Ronald Reagan's Heart: Three Emotional Landmarks

Double rainbow over Ronald Reagan’s birthplace 
the night before his election to the presidency.

What a difference a year makes!

A year ago, I attended the 102^nd anniversary celebration of President Ronald Reagan’s birth at Eureka College after penning “Ronald Reagan’s Heart: Two Emotional Landmarks.” (See below.) His son Michael described the college as about the size of a “postage stamp” 
last night at a 103^rd anniversary celebration in Washington, DC hosted 
by the Reagan Alumni Association. Indeed, it is—exemplifying, Michael said, his humble roots. 

On this morning, a year ago, I was wrapping up a meeting with a key legislator in Springfield, Illinois, seeking support to save Reagan’s Chicago home on the South Side—another illustration of just how humble Reagan’s roots were. This legislator told me he had grown up a virtual orphan and Reagan had been a father figure for him. He said he would do what he could.

Of course, the home was demolished. But not the larger cause, the most important emotional landmark, which Reagan fought so hard for.  The work of Major General Paul E. Vallely (US Army Ret), Chairman, Stand Up America, about which I wrote in this piece, fittingly published yesterday, is a prime example.

As Reagan always said, “It can be done!”  But, it is often quite difficult, as this other towering figure, St. Thomas More, born on this day in 1478, is a testament to.

Mary Claire Kendall

President, Friends of President Reagan’s Chicago Home

The author at a tribute to President Reagan in
Washington, D.C. on the 103rd anniversary of his birth

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN:


 2/06/2013 @ 8:00AM 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maryclairekendall/2013/02/06/ronald-reagans-heart-two-emotional-landmarks/

Mary Claire Kendall, Contributor

I write about Hollywood legends and real life.

Ronald Reagan's Heart: Two Emotional Landmarks

Double rainbow over Ronald Reagan’s birthplace the night before his election to the presidency.

When former President Ronald Reagan visited his birthplace in Tampico, Illinois on May 10, 1992, this tender-hearted, consummate gentleman, fast-fading with enveloping Alzheimers, wept, said curator Joan Johnson, as he laid eyes on the bed, where his mother Nelle had labored for many difficult hours, before giving birth to him on February 6, 1911.

His father Jack, Reagan later recounted, quipped right after his birth, “For such a little bit of a fat Dutchman, he makes a lot of noise doesn’t he?” His mother, though weak, beamed, “I think he’s perfectly wonderful.”  Both the endearing name and positive opinion stuck.

Today, all of us who came to understand how “perfectly wonderful” Ronald Wilson “Dutch” Reagan was, celebrate his birthday, hearts overflowing with gratitude for this giant of American history—the only president born and bred in Illinois.

After four years in Tampico, the family moved to Chicago’s South Side—a culture shock for Reagan’s dad, who began drinking more heavily. But, there was a silver lining. It was only because of Jack Reagan’s drinking habit that conservative commentator Tom Roeser, was, years later, in talking with President Reagan, able to pinpoint the exact site of the president’s Chicago home—on southwest corner of the University of Chicago, located diametrically opposite President Barack Obama’s Hyde Park home on the northeast corner.

In Tampico, the population was less than 1000. There the Reagans lived in a spacious six-room rented second-floor apartment above a bakery from September 1906 to May 1911 while Jack worked across the street at Pitney General Store.  Shortly after Dutch’s birth, his father was promoted from merchandiser to manager and the family rented a large house around the corner, where they lived until December 15, 1914.

When Mr. Pitney sold his store, Jack scrambled for employment and landed a job at Marshall Field’s Mayfair Annex near the University of Chicago.  Right after the first of the year the family moved to Chicago, population 2.2 million, where Jack and Nelle chose another flat with six rooms—an architectural feature unique to Illinois, and particularly Chicago, that gives an apartment the feel of a house.

As with Tampico’s “Main Street Historic District,” in 1982, the South Side neighborhood in which the Reagan’s home at 832 E. 57^th Street resided, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, in 1986. As Jack Spicer, Chair of the Hyde Park Historical Society’s Historic Preservation Committee, said, paraphrasing, “It is the finest remaining example of what was once a solid and working and middle-class black neighborhood.”(Chicago Sun-Times, February 6, 2011)

Like the birthplace, the Hyde Park home was the scene of memories that tapped a deep well of emotion in President Reagan, evidenced by his reaction upon Mayor Jane Byrne presenting a photo of the home to him in September 1981, six months after the assassination attempt.  His eyes became misty, showing a hint of tears, as he absorbed all the memories of his time living there—like when four-year-old Dutch and his six-year-old brother Neil, nicknamed “Moon,” would go to White City, an amusement park a mile from their home, laden with freshly made popcorn they would sell to amusement park patrons to help supplement the family income, increasingly diminished because of Jack’s drinking habit.

As some might have heard, the home now hangs in the balance as the city and university decide whether to spare it from being demolished—and if spared, how to honor President Reagan’s memory there.  (No, it’s not true the block on which the home sits will be transformed into a parking garage for the Obama library.)

Our hope is that President Reagan’s memory will be honored in a big way on the site of the planned 240-bed hospital facility—right across the street from The Center for Care and Discovery, featuring state-of-the-art Alzheimer’s Research.

But, it will take money and lots of it toward which end the Friends of President Reagan’s Chicago Home, Inc., founded by a group of devoted Reaganauts in December, incorporated just three short weeks ago, are determined to do what it takes.

The ideal would be, working with the university, to transform the home into a museum and center that elegantly showcases President Reagan’s historic presidency, as well as his roots, with the apartment restored to its 1915 splendor, while at the same time, perfectly complementing the mission of the university’s Center for Care and Discovery.   And, that’s where we hope to get particularly creative.

In so doing, this Chicago home, where little Dutch was being prepared for greatness, would complete “The Reagan Trail” of homes where the only president born and bred in Illinois grew up—a president who died of Alzheimer’s, a cure for which, in the ultimate irony of history, might be found on the very site where Reagan’s first and most vivid memories were formed.

UPDATE: The Ronald Reagan Birthplace in Tampico reached their fundraising goal to finance the statue they had commissioned, showing three-year old “Dutch” Reagan playing on a Civil War cannon as he did so often when growing up in Tampico. It was placed in Reagan Park (formerly Railroad Park) in October 2013. See www.reaganstatue.org.

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This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maryclairekendall/2013/02/06/ronald-reagans-heart-two-emotional-landmarks/

Heavenly Review of "William 'Bill' Walton: A Charmed Life" by Glenda A. Bixler

What an incredible, awesome, breathtaking review by Glenda A. Bixler of William ‘Bill’ Walton: A Charmed Life, which it was my privilege to transform in 2012-2013, landing the publisher to boot!  (Probably my friend Redd Griffin’s intervention from heaven—both the publisher and this, ahem, heavenly review. Redd was the one who introduced me to the author, Mary Hackett, married to Bill’s nephew Jack, who was such a delight to work with.)  In fact, Bixler’s blog is dubbed “Book Reader’s Heaven.” That nails it. This was ALL Redd’s doing. Thank you, Redd! Below is a portion of her review... 

World Battlefronts: Parachute Landing in Normandy

Monday, June 19, 1944

The night before D-Day, few of the paratrooper comrades of TIME Correspondent William Walton tried to sleep. After midnight they turned out, climbed into EUR-475. They were the spear head; some of them would not live to see that day's dawn. Walton, a qualified parachutist attached to the outfit, crawled in with them, was soon over France. He cabled: I plunged out of the plane door happy to be leaving a ship that was heading toward flak and more Germans. The jump was from such low altitude...                                                                                             

William "Bill" Walton: A Charmed Life

By Mary Hackett

Edited by Mary Claire Kendall

A writer will always write and when William Walton went to report on many activities in Europe, he also wrote letters home to his family. He had always thought of writing his own biography, but thankfully, the family, and, in particular his sister-in-law Mary Hackett saw that his letters could be turned into one of the most interesting books sharing American history from a journalist's viewpoint...

Those who will want to travel with him into the war years will certainly have the opportunity. I think the thing that made the

As he stood, he surveyed the once peaceful
and picturesque rural area of Normandy,
looking in horror at the blight that blanketed
the land: houses and barns now riddled with
holes; trees reduced to scattered fragments;
equipment smashed to pieces. Bill said the
fate of the dairy herds, one of the war's
signature images, was even worse--stinking
black and white cows, sometimes one lonely
cow, often scores, lying lifeless in fields.
It was a disheartening scene, one that he
could not have imagined...Most of Bill's
exposure to war had been viewed from an
aircraft flying high over a city, not on the
ground where up-close images of
extensive carnage and flattened structures
were forever seared in his memory.
~~~

most impression on me regarding his desire to do all that he could to keep America informed

English: Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway with unidentified Chinese military officers, Chungking, China, 1941. Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

was to accept an invitation to train as a paratrooper. He jumped so that he was already there by the time the ground troops showed up!

But not all was about the war... Bill became close friends with Ernest Hemingway and his wife Martha Gellhorn, shown at the left...Hemingway even saved Bill's life, but there were many times for social gatherings as well.

One personal interest caught my attention--Bill was there when the most wanted gangster, John Dillinger was killed, and rode with his body to the Cook County morgue. {Me, I'm related to the Dillingers and had a John Dillinger in my family who always got picked on--LOL} Bill..."noticed that Dillinger must, at some point, have attempted to fie or burn his hands in an effort to eliminate identifying fingerprints...This reporting coup gave Bill his first national recognition. His byline, "by William Walton," would soon begin to appear in many more publications..."

Another little tidbit I enjoyed was that when, in June 1946, Bill stood to receive an honorary degree he gave a little [payback] speech... "he noticed that most of the faculty seated before him were those who had voted to kick him out almost 20 years earlier...At the end of his speech, to express his displeasure with the school's heavy-handed discipline so many years before, he turned his backside to the assembled crowd and bowed. Later, he commented to his family, "There was a very nice shape to that!"  To me, that's why we enjoy reading about people's lives, don't we?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
William_Walton_(painter)
The body of John F. Kennedy in repose
 in the White House on November 23, 1963.
William Walton helped research the funerary
decorations for the room and the dressing
 for the catafalque.

I became fascinated with Walton's love of the outdoors and his painting activities, which became a little more well known when Bill became friends with John F. Kennedy and his family to carry through even to helping with the arrangements for his burial. There is quite a bit covering that time and his friendship with Jackie afterward Kennedy's death. "(1949-1960)"

Life, for whom he had also worked, took his friendship with Kennedy to write an article about his paintings. in "Life" in 1961. At first when you read somebody is an artist and a friend of Ernest Hemingway, et. al., don't you just wonder where somebody gets all that talent, LOL! I don't know about you, but you must begin to admire this man, don't you think?!

AND LATER in the review, Bixler writes:

On the other hand, of course, there are not too many Americans who cannot cite Kennedy's last line: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." That night the overture "From Sea to Shining Sea" was played for the first time in public...

Redd Griffin & Reagan's Chicago Home

My friend Redd Griffin of Oak Park, who was my mentor on Hemingway, about whom I'm writing, sent me the article below on October 29, 2012, as he worked to save Reagan's Chicago home. He wanted to know what I thought. Was the article compelling?  Did I think it would encourage people to rally behind the cause?  He had worked tenaciously for over a year to bring attention locally to the impending demolition of Reagan's Chicago home and had reached out to me for help in the effort to save it.  That Reagan was four when he lived there, a most formative time, and formed his first memories and had such character-shaping experiences there, sold me. 

Redd died suddenly of a heart attack on November 20.

Aftermath
On November 30, I was scheduled to go to Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois for what was supposed to be an entirely Hemingway-focused weekend. But, it soon became a Reagan-focused weekend, as well, starting with a visit to Reagan's birthplace in Tampico on December 1, and ending with a visit to Hemingway's birthplace in Oak Park on December 2.  En route back to Midway Airport, I saw a young African-American woman on the L, with rotting teeth, and my heart went out.  Reagan's philosophy, properly understood and reflected, holds such promise for those like that woman who suffer great poverty.  I soon picked up Redd's cause, with that young woman and others like her in mind, founding the national organization, Friends of President Reagan's Chicago Home, which we incorporated in the State of Illinois on January 16, 2013, with the idea of establishing a center and museum on the site of his home, celebrating what Reagan stood for, really -- not as it's reflected through a filter of liberal bias.  

The home was demolished on April 4, 2013 by the University of Chicago after the City of Chicago refused to landmark it.  

       - Mary Claire Kendall, President, Friends of President Reagan's Chicago Home

Ronald Reagan’s Chicago Home

By John R. Schmitt

Originally published in Chicago History Today 

Before Barack Obama, only one U.S. President had called Chicago his home.  As a boy Ronald Reagan lived on the first floor of this Hyde Park building.

832 E. 57th St., Chicago, Illinois - Hyde Park -  Reagan's childhood home, age 4, in 1915, 
soon to be razed to make room for the new University of Chicago Medical Center

The Reagans moved into their apartment in January 1915.  They’d come to the city from the western Illinois village of Tampico.  Jack Reagan, the father, got a job selling shoes in the Loop.  His wife Nelle stayed home with the two boys, 6-year-old Neil and little Ron—called “Dutch”—who was going on 4.

The University of Chicago was a few blocks to the east, but the area where the Reagans settled wasn’t fashionable.  Nor was the building—their flat was lighted by a single gas lamp, which operated when a quarter was deposited in a timer.  They probably picked the location for its easy access to the Cottage Grove streetcar line.

Jack, Neil, Ronald and Nelle

After living in tiny Tampico, Chicago was a brave new world for Dutch Reagan.  He was excited to see all the people and activity.  When a horse drawn fire engine clanged by his apartment window, he decided there could be no finer profession than being a Chicago fireman.

All was not pleasant for Dutch.  He came down with bronchial pneumonia and nearly died.  A neighbor brought over a set of lead soldiers for the boy to play with, and they became his favorite toy.

Jack Reagan was a drinker, which didn’t help the family finances...  For entire article click here.

UNKNOWN CHICAGO SOURCES: Reagan, An American Life (1990); Morris, Dutch (1999).