10 THAT PRINTER OF UDELL S

Transcription

1 Foreword In what he considered his best film, the 1941 psychological drama King s Row, Ronald Reagan played a young man who woke up to find his legs amputated. Where s the rest of me? the anguished Reagan exclaimed. The scene was considered a highlight of his acting career, and Reagan liked the line so much that he used it as the title of his 1965 autobiography. But for many people who knew Ronald Reagan, the line also summed up how they often couldn t tell what was truly behind the genial story-teller who seemed to be friendly with everyone but intimate with very few. His son, Ron Reagan, notes that, even though his father was on public display his entire adult life, for even those of us who were closest to him, there was a hidden 10 percent that remains a considerable mystery. One mystery is how a boy who spent much of his youth alone, was picked on by bullies, and was so nearsighted that he was chosen last for playground games could acquire the ambition to run for president four times and eventually become an archetypal American hero. If many of us would like children to emulate Ronald Reagan, it would help us to know how that happened. No one will ever definitively discover the Rosebud of Ronald Reagan, the single explanation for his drive. But there are clues. Reagan consciously set out to become a hero at an early age. I m a sucker for hero worship, he

2 10 THAT PRINTER OF UDELL S wrote in 1977, when he listed the books that impressed him as a child. Indeed, heroism was a recurring theme of his presidential speeches, from his first inaugural to a State of the Union address in which he celebrated unsung American heroes who may not have realized their dreams themselves but who then reinvest those dreams in their children. Ronald Reagan was clearly greatly influenced by his mother, Nelle. She insisted her son go to church. It was in church that Reagan picked up not only those core beliefs and values, but also the intangibles so vital to his success: his confidence, his eternal optimism (which he called a God-given optimism ), and even his ability to speak, concludes Reagan biographer Paul Kangor, a professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. In March 1922, when Reagan was a boy of eleven living in Dixon, Illinois, he had an epiphany, a truly life changing experience. On one cold night, he found his alcoholic father lying in a drunken stupor on the front porch. In his autobiography, Reagan wrote: Seeing his arms spread out as if he were crucified as indeed he was his hair soaked with melting snow, snoring as he breathed, I could feel no resentment against him. But the young Dutch Reagan was clearly upset by the incident. It was the season of Lent, and his mother, a devotee of the Disciples of Christ, put a bestselling, inspirational novel in his hand. It was a 1902 work called That Printer of Udell s, by Harold Bell Wright, who was a pastor in the Disciples of Christ Church at the time he wrote the book. Reagan devoured the book. It made such an impact on me that I decided to join my mother s church and be baptized, Reagan recalled in his autobiography. He was, by total immersion, on June 21, What was the power contained in the book s words

3 Foreword 11 that had such an impact on Reagan? That Printer of Udell s is the story of Dick Falkner, a young man who grows up in poverty but succeeds by combining a belief in practical Christianity with Horatio Alger-like grit. He is given his big break by the kindly George Udell, who hires him as a printer. Dick never looks back after that. The book is clearly evangelical in tone. One chapter is entitled Philippians 4:8. That is the part of the New Testament that emphasizes the power of prayer and, in Christ s words, exhorts Christians: Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me put it into practice. Reagan would later tell Edmund Morris, his official biographer, that the book made him a practical Christian. Morris was struck by just how important That Printer of Udell s was in Reagan s later life. Falkner, its central character, is a tall, good-looking, genial young man who wears brown suits and has the gift of platform speaking and comes to a Midwestern town just like Dixon, Illinois, and figures out a workfare program to solve the city s social problems, he notes. He marries this girl who looks at him adoringly with big wide eyes through all of his speeches, and he eventually goes off with her to represent that shining city in Washington, D.C. After finishing the book, Reagan told his mother, I want to be like that man. Indeed, Morris says that the parallels between Dick Falkner and Ronald Reagan became eerie. Morris states that reading that book marked the moment when Reagan s moral sense developed. He says its components were made very clear in the Wright novel. The message he takes is that of practical Christianity. Independence, charity beginning at home, self-reliance, decency, fidelity, the sanctity of human Christian relationships, marriage, motherhood, parentage, writes

4 12 THAT PRINTER OF UDELL S Morris. All these simple beliefs instilled themselves in the young Ronald Reagan. So when he talked to me about That Printer of Udell s he was talking about his religious crux. Sitting in the Oval Office interviewing Reagan in 1988, Morris became convinced that the man in the brown suit before him had become that young man that he had read about all those years before. Peter Hannaford, a longtime Reagan aide, says that Reagan profoundly empathized with the fact that, like him, Dick Falkner also had an alcoholic father and yet overcame poverty and adversity. It s clear that Reagan set out to become a hero like Dick Falkner. Reagan found his greatest sense of fulfillment by working as a lifeguard at Lowell Park in Dixon. From the age of sixteen until he turned twenty-two, the shy, nearsighted boy became a vibrant, action-oriented lifesaver. He rescued seventy-seven swimmers, noting each one with a notch on a log in the park. He loved talking about how his role as a lifeguard brought him a real sense of purpose and meaning beyond the good he did as a lifesaver. You know why I had such fun at it? Reagan would later recall. Because I was the only one up there on the guard stand. It was like a stage. Everyone had to look up at me. Again and again, Reagan would crave that feeling of both doing good and being noticed. It led him into radio, then to Hollywood, and then into public service. Even on his path to the presidency, Reagan revealed his instinctive desire to be seen as a hero and strive to carry out heroic deeds. At a 1975 dinner with conservative leaders at Washington s Madison Hotel, Reagan reminisced about his career in Hollywood. He noted that he had played a good guy in every one of his films save his last one, in 1964 The Killers, in which he had

5 Foreword 13 portrayed a gangster, who even slapped a woman across a room in one scene. It was a role he detested. He told the conservatives: Ever since then, I decided I wouldn t pick up a script in which I wasn t wearing a white hat. I can be more effective that way. Many of Reagan s accomplishments as well as his outlook on life can be traced back in part to that dogeared copy of That Printer of Udell s that Nelle Reagan gave her young son. Reagan was uncharacteristically revealing about the book s influence on him in a 1984 letter to the daughterin-law of Harold Bell Wright, the author of That Printer of Udell s. He noted that all of his boyhood reading left an abiding belief in the triumph of good over evil, but he singled out Wright s work for having an impact I shall always remember. He continued, After reading it and thinking about it for a few days, I went to my mother and told her I wanted to declare my faith and be baptized.... I realize I found a role model in that traveling printer whom Harold Bell Wright had brought to life. He set me on a course I ve tried to follow even unto this day. I shall always be grateful. Indeed he was. When Young America s Foundation bought the Reagan Ranch in 2001 for use as an educational center, a faded copy of That Printer of Udell s was in its bookshelves. So Ronald Reagan willed himself to take on the qualities that would allow him to become the hero he wanted to be. As an adult he had an often veiled but unstoppable ambition his aide Martin Anderson called him a warmly ruthless man when pursuing his goals. That also could explain why he was sometimes distant from even his children and certainly his associates. He was consumed by a pursuit of bigger things, such as greatness for himself and his country. And that pursuit was set in motion in part by That Printer of Udell s.

6 14 THAT PRINTER OF UDELL S For Ronald Reagan, the heroes he admired and the hero he aspired to become demonstrated what individuals in a free society were capable of achieving. By willing himself to bring out that which was the best within him, he set down goals we can urge all our children to emulate. The very essence of Ronald Reagan s personal American Dream was that the next generation should always strive to be better than the previous one. There s no mystery about that part of Ronald Reagan s legacy. John Fund