Reagan - June 5, 2004

By Brian Kirwin

Four years ago today, America and the world lost one of its greatest and most beloved leaders.

Ronald Reagan.

A journey that began in Tampico, Illinois ended in his California home that day, four years ago.

Newsweek published this memorial written by his daughter, Patti.

For anyone who has lost a loved one, those anniversaries are both sad and sweet. The sadness is obvious—you don’t stop missing the person who has gone; you don’t stop wishing you’d had one more year, one more day. The sweetness sneaks up on you. It comes in the form of memories, some of them long buried. But mostly it comes with the realization that nothing ever dismantled the love between you, even though many things seemed to along the way.

Patti wrote why this man was great, and as you can imagine, it went beyond politics.

It had nothing to do with politics, but rather with the quality of his character. It had to do with his goodness, his dignity—qualities that we as a nation are hungry for.

And one comment to today’s political campaigning - What would Reagan say?

My father would be perplexed by the overabundance of meanness in the political field. And he would be deeply saddened by it. His wish, I think, would be that we as a country turn our backs on the vitriol that has become too commonplace and demand that the “race” for president become a dignified one, as archaic as that may sound these days.

Take a moment today, and remember the Gipper.
(crossposted at Reagan’s GOP)