All great change in America begins at the dinner table.
~Ronald Reagan
Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we've ever known.
~Ronald Reagan
I'm a woman who realized she might be a Democrat during the Reagan era, which encapsulated most of my teens -- Ronald Reagan's presidency, to steal the lyrics of the song, took me from crayons to perfume. I still don't agree with his politics, but much of what I've read makes me think I would like the man. I like this son, too, and nothing he's written is that inconsistent with what his mother has written and I doubt anyone would accuse her of anything other than love and devotion.
The book is framed very much as a journey back to understand Ronald Reagan's childhood and his life -- his family history, where he grew up, what small town life was like, where he learned his values. The author states his father wasn't much for reflection and genealogy, but the song's quest for a greater understanding makes sense to anyone who wishes they could talk to either a distant living parent, a parent who suffers from dementia, or one who has passed away. All the discussions you want to have, the desire to remove all the barriers to that real understanding we all seek with those we truly love.
And Ron Reagan clearly loved his dad and does Reagan supporters, history buffs, and people with an interest in that soon to be gone generation, a huge favor. The world President Reagan and so many of our elders was born into is so different from the world today, or the world of the 1980s, and yet that time shaped a very strong generation that collectively fought for what they believed to be right in the world and at home. While I didn't agree with Ronald Reagan in his choices, many of his actions are from the best intentions of a generation that is passing from the earth. Politically, we're seeing members of that time and the next generation or two, passing away on both sides of the aisle, but their choices and beliefs are still present in the laws of the land.
I know at least one of the author's siblings doesn't agree with everything in the book, but no one child in a family has the sole authority to definitively speak about their parents. I don't think anyone gets beyond a certain age without discussing a long-remembered incident and realizing no one else recalls it, or that they see it entirely differently. As the saying goes, no two children grows up in the exact same family -- and in this case, they have more than averages reasons to have different takes, being the result of two different marriages. The thing is that they both loved their dad and both have written with respect, only one by dint of his personal politics is looked at with greater suspicion, even if his words don't justify that. Some of the things the author wrote that may seen critical -- and true criticism is few and far between -- remind me very much of Michael Reagan's writings about his father being difficult to know. As to the claims that there might have been early hints of Alzheimer's, no one can deny that this is entirely possible and something an adult child would ponder when they wake up in the middle of the night. Ron spends much of the book searching for his dad as a boy and writing abouthow he seemed so strong and invincible when the author was growing up and it would be absurd to ignore the disease which stole him from them. The author makes clear, with great love and wanting the reader to at least understand his father, that Ronald Reagan was a kindly intentioned man and even when he stopped recognizing his loved ones and had regressed, was still a kind man -- that it was still his nature when all was stripped away. What parent wouldn't hope for that eulogy?
When I was in D.C last year and visited the FDR memorial, the tour guide spoke of the statute of FDR in the wheelchair -- how he was never allowed to be seen as physically lessened while in office, and how Clinton commissioned it because it was time for disability to stop being considered shameful, that to not show it dishonored all the many people who have so much to offer and are challenged in some way. Alzheimer's is no different and the time is now to look with honestly and compassion at the life of another president who might have faced while in office a challenge we didn't know about at the time. The only worthwhile history is one that values honesty so that we can understand and a son has a unmatched vantage point. I don''t know if the author is correct, but he addresses an issue that no one can reasonably ignore when examining the Reagan era. I understand the larger implications, just as I do on the case of many presidents (and kings and queens and heads of state) who we now suspect of being ill or compromised.
Enjoyed this book and "junior's" homage to his father both on its own and in partnership with
I Love You, Ronnie: The Letters of Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan
.
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