Reagan Tribute Image

An excerpt from Reagan:A Life In Letters

Students at the John Sipley School sent brief messages to the President .
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Mr.Ed Roweau
J.L.Sipley School
Woodbridge,Ill.
March16,1983

Dear Mr. Roweau:
Thank you very much for your kind letter and please extend my thanks Miss Mahon,Mrs.Kolak and all of your students for their generous words.
They also had some questions : yes I have plenty of jelly beans,my favorite sport is now riding but my real love is football which I played in high school and college . Heather I do like my job . Angela and Maria I like pork chops too but my real favorite is macaroni and cheese .
Thank you all again and best regards .
Sincerly,
Ronald Reagan

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

And how stand the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after two hundred years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.

And so, good-bye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

January 11, 1989

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