From Edwin Feulner:
I first saw Ronald Reagan close up in 1973 when he testified on welfare reform before the Senate Finance Committee, displaying his rare talent for expressing conservative ideas that Americans found so compelling. In November 1978, my friend Richard Allen, Reagan's director of foreign policy research, asked me to arrange a meeting between the candidate and journalists in London. Bill Deedes, then-editor of the Daily Telegraph, complained to me beforehand about coming to a breakfast meeting-"a barbaric American custom"-with this man who used to be governor of California. He left telling me it was one of the most interesting, fruitful and positive meetings he had ever attended on either side of the Atlantic.
But perhaps the most memorable moment of my personal encounters with President Reagan occurred on Oct. 3, 1983, at The Heritage Foundation's 10th anniversary dinner in Washington, D.C., My wife, Linda, stood next to the President on the dais. He was so moved by the color guard's presentation of the colors and the Navy Band's playing of the national anthem that he leaned over to Linda and whispered, "That was so moving, it makes me want to clap. Too bad no one else is." She replied, "Mr. President, I'll bet if you did, everyone else would join in." He did, and within a second 1,400 people were on their feet applauding.
In Ronald Reagan's two terms as president, he gave America a transfusion of his own optimism and hope. He enkindled a sense of the possible, rescuing America from defeatism and much of the world from tyranny. He restored our confidence in the presidency itself, proving that Jefferson's "splendid misery" could be simply splendid. And-not coincidentally-he helped create a safer, freer world. For that, his nation will be eternally grateful.
The Heritage Foundation.
From Anthony Dolan:
I was working at the Reagan White House, sometimes if someone in the administration was veering off the conservative course and his aides were afraid the President would hear about it, the word would go around the West Wing (and not always jokingly) "Better hide his issue of HUMAN EVENTS."
I had joked over the years about this with Ken Duberstein who in the last year became President Reagan's chief of staff. One day on Air Force One I saw someone bring him something from the President, who was in his forward cabin.
Few things are more vivid in my memory than seeing Ken standing up, looking back at me and while waving a copy of HUMAN EVENTS laughingly saying- "Tony, see what I mean." On the front cover in Reagan's handwriting was "see page 3."
When President Reagan praised HUMAN EVENTS over the years he meant every word. HUMAN EVENTS meant a lot to him, and to all of us who grew up in the conservative political movement - a movement that formed Reagan even as he formed it. A movement that would have been unimaginable without HUMAN EVENTS.
for President Reagan for eight years.
