President Reagan's Interview with Tom Brokaw on January 17, 1989

came a long way, town in Illinois Dixon and the protective warmth of your mother Nell your first memory of your mother's influence on you and what she taught you to do that really shaped your life well, her Body, of course, was An important part. She had a brother. She was also a couple of years older than me because in our family, the two of us, my mother and my father, she was probably the kindest human being I have ever met. Now that I think back, I know that we live in poverty and are pretty close to everything.

At the time, but we didn't know it at the time because the government didn't come and tell us we were poor and she was always looking for someone worse off that we could help and I remember that about her, this kind, honest Noland still in the same place. time she could be firm like that time in an even smaller town where I was born, Tampico, Illinois, eight hundred people and we lived across a small park from the railroad station and in those days the biggest gift was not the ice cream cart. What came was the ice cart and the children got pieces of ice from them.

The Ice Man was cutting the pieces to put in the ice boxes along the road and the ice cart had stopped there and my brother and I saw it and he was the eldest took the lead and we started to cross the small park, but a train stopped between us and the ice car and my mother came out to the porch just in time to see us get off and crawl under the train to get to the other side. and we were barely finished and in the ice car when the train left, she met us in the middle of that little park and we felt a very firm hand that we both applied halfway to our bags.

Did she teach you other things too? how to read and how to move forward in life, about the values ​​of life, oh she, yes, she always talked about things like that, but she made a lot of sense with them, but they are worth considering in reading. I don't know if she did. I was aware that she was teaching, but when we were very young and at the time we lived in Galesburg in a rented house there, my father would travel around looking for better jobs and she would read to my brother and me when we went to bed. sit between us in bed and read the bedtime story, but she always did it and she would hold the book and run her finger under the line she was reading and we would both be there and we could watch and at the same time hear about it.

Of course, now I don't know if I was doing it deliberately and I don't remember learning to read, but one night when I was five I was lying on the living room floor with the newspaper and my father came in. and he said what are you doing and I said well reading the paper and he thought I was being a know-it-all and he said well go ahead, read me something and I did and the next thing I knew I was on the porch yelling for the neighbors and he brought the neighbors and made me read to them because there was no kindergarten.

He had never been anywhere else except home at that time. You're far from starting regular school, but yeah, he was reading the newspaper. Your mother had a very strong religion. values ​​too yes she believed in the power of prayer, for example, do you believe in the power of prayer yes, can you remember incidents in your life where you have prayed and God has answered your prayer almost in a specific way? Yes, I believe I can and I believe very much in what Abraham Lincoln said when he had this job, he said that he could not perform the functions and duties of this job for fifteen minutes if he did not know that he could turn to someone who was wiser and stronger. than everyone else. but in that sense I think my mother taught me a lesson over and over again and as I got older I really started to realize it and that's when there was a big disappointment something went wrong she told us look everything just happens for a reason and for a reason the best now she said you may feel bad about this right now but in the future something good will happen and you will appreciate that look back and say if this hadn't happened what was supposed to be bad what would be good.

It wouldn't have happened and I had a classic example growing up. I graduated from college in 1932. I was hitchhiking. I set my sights on a career in entertainment so I thought I would start if I could ever get in and being a sports announcer would be radio was pretty new in those days and I was ultimately disappointed having received the advice to try to get a job at a station no matter what. whatever you wanted to do and then risk moving forward from there, but I couldn't and a very wise woman at a major station in Chicago told me I was going down the wrong path.

I shouldn't try to go to those big stations where they couldn't afford to hire inexperienced people. smaller stations, well I hitchhiked home and I got there and they told me that a Montgomery Ward store had opened in Dixon and that they had a sporting goods department and they were looking for someone who was pretty well known in town for their athleticism in high school there and and so on to run that department while I went and applied and didn't get the job I felt like a couple of years after being in high school was quite a sensation in basketball, he got the job.

I was quite disappointed because my father lent me the car. I told him all the things he had been doing in a family car and I drove 75 miles in my disappointment to the three cities of Rock Island, Moline and Davenport Iowa and there, at a station in Davenport Iowa, I met a program. director that he still couldn't use me and but where was I because they had just hired the announcer a few days before and I didn't tell him that I didn't listen to his station but when he left talking to himself, he really said: how can you become a sports announcer if you can't get a job at a radio station? and he went down the hall and very soon I heard a tapping, he was very crippled by arthritis, to Keynes and he was shouting your great wait for so-and-so and he reached me the elevator wasn't there yet and he said what was that you said about sports and I said well, that's what I'd like to be from what he said, you know something?

I said I played soccer for eight years and he told me could you tell me about a soccer game and if I was at home listening to the radio make me watch it and I told him I think if he took me to a studio he put me in front of a microphone and said now when the power comes on red light I will be in another room listening you start broadcasting an imaginary soccer game well I stayed there waiting for the light to turn on and I knew I had to have names and I remembered the year of that previous one I fell in my last year playing in a murica game when we went 65 yards on the last play for the winning touchdown and it was the last play of the game and I knew all of our players' names and I knew enough about the opponents' names that I thought I could, so I started in the fourth quarter and I had a long blue shadow sitting on the field and the real wind coming in at the end of the stadium, we didn't have a stadium, we had creatures and then I made some plays and finally I got to the big play and I had this and I made the big play and I got the touchdown with only 20 seconds left to play with only 20 seconds left and so on and then I grabbed the microphone and said that's it.

He came in and said. Be it on Saturday I will give you $5.00 and transportation fare you are broadcasting the Iowa Minnesota game for us do you think that if Montgomery Ward's had hired you for the athletic department I would still be there working at Montgomery Ward's and not as

president

of the USA? Well, all the things in between that turned out and this wouldn't have happened, you and I come from similar roots. I too grew up in small towns in the Midwest and life has changed for both of us, obviously, on many of the great occasions that I have had the privilege of being a part of.

I have often thought about my roots, friends or particular incidents in my life and wondered what Roy does that happens to you when you are at a state dinner or in the Kremlin. or when you are presiding over a ceremony, for example in Norman, does Dixon cross your mind on those days? Oh, there are things that I think need reminders and are very far removed from that way of life and this, but there are reminders from time to time. a time just like this that I finally gave you that thing that you will remember and say hey this maybe had a beginning there you went from Dixon to Eureka College and studied economics among other things that you reminded your advisors from time to time Until now, What do you remember from your Eureka economics courses that have helped you deal with the national economy?

Well, I majored in economics and sociology, they were combined, so it was one major, but you were actually studying at a time when life was in stark reality, these were the depths of the depression, we had a teacher, a wonderful hello gray dad, and he used to give us readings outside of economist books to read, then we would come in with a book report and so on, then we would discuss it. and I can remember, he had a sense of humor, we were also in the depths of the depression, a book by a prominent economist and when we were finishing reporting and everything, just as class was ending, he said it's interesting to note. that the author of this book five weeks before the crash said that he saw no reason why stocks should not continue to rise indefinitely.

We were really studying a classic example of economics and what was going to happen this was before FDR's election and all the recessions we've had since then. No one who has not gone through the depression can visualize what it was like to have 26 percent unemployment nationwide. The government was on the radio with advertisements. Don't leave home looking for work. Well, there were no government programs at that time to take care of people. the people who were suddenly left without my father running a shoe store with some kind of job a partnership in the property had disappeared the shoe store had disappeared and this was happening in small towns like Dickson as well as in big cities the National Guard in Illinois was mobilized and sent to parade in Chicago simply because at that time there were so many people living in the street gates on the streets right off Michigan Boulevard that there was a real concern about riots and so on and they did it simply as a show of strength, there are still people in this country.

Now that we're homeless and we're still struggling financially and so on, and for some of them it's kind of a continuation of the depression, is there a parallel between what's happening for some families in this country now and what happened then? Well, there may be some because there are some places in the country where, due to a change in industry etc., the major industries in those communities have disappeared and it is a case of moving or bringing a new industry to the community etc. , so there are a few problem points, but basically, as you know, 19 million new jobs have been created and the largest percentage of them have gone to the people most in need and they are better jobs than ever and more than 90% of them are full time, not part time. time, so it is not a situation comparable to that and I think we have to recognize that some of the people on the streets have chosen that because here in Washington the public and private shelters that have been opened for those people have space in them and the people who can go there and wouldn't rather be out there on bars and so on, and whatever their reason, remember that recently in New York a young woman took a case to court to force them to respect her constitutional right. let her go back and live in that cardboard box on the street present let me ask you about your career in Hollywood.

You went from a good job in Des Moines, Iowa as a radio host at the height of the depression, to Hollywood, where you were making what $200 a week I think it's a contract player at Warner Brothers yeah, did you start thinking at that point Heck, maybe there's a lucky star hanging over Ronald Reagan, that luck will be a part of your life somehow, well, if I called it luck or if I called it an answer to prayers, I realized that I was very blessed and that's why I thought that also and because of those blessings that I had, I should pay my way by doing what I could and come back for others.

We were all a little starstruck in this society when you arrived and how would I say who were the big stars that you remember seeing that really impressed you, oh well, this was in the wonderful era of Hollywood that no longer exists. It was an era in which the seven major studios had their rosters of contracted players and stars, their directors were under contract, the producers and writers were like a family at the studio, and at Warner Brothers there were Jimmy Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Betty Davis and Wayne . Morris had just become a new young star, they were in the Galahad boy he had done, but then Dick Powell and Jack Carson and when you can accept, you try to think about all of them at the same time, but I ate there at the police station at lunch time lunch and they were all around you and they were at the same table with you and it was a wonderful moment, but they also made you realize that you were under contract, now they took me in and sat me down and it was like I couldn't listen because everyone was talking aboutme in front of me and they were trying to decide on a name for me.

I had always used my son nicknamed Dutch as a sports announcer Dutch Reagan and they were talking and talking and finally I was getting a little uncomfortable and finally I told them because that was a pretty big radio station so then I said look you know my name is pretty well known in a large part of the country and do you think just throw it out and they said Dutch Reagan and I said well my real name is Ronald Reagan. I had never used Ronald, I like the Dutch one better and they said Ronald Ronald Reagan.

Hey, that's not bad. I have to keep my own name. Ronald Reagan. Who are the actresses you like to play with and those who star in movies that you remember? Oh my god, the Lane sisters had just done it! come big in pictures Priscilla Lane I was in a picture with Betty Davis and it was a wonderful experience, great actress and it was Jane Bryant, oh my god I'm forgetting some of the names Ann Gerard and Sheridan, oh yeah, he. I chose him with Ann Sheridan and she was a great girl. Simply wonderful. Do you watch movies.

Now you know who the contemporary film is. Sarah Connor. They might very well do the Ronald Reagan story now if you could choose it. story of Ronald Reagan who would you like to play your role? I would prefer that they not do this story if I can't interpret it I don't know if I want to recommend it to someone else Do you like current movie stars? Do you have any favorites among the current Croco stars? I'll tell you the lack of continuous publicity like we had when there were fan magazines and everything and every studio had a publicity department with men who were assigned to a group of artists there. see that their names were constantly before the public that no longer exists and I find great difficulty in remembering the names I will see a face on the screen say oh yes their members saw them in another photo but the names just don't No, don't delay: recently you spoke in your farewell address to the nation about films that had strong moral values ​​and celebrated American patriotism.

What are some of those movies that you remember that did that? Oh, well, if you constantly remember, there was. The movies that were made I don't remember the titles, but the movies that were made say about West Point or Annapolis and always in that kind of way that the plot took place in the story regarding the cadets, but they were there in those schools and then there or of Of course, the service images of that and when the war came, images of war that were constructed and based on patriotism and so on, and were quite objective in their representation of those times.

Yes, I think there was also a great idea in Hollywood to make movies. That related to the things that people understood and knew Mr. President, you also said in that farewell speech that you ordered American children to sit down with their parents and talk about what America stands for and what needs to be done. celebrate in this country. If you could lead that kind of discussion at a table, who are the people in your life that you would present as the Patriots, the kind of model Americans who would serve to inspire our generations to come. Oh, I think there are a lot of numbers that could start with our people going overseas and not there or leaving. go to space on the shuttle, but you could go back to the heroes of our time and I think it's also more general than that.

I remember when you were little you knew that when the flag passed you had to stand up, put your hand on your heart you knew you had to stand and sing the national anthem and you learned to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and history was also required and therefore you knew the beginnings of this country and you knew the names of the great patriots. and who was George Washington but everyone else and I don't think that's true today so often well when and I won't name the University I don't want to embarrass anyone but when not long ago junior third year students in one of our great Universities couldn't tell anyone which side Hitler was on in World War II.

Is there anything wrong with thinking that history doesn't take into account whether it will help you make a living or anything like that, but rather that everyone should know the background and history of their country, how it came about and therefore what are the responsibilities of our citizens, isn't it a little shameful that in this country that had to fight for independence from We the People, is now getting smaller and smaller? the amount of people who bother to vote, how can anyone have the nerve to complain about any level of government if they didn't go to the polls?

Will Rogers once said that the people elected to public office are no better or worse and the people who send them there, but they are all better than those who don't vote at all, especially you have had such an extraordinary life starting, as I say, from that small town in Dixon, Illinois, when I was of age, a working class family there. You have risen to the great heights of being President of the United States, you leave office with the good will of the American people behind you, what is the difference between being in this type of position, a member of the haves?

I guess the best way to Describe it in American life and in the early days of your life when you again remember well the have-nots. As I say, I recognize that for some reason I have been blessed and never a day goes by that I don't give thanks for that. blessing and I also ask that I be given the wisdom to do something to show my appreciation for that and blessing and don't stop here for a minute because I'm going to look at a couple of things that we haven't done. able to get to that, I would like to get back to that and the anecdotal things, I know that yes, okay, if we could, only if we can agree on that, we will be okay, okay, I want mr.

president

, you had a very strong relationship with someone named Margaret Cleaver, yes, you are almost engaged to her, I was engaged, I perfected my fraternity pin on her, you talked about your future together, probably well, yes, she was the daughter of the minister of our church and I know that she went to Eureka College and in reality it was not that I made the decision then to go there, I had already made it, that when I was much younger my greatest hero happened to be the son of the then minister of the church and He was a big high school football star and when I was a kid I saw him and I thought he was cool and he went to your ikan and played football there later for a while, I think he was the chaplain at Yale University, but Yes, we went together in high school.

Eureka College before you left college why was that I don't know if it still exists today, but yeah, engagement you buy rings, you put your fraternity pin on it how did you think your life together would take shape? I mean, what did you do? What were your hopes then when you were going with Mark Lee? Well, I knew that from my own background and so on. I knew I had to reach a certain level of income before I could contemplate marriage, but I think that's what our romance didn't do. She didn't survive, she became a school teacher and I was in Iowa there as a sportscaster and during a long separation there was no possibility of visiting us frequently and then one day I got a notice that she was engaged to marry someone. otherwise she broke it, you didn't break it, no, and a former teacher from my high school won that type of teacher that every student has and that you remember throughout your life, he wrote me a letter, I had also seen what had happened and he wrote me a letter telling me how I should react and that I should do anything stupid, like go to the back or something, and I remembered it, but again it must have been one of those things that the disappointment that you now see comes back and says Well, if that had happened, what I have now might not have happened.

There is a famous story during your years at your Eureka College about one of your college football teammates, William Burkhart, he was a black member of the team and he couldn't. I walked into a hotel where the entire team was supposed to stay, so you took him to your house in Dixon, Illinois, where he was immediately put up with another black teammate. People who watch that story say that Ronald Reagan seemed to be more sensitive about that kind of thing. of things then he has been as president of the United States and perhaps it is because he encountered them firsthand there in Eureka, all of this has been the hardest burden.

I think that everything that I was born here is that idea. that I am NOT that sensitive and that in some way I am discriminating and so on and it is not true that in the house where I grew up with my mother and father what my brother and I grew up knowing is that there was no greater sin than prejudice or The discrimination. and this was back in the days when there was discrimination in general and at Eureka College yes, what happened was we had to spend the night in our hometown on the bus full of players on the way to a game on Saturday and I took the coach in introducing him to the hotel manager and he said he would take everyone except those two when our coach Mac said well we'll sleep on the bus and turned it around because the man had also said no other hotel would either.

There aren't many hotels in that little town and we started and I told Mac, I told him we can't do that, I said would they know what the reason is and would they be embarrassed, well he said what can we do when he had told me. I told myself I couldn't stay at home even though I had a house there and I said, well, why don't we say there's not enough room for everyone and put me and the two boys in a taxi and go home and still so he feels upset because he did it. He said: Are you sure you won't do that?

And I said yes. He knew my house. There was no possibility of calling her. I rang the bell and Nellie came to the door. My brother and I decided to call our parents by his name after we reached a certain age, we got to the door and I said no, there is not enough room in the hotel for all of us. Can we stay here? Well, she never helps you. I can hang in there and then we get there and that was not unusual because of the way I was raised or raised and I still feel the same way as governor of California I appointed more blacks to executive, artistic and policy-making positions than all of the previous governors of California.

California met and I asked you about your family because it was such a big part of your early childhood that you didn't have a lot of money in that family, your father is, you've written in your own book, you drank too much. he couldn't hold down a job in many different places and yet you always stayed together as a family even though there are big differences between you and your luna brother, for example in how you see life and how you behave and here. You are the President of the United States Your financial future is secure You have a very good marriage but within your own family there are now these tensions Michael has written a book criticizing the way Patty and Mrs.

Patty's family has been conducted. Reagan isn't talking it's just an affliction of modern life it's how we've changed in this country what Patty could be now we feel it and I haven't given up but Patty came up at that age when everything written was It happened on campuses and if I approached one of them and they would burn me in effigy, but no, the rest of the family is united and the book about that, Mike, if you had read it, is a very unusual book. Mike was adopted and This was a book about this and so the first part of the book is his attitude that he is now confessing, but the last part of the book is almost like it was written by a different human being.

Nancy was the one who told him how to find his real mother when he wanted to and she was dead, but she found out that she had a brother, so that last part and we're as close as possible and he is. I would recommend that book to anyone who has adopted children. He was writting. of the resentment that was inside him about his situation and it is a fascinating book, mr. president, you are about to retire Richard Nixon is studying international affairs a lot these days Gerald Ford works on this commission for the new presidency and plays automatic golf and talks a lot Jimmy Carter pursues his interests in the Carter Library and in terms of the Middle East and the problems of urban centers by going back to the mashed potatoes circuit and trying to incite the public to demand some changes, and they have the right to demand a line item veto for a president, the balanced budget amendment but most states have but the federal government does not have Thomas Jefferson called attention to that and there are things that well for example the 22nd amendment that was approved by our own party here is a revenge for Roosevelt who says that two terms as the limit for a president this is the the only position that is elected by all the people, I believe that this is an infringement of the democratic rights of the people and now that I am out of office so that they cannot accuse me of wanting to do it on my own, I am going to see if I can mobilize the people to demand the repeal of that amendment is an invasion of your democracy Veit wrote or scribe to vote for whoever you want to vote for and for however long so that we can I will see a lot of Ronald Reagan speaking all over the country, yes, every time you look, sir.

President, remember this lifeextraordinary power you have had for most of the 20th century in America, from Dixon Illinois to the heights of power. President of the United States, what do you really remember that made the difference? because you made it possible, well, I think maybe the teaching that I had and the faith that I had in prayer and I did it, by the way, we're leaving out a lot of hometowns, you know? And when you mentioned my father's drinking, let me point it out to you. he was an alcoholic if our family stayed together because my mother took us both aside my brother and I told him there you will see things and sometimes your father but you must not turn against him he has an illness and as an illness that we I must try to help him, no It was a case of just, you know, an exuberant coming home.

I've seen him go two or three years without drinking, but he was into the classics, he was an alcoholic and once he got the first drop down, that is. What happens with an alcoholic is that they are no different than everyone else until they have that first drink and then it would be chaos until he would be on his back and you would call the doctor. Did that make you aware of his own drinking habits? Yes Yes. I don't think I've ever felt anything like that because it's an illness and I remember very well that there is a doctor.

Medicine cannot explain it, but some want to look for a second psychopathic or psychotic psychological reason, others. look for any physical exam, there has been one about sugar shortage. I know that when I was in the Hall during periods of sobriety, my father was the biggest dessert eater I had ever seen and, in fact, he was not over the top and he did it with good humor. say hey what's that out the window and look out the window or my brother would take a spoonful of our dessert but that was the key, the family strength that you had when you look back on the last 50 years of your life, yes, although there There was never a hint in our family that there could ever be a dissolution of the family in fact and we were even religiously divided, my father was Catholic and my mother was Protestant, but if we were to adopt any religion, it would be I come from her because for a while I think he stopped going to church during Lent, but towards the end of his life he came back, he was in church and no, he was and his hometowns started with Tampico, then Chicago, then Galesburg, then Monmouth, Illinois and then I came back to Tampico and then to Dixon and it was about eight or nine on my birthday when I went to Dixon.

Thank my Lord. president