Retired professor says Reagan's impact is great

The Tuscaloosa News ^ | June 07, 2004 | Robert DeWitt

[petitfour]

President Reagan was arriving back in Washington fresh from his summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, when Forrest McDonald saw him in October 1986.

“He was fresh off of the plane and gave a speech to the press. There might have been 400 people there," McDonald remembers.

The speech was about the summit, which had ended shortly before Reagan departed on Air Force One. Because of its content and the timing of the speech, it had to have been written on the plane. McDonald obtained a copy and followed it as Reagan spoke.

“He never looked once at a teleprompter -- there were none," McDonald said. “He never looked once at a script even though he had a copy in front of him. He delivered the speech flawlessly."

[petitfour]

This is several weeks old, but it was never posted. I excerpted instead of posting the whole thing. Hope that's what I was supposed to do. :)

[petitfour]

Ping

Here is The Tuscaloosa News article about President Reagan.

[Crawdad]

I had Dr. McDonald for U.S.History 101 when I was a freshman in Tuscaloosa in 1978. He's a very fascinating man.

[petitfour]

(I think I'm his official publicist on FR.) Be sure to tune in to C-SPAN2 from noon to 3:00(Eastern) to hear him talk about his new book, and I'm sure he'll talk about more than that.