Goodbye, Freedom Man

In 1983 and 1984, I was privileged to work in the Office of Public Liaison at the White House. The following are excerpts from my eulogy for Ronald Reagan at the Roanoke Memorial Service last week:

In the many speeches and comments that have been made this week about the life of Ronald Reagan, there are three things that keep coming up: the personality of Ronald Reagan, his words, and, most importantly, his actions, which created his legacy.

Reagan was an intensely private man, who rarely spoke about himself. Yet he spent most of his life either in the movies, or in politics, in Hollywood, or in Washington, D.C. These are the two most self-absorbed cities on this planet. They never changed Ronald Reagan.

At the end of a speech in the White House, a lady from the audience asked President Reagan for an autograph. He smiled, took the pen and paper, and said, “This reminds me of Hollywood.” He then told a story: “I was walking down the street in Hollywood one day and a man saw me and shouted, ‘You! I’ve been wanting to see you! I want your autograph; you are my favorite actor.’ ”

The man fumbled for paper and pencil as he came up to Reagan, handed them to him, patted him on the back and, still beaming, said, “Ray Milland!” And Reagan finished the story, “So, I signed Ray Milland. I made him happy.”

This was Ronald Reagan all over. He knew who he was, and never had to pretend. And this confidence, which never descended into arrogance, was one of the things that made Reagan a great speaker. This past week, we have heard a lot about Reagan the public speaker; Reagan the Great Communicator. But the commentary does not capture the real secret of Reagan’s success.

Reagan often used the words of others to express the thoughts he wanted to get across. In his Inaugural Address, Reagan quoted a World War I soldier, buried in Arlington Cemetery. None of us will forget Reagan’s speech at Normandy, when he read the words of a young woman to her father, a D-Day veteran: “I’m going there, Dad, and I’ll see the beaches and the barricades and the monuments. I’ll feel all the things you made me feel through your stories and your eyes. I’ll never forget what you went through, Dad, nor will I let anyone else forget. And Dad, I’ll always be proud.”

Even Reagan’s most famous phrase, Shining City on a Hill, is from Gov. John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

But in every case, when Reagan said the words, we remembered them, because Reagan had the ability to look into the heart of great Americans, and make us see, and feel, what great Americans see and feel.

Ronald Reagan did not learn to be a Great Communicator in Hollywood. He learned it in Tampico and in Dixon, the small towns where he grew up, and where he learned what he later called the five short words that expressed his message: “family, work, neighborhood, freedom, peace.”

Perhaps the most touching of Reagan’s quotations came from his Farewell Address. He told the story of some boat people from Vietnam, about to picked up by the carrier Midway. “As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied a sailor on deck and stood up and called out to him. He yelled, ‘Hello, American sailor. Hello, Freedom Man.’ ”

And this brings us to the actions, and the legacy of Ronald Reagan, for that is what he was: a freedom man, perhaps the greatest freedom man of the 20th century.

Reagan’s role in the fall of the Soviet Union has been well documented, but in retrospect, it is easy to forget just how unlikely Reagan’s victory seemed in 1981. Since the end of the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union had gained allies in Southeast Asia, southern Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East and Central America. NATO appeared to be crumbling. This was the world Reagan inherited.

There was a different sort of oppression here at home; the oppression of creeping despair. Our economy was reeling, our enemies were advancing, and our confidence in our democracy was faltering. Reagan brought hope to a weary country, and light to a world in which the darkness was growing.

He did so by removing the shackles that had bound up the creativity, spirit, drive and natural optimism of the American people. By showing his faith in us, he helped us rediscover our faith in ourselves.

Abroad, Reagan presented the Soviet Union with two insurmountable challenges. He called it what it was, an empire of evil. Reagan also presented the Soviets with a technological challenge, by launching the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Faced with these two challenges, the Soviets gambled on reform, a reform Reagan knew could never work. No enslaved people will ever be satisfied with just a little more democracy. Reagan consciously unleashed the forces that would consign the Soviet Union to the destiny he foresaw for it as early as 1981: the ash heap of history. Hundreds of millions all over the world breathe the air of freedom because of Ronald Reagan.

And even as his illness clouded his vision, who can doubt that Ronald Reagan, even at the end, still saw the America he described in 1984? “Her heart is full,” he said, “her door is still golden, her future bright. She has arms big enough to comfort and strong enough to support, for the strength in her arms is the strength of her people. She will carry on unafraid, unashamed and unsurpassed. In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America’s is.”

Godspeed, President Reagan. Goodbye, Freedom Man.