Posted on 06/11/2004 11:58:52 AM PDT by RWR8189
TOM BROKAW and Dan Rather believe too much media attention has been heaped on Ronald Reagan after his death at 93 last weekend. And it's true Reagan, a modest man with much to be proud of, might have been embarrassed by so many glowing testimonials about him. But he was a strong believer in focusing public attention on the dead and especially in eulogies. How do we know this? Reagan said so.
In 1989, the year Reagan's presidency ended, he published a collection of his speeches entitled Speaking My Mind. Reagan personally selected the speeches and, interestingly, he left out all of his State of the Union addresses. But he included eight eulogies he delivered at memorial services or funerals. One is the speech Reagan gave in 1969 at the death of his friend, actor Robert Taylor.
Reagan prefaced the speeches with brief comments on the significance of each one. "I honestly believe eulogies have significance," he wrote about the Taylor speech. "I believe they are some of the most important speeches I've ever given. I don't mean because they changed the face of the nation in any way, but because it's a very great responsibility to capture the spirit of an individual and what he or she meant to the world . . . You have the power to sum up a human life. I've always taken this power quite seriously."
Indeed, the Reagan eulogies are revealing about those he praised--and about the former president himself. He said Taylor is remembered by million of moviegoers "with gratitude that in the darkened theater he never embarrassed them in front of their children." Reagan, of course, preferred movies from his decades in Hollywood to recent films, which he thought coarse and too sexually explicit.
Reagan's most famous eulogy honored the Challenger astronauts killed in 1986. "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God,'" he said. In his preface to the eulogy, he recalled standing next to Jane Smith, widow of astronaut Michael Smith, at a memorial service in Houston a few days later. She gave Reagan the 3" x 5" card on which her husband had written and left on his dresser. "He wrote about the importance of the mission," Reagan said. "It was such a personal, generous gift that I didn't feel right keeping it. I made a copy . . . and gave her back the original."
Some of Reagan's eulogies are difficult to read without tearing up. In 1985, 248 soldiers of the 101st Airborne were killed in a plane crash in Newfoundland as they returned home for Christmas. At a memorial service at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Reagan offered a prayer. "Receive, O Lord, into your heavenly kingdom the men and women of the 101st Airborne, the men and women of the Screaming Eagles. They must be singing now, in their joy, flying higher than mere man can fly and as flights of angels take them to their rest. . . . They will never grow old. They will always be young. And we know one thing with every bit of our thinking: They are now in the arms of God."
At one memorial service--Reagan couldn't remember which one--he had a touching experience after he spoke. "Words do help, but so can simply going from one family to the next and offering personal condolences," he wrote in his introduction to the Fort Campbell eulogy. "Nancy and I were going from person to person trying to help with the grief and I came to a little boy. As I took his small hand, he said to me, 'Please bring my daddy home.' I cannot describe to you the anguish."
Reagan's eulogies are filled with astonishing flourishes. In 1987, in a service for sailors killed when the USS Stark was attacked in the Persian Gulf, he declared:
Because they were heroes, let us not forget this: That for all the lovely spring and summer days we will never share with them again, for every Thanksgiving and Christmas that will seem empty without them, there will be other moments, too, moments when we see the light of discovery in young eyes, eyes that see for the first time the world around them and know the sweep of history and wonder, "Why is there such a place as America, and how is it that such a precious gift is mine?" And we can answer them. We can answer them by telling of this day and those that we come to honor here.
What's striking about Reagan's eulogies of individuals is that he describes them in ways that have come to apply to him. I doubt that he had himself in mind, though, when he portrayed Robert Taylor this way: "Simple things he had, like honor and honesty, responsibility to those he worked for and who worked for him, standing up for what he believed, and yes, even a simple old-fashioned love for his country, and above all, an inner humility." Not many political leaders have humility, inner or outer. Reagan did.
At the White House before a delegation about to leave for the funeral of assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in Cairo in 1981, Reagan offered a few remarks. He had met with Sadat two months earlier in Washington. Reagan's words were eloquent, but his preface in his book of speeches had a prophetic statement. Speaking of Sadat, he wrote: "He had crossed the line from that of simply another head of state with whom we did business to something more." Reagan, too, crossed that line.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
This is driving me crazy. A reporter this morning on a major network said that Reagan gave the eulogy for Sen. Heinz at the National Cathedral, but I've been searching the internet and I cannot find any support for that claim. Can anyone help me out here?
I don't think I shall see anyone the likes of The Gipper again in my lifetime. God Bless you, Ronald Reagan!
According to reports this past week Reagan picked the little boy up in his arms and whispered "I wish I could".
"I don't think I shall see anyone the likes of The Gipper again in my lifetime. God Bless you, Ronald Reagan!"
I didn't think it was possible...in 1979. I was happily shown I was wrong over the course of the next decade.
Like the saying goes, "leaders don't flock, you find them one at a time".
And I'll add, its normally when you need them most. Such as with Ronald Reagan...the man that pulled us all back from the abyss.
How great was this funeral? Hw wonderful is it to see this man get his due? Bush was awesome. FABULOUS eulogy. Thatcher - WOW. All so sad, yet so uplifting. I loved the Bob Cummings story in Bush's eulogy...
It was wonderful. We all were in Mom's room watching and crying. This whole week has been so great for our side...and for our country!
Paraphrase
"we didn't do bad, for a couple of Irishman, marrying up"
Tears were flowing, and squeezing my Wifes hand, I will never forget the moment...
I know him and I have never met him, I am better for having known him.
Speaking of eulogies, has anyone located a link to the stirring one she gave today?
There could have been no one better than Ron and Nancy comforting us and the families that day. I shall never forget the true agony and sincerity that shone through from their empathy. It is all seered into my memory.
Yes, there are limits to power granted to any man. Reagan knew this all to well.
On so many levels. The Reagan magic works again.
Wonderful, reads almost like Churchill. I love the bit about "the big fella upstairs." What a wonderful appreciation of what America really is. Let's restore her to where she was under Reagan.
I think President Bush has a much better understanding of the limits of power today than he did three years ago.
Guess you could say that about all of them.
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