I won't assume that you posted this because Pres. Bush just told the story during his eulogy to Pres. Reagan...only because I don't like to assume...
What good teeth he had!
Reagan ping
Wonderful!!! I LOVE PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN; he will always be MY HERO!!!
I wonder where Andy Smith is now. I'd like to see an interview with him.
I read a wonderful story about President Reagain in my local paper this morning. A local artist was commissioned to do a portrait of the president. He arranged to spend several days with President Reagan in order to get a sense of him.
Well, they became friends. President Reagan showed the man his secret stash of nuts which he said he liked to sneak to the squirrels on the grounds when the guards weren't looking. This was very mischevious because that year the squirrels had been doing damage to the grounds.
At the unveiling, Nancy just stood there and looked, and after a long time turned to the artist with one tear on her cheek and said, "That's him. That's my Ronnie."
The president simply said, "Yep, that's the old buckaroo."
Related story .....
Dear Mr. President, My room is messy ...Display of letters to commanders in chief includes 15 from kids
10:29 PM CDT on Sunday, June 13, 2004
WASHINGTON – A girl who wanted to keep her father home during World War II and a boy who wanted federal help to clean his room turned to the one person they thought could make those things happen: the president of the United States.
So, like thousands of others each year, they wrote the commander in chief. Their correspondence will go on display at the National Archives and Records Administration in an exhibit that opens in November.
It will offer a wide-ranging sampling of the archive's holdings, including 15 letters from children.
Carolyn Weatherhogg was 10 when she wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II.
"Dear Mr. Roosevelt," she began, "I am sending you a suggestion that is draft fathers alphabetically." She apparently figured it would take her father's draft board considerable time to reach the 23rd letter of the alphabet – W.
The agency does not have the envelope, so it is not known where Carolyn was from or whether her father went to war.
Seventh-grader Andy Smith of Irmo, S.C., sought President Ronald Reagan's help after his mother declared his room a "disaster area."
"I would like to request federal funds to hire a crew to clean up my room," he said in a typed note.
Mr. Reagan sent Andy a handwritten, tongue-in-cheek reply. In it, he noted a new effort – the Private Sector Initiative Program – set up to encourage volunteers to tackle local problems rather than relying on government help.
"I'm sure your mother was fully justified in proclaiming your room a disaster," Mr. Reagan wrote. "Therefore you are in an excellent position to launch another volunteer program to go along with more than 3,000 already under way in our nation."
The letter and Mr. Reagan's response were mentioned by President Bush when he eulogized the former president last week.
Fourth-grader Brandon Golden of Lafayette, Ind., struck a plaintive note in a letter to the first President Bush.
"I like the educational tools we have in our schools," he wrote, "but could lunches be better?"
Sometimes the young letter-writers became well-known. Fidel Castro, 12, wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940.
"If you like," the future Cuban dictator wrote, "give me a ten dollars bill green american, in the letter because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill green american and I would like to have one of them."
More than 35 years later, Mr. Castro told a reporter how proud he had been when he got an acknowledgment from a U.S. diplomat. There was no $10 bill.
Then there is the letter from three girls in Noxon, Mont., to President Dwight Eisenhower.
"We think it's bad enough to send Elvis Presley in the Army, but if you cut his sideburns off we will just die!" they wrote.
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/061404dnnatkidsletters.927fc.html
