-By Warner Todd Huston
On the evening of February 6–Ronald Reagan’s birthday–I attended a small event put on by Americans For Prosperity-Illinois (AFP-IL) to celebrate President Reagan’s birthday. We were regaled by a talk from Reagan’s personal, post presidency assistant, Peggy Grande and she gave a wonderful talk.
Ill. AFP Director David From Introduces Our Speaker
Mrs. Grande had some wonderful, heartwarming stories about the President. She was a lucky, lucky woman to have been able to live a decade in the company of so great a man.
Peggy Grande, Ronald Reagan’s Personal Assistant
Best of all, Mrs. Grande let us know of Reagan’s secret life… there wasn’t one. As she so wonderfully put it, Reagan was Reagan. What we saw in his public personae was his personal comportment. He was kind, intelligent, thoughtful, happy… in short the “happy warrior” we all saw on TV was Ronald Reagan.
This was the most revealing thing of all. It meant that there was no false front to Ronald Reagan, no artifice. The fact is, we weren’t somehow being fooled by Ronald Reagan. He was the great man we thought he was in public as well as in private.
Mrs. Grande worked for Ronald Reagan from the year he left office until 1999 when he became too sick to really be able to work in his offices.
She showed us many photographs of the President in his offices. Many famous visitors made the pilgrimage to Reagan’s offices. Lady Thatcher, Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, all sorts of world leaders. The photos were great, but one thing they consistently showed was that Reagan was old school in his offices. Suit and tie every day no matter what. Always business-like.
No shorts, t-shirts… Ronald Reagan was old school, for sure.
It was a very nice night of reminiscences about a great man. Thanks to AFP-IL director David From and his crew for extending the invitation to me for this wonderful night.
Happy Birthday, President Reagan
On the way inside…
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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