I have been twice.
Walking through the displays in the library, the overwhelming sense for me was that we today are surrounded by pygmies. Reagan’s time was a period of momentous greatness, both here and abroad.
Yes, I’ve been there twice now, last time was this past June. Visiting his grave is emotional for me too.
I loved going up to the library to witness the sunset. If you stand by the piece of the Berlin Wall and look out, you can see the sun setting over the Pacific which glints copper as the sun vanishes.
I went there to see the Air Force One exhibit in 2007 with my cousins when I flew down to L.A. to see them. My cousin-by-marriage was a major TV writer and producer until he retired to play tennis and golf. He’s an unrepentant liberal.
At the beginning of the tour, there was a film about Reagan. By the end, people were in tears, and my cousin walked out in annoyance. The rest of us rejoined him later.
At the grave site, my last stop on the tour, I found people in tears.
When we got home from the library visit, I found a framed script on his office wall with dialog between Reagan and Bob Hope with a whole series of handwritten changes and corrections. I asked him about it.
When Hope did his 85th birthday show on NBC in 1988, my cousin had written the script for that piece of dialog. He had faxed the script to Reagan aboard AF1, and he suspected that Reagan would not like one particular joke in the script. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Reagan called him over the AF1 phone, and they spent the next 15 minutes polishing that gag until it was perfect.
Despite the differences in their politics, he respected Reagan’s comic timing and gifts for showbiz. That was enough for him to frame the script on the wall. It was two seasoned professionals at their best.