his crew had completed that day. And he signed his paycheck, because there was no automatic deposit back in those days. I can still remember my Dad sitting down at the kitchen table each night after supper (which was exactly at 5 p.m.), and completing his daily track reports. He made them out in triplicate. Back then it was carbon paper. He always kept a copy for himself. That way, he had a record of every problem he had reported, and every job they did. And thank God he did, because just before he retired, they questioned him about not reporting an issue, and he had the carbon copy to prove he had reported it.