General Jack who sheparded, guided, comforted, and talked Mrs. Reagan through the week, should get another star for the way he, his aide, and his Command performed. Magnificent!
^^^
I second that e-motion!
Two words: Absolutely Superb! This week has been the culmination of an American tribute. Ronald Reagan would not have been prouder of this week, nor could our Nation have been more proud of him.
My first Commander-In-Chief was John F. Kennedy. My last was bill clinton. Ronald Reagan was the best of the eight I served under, and there were a few good ones in the mix. But none like Ronald Reagan.
As a child, I remember the air raid drills in school where we went under our desks, then marched down to the shelters in the basements - all in preparation for a Soviet nuclear attack. I was young and didn't really know what was going on.
But at 13 years old, my first real political memories and realizations of danger were the Soviet tanks crushing the Hungarian Freedom Fighters in Hungary and their desperate cries for help over the radios from Budapest - for the help that never came.
My first military memories include among them the frightening Cuban Missile Crisis. They also include standing on a dark summer night, face-to-face with the enemy in a possible military confrontation at Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall. And so it went on over the years. The danger was always there. It never ended. And I slowly grew older in the process.
For most of my entire adult life, in various places at constant times, I trained for and sometimes fought against Communism - often at the very periphery of the Iron or Bamboo Curtains. I was constantly girding for an awful war against the Soviet Union - a war in which it was not at all a sure thing we would emerge on the victorious side. For more than 30 years this was where the core of my personal efforts were centered.
Then, one day, suddenly, it was over. Over. The Berlin Wall came down. The Iron Curtain dissolved. The bells of freedom rang in Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest, even Moscow.
Oh, there would be other wars, other efforts. But the big one, the major one, the always present, looming nightmare. The prospect of annihilation or slavery by the Soviet Union and Godless Communism was over.
Thank you, President Reagan. Thank you.
Thank you for setting so many of us free. Not just those in the Soviet Empire, but even those of us here in your own land. You gave so much more to us than we can ever give to you. That bow which Margaret Thatcher gave to you could be multiplied many, many millions of times for those of us who could not be there to salute you.
I can't wait to see you in Heaven and talk with you about it!