Walking his father's footsteps: Michael Reagan visits former president's local roots
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| Michael Reagan greets volunteers at the Boyhood Home Visitor Center in Dixon Saturday afternoon. (Philip Marruffo/pmarruffo@svnmail.com) |
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When Michael Reagan shouted “hello” to a crowd of more than 100 people gathered Saturday in Tampico, he truly meant it.
The son of the nation’s 40th president, he was visiting Ronald Reagan’s birthplace for the first time. Reagan toured various areas in the Sauk Valley, where his father was born and raised, to commemorate what would have been the former president’s 99th birthday.
Reagan also spoke at a luncheon at Sauk Valley Community College about a new scholarship arrangement with Eureka College, “Dutch’s” alma mater.
“I’ve been to Eureka College a couple of times, but not to Tampico, never been to Dixon to see the Boyhood Home,” Reagan admitted to the crowd at the college.
President Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004, was born Feb. 6, 1911, in Tampico, and lived there and in other towns until 1920. The family moved to Dixon, where they lived until 1937, then relocated to California. Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932.
Reagan said Saturday the former president never forgot his friends and roots, and he always came back to his beginnings and the way of life he loved. Throughout the day, the president’s son greeted children, students and residents and told stories about his father. He told of his father being a storyteller, and a champion of liberty, freedom and education.
Reagan described how his father gave him a lecture about taxes when he asked for a raise in allowance. He discussed how, as governor of California, his father initiated California’s work program because his own father, Jack, had worked for the WPA (Work Projects Administration) during the Great Depression. He also joked about how Nancy Reagan couldn’t be blamed for the president’s Alzheimer’s disease because she didn’t cook.
President Reagan, who was known for his horseback riding and for being a lifeguard, learned to swim and ride in Tampico. The crowd at the president’s Tampico birthplace heard Reagan tell of how his father taught him to swim by throwing him into the pool.
Joan Johnson, volunteer coordinator for the Tampico Historical Museum and Birthplace of President Ronald Reagan, and also a member of the Illinois Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission, gave Reagan a tour of the birthplace at 111 S. Main St., a focal point for the day.
More than 2,000 visitors from 48 states and 18 countries toured the birthplace in 2009, Johnson said.
The Reagan Birthplace is an apartment over a bank restored to the period when the Reagan family lived there from 1906 to 1911. They lived in Tampico and elsewhere, and moved to Dixon in 1920.
The tour included the bedroom where the president was born and ended with Reagan and his entourage crawling through the famous back-porch window where the president’s mother, Nelle, handed Ronald and his brother, Neil, to the baby sitter next door when she left to do errands.
A celebration, complete with birthday cake and a singing of “Happy Birthday,” was held at the Tampico museum.
In Tampico there was a birthday cake celebration and singing “Happy Birthday” to the president at the Historical Society Museum. The village hopes to participate in the many local celebrations of Reagan’s 100th birthday next year by raising money to erect a statue of the president at Reagan Park.
“Every year since he was elected president we have had a birthday party for him,” Johnson said. “We would have the birthday cake, punch and coffee – just an open house at the Tampico Historical Museum.”
Once in Dixon, Michael visited the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home at 816 S. Hennepin Ave., which was one of several homes the Reagans rented in Dixon until 1937. The Reagans lived at Hennepin for 3 years. The home was restored to the time period under the direction of President Reagan’s daughter, Maureen. The home shows antiques, such as an icebox and Jewel Tea Co. dishes the family may have used.
“Everything is true to the time period,” said Janet Hertel, a tour guide for the Dixon Boyhood Home.
Hertel said Ronald Reagan moved his parents to California after he received a contract with Warner Brothers Studios.
“It was the first home his parents ever owned,” she said.
