Ronald Reagan: Actor, President And Secret FBI Informant

Ronald Reagan, the 40th President Of the United States

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6th, 1911 in Tampico Illinois to Nelle Clyde Wilson and Jack Reagan. 

Nelle taught Ronald to always expect to find the best in people which he often did.

Jack was a salesman and a story teller. Jack nicknamed Ronald "Dutch" due to his "fat little Dutchman"-like appearance and "Dutchboy" haircut.

Ronald’s ancestry is Irish on his father’s side and Scots-English on his mother’s side.

Ronald was raised in a poor family in a small town of northern Illinois.

He was baptized into the the Disciples of Christ faith in 1922.

Long before the civil rights movement, Ronald opposed racial discrimination. One time in Dixon, the proprietor of a local inn would not allow black people to stay there, Ronald brought them back to his house. His mother invited them to stay overnight and have breakfast the next morning.

At Dixon High School Ronald developed interests in acting, sports, and storytelling.

Ronald's first job was as a summer lifeguard at Rock River in Lowell Park. He preformed 77 rescues over six years.

He attended Eureka College were he majored in economics and sociology and graduated with a C grade. He was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, a cheerleader, was on the football team and was captain of the swim team. He was elected student body president and led a student revolt against the college president after the president tried to cut back the faculty.

After he graduated college in 1932, Ronald worked as a sports announcer on several regional radio stations before moving to WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa. There he was as an announcer for Chicago Cubs baseball games creating play-by-play accounts of games using only basic descriptions that the station received by wire as the games were in progress.

In 1937, Ronald traveled with the Cubs to California, while there he took a screen test with Warner Brothers Studios. This lead to a seven year contract.

His first starring role was in the 1937 movie Love Is on the Air. 

In 1938, on the set of the film Brother Rat, Ronald met fellow actress Jane Wyman. 

They fell in love and were married on January 26, 1940 at the Wee Kirk o' the Heather church in Glendale, California. 

Together they had three children, Maureen, Christine and Michael. Christine only lived one day and Michael was adopted.

Ronald lost partial hearing in one ear when he was hurt on the movie set "Code Of The Secret Service" in 1939 after a gun was fired next to his ear. Decades later, President Reagan wrote to Michael Jackson offering his support after Jackson was burned filming Pepsi TV commercial.

By the end of 1939 he had already appeared in 19 films.

In 1940, in the film Knute Rockne, All American, Ronald played the role of George "The Gipper" Gipp and from it, he acquired the lifelong nickname "the Gipper".

Ronald acted in the 1942 movie "Kings Row" where he played a double amputee who recites the line "Where's the rest of me?" This was his favorite movie he acted in.

One April 14th, 1942, he was ordered to military active duty in San Francisco. He classified for limited service only due to his poor eyesight, this excluded him from serving overseas. He was promoted to captain of the First Motion Picture Unit on July 22, 1943 where  he was indirectly involved in discovering actress Marilyn Monroe. He returned to Fort MacArthur, California, where he was separated from active duty on December 9, 1945.

In December 1945, he was stopped from leading an anti-nuclear rally in Hollywood by pressure from the Warner Bros. studio.

Ronald was twice elected President of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1940's. During this time Ronald and his then wife Jane, provided the FBI with the names of actors within the motion picture industry whom they believed to be communist sympathizers. 

He also testified in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee against the "Hollywood Ten."

Ronald had doubts about being a spy for the government. Before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he stated,

"I never as a citizen want to see our country become urged, by either fear or resentment of this group, that we ever compromise with any of our democratic principles through that fear or resentment."

Ronald Reagan started out as a democrat and his wife, Jane, a republican. This along with Ronald's Screen Actors Guild duties lead Jane to file for divorce in 1948. Their divorced was finalized in 1949.

In 1949, Ronald met actress Nancy Davis while he was helping her with her name appearing on a Communist blacklist in Hollywood. She had been mistaken for another lady of the same name. Nancy described their meeting as, 

"I don't know if it was exactly love at first sight, but it was pretty close."

They were married on March 4, 1952, at the Little Brown Church in the valley with actor William Holden serving as best man. 

Together they had two children together, Patti and Ronald "Ron" Jr.

Ronald became a motivational speaker at General Electric factories.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was "a true hero" to Ronald, but  Ronald became a Republican in 1962 and was a leading conservative spokesman in the Goldwater campaign of 1964. 

Ronald believed in the importance of smaller government. 

In his famous speech, "A Time for Choosing" Ronald states,

"The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing ... You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream—the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order—or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism"

Ronald's last movie role was in the 1964, The Killers. It was based on an Ernest Hemingway story, and  Ronald's only role as a villain in a film. It was the first made-for-TV movie, but was considered too violent for TV, and released to movie theaters instead.

His final work as a professional actor, Ronald was a host and performer from 1964 to 1965 on the television series Death Valley Days.

When Ronald was newly elected governor of California in 1966, by defeating former San Francisco mayor George Christopher, he sided with his political benefactors over Cesar Chavez.

Cesar Chavez led the movement to end the underpayment and inhumane working conditions endured by over a million Mexican-American farm workers.

Reagan's campaign emphasized "to send the welfare bums back to work," and "to clean up the mess at Berkeley". During his tenure as senator, Ronald raised taxes and turned a state budget deficit to a surplus. He also ordered in National Guard troops during the People's Park protests at the University of California. 

This led to an incident that became known as "Bloody Thursday," resulting in the death of student James Rector and the blinding of carpenter Alan Blanchard. 

Ronald was re-elected as Governor in 1970 defeating "Big Daddy" Jesse M. Unruh. That year, Ronald then responded to questions about campus protest movements saying, 

"If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. 

No more appeasement."

Ronald was "pro-life" he was quoted as saying, 

“I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.”

In 1967, Reagan signed the Mulford Act, which repealed a law allowing public carrying of loaded firearms. This garnered national attention after the Black Panthers marched bearing arms upon the California State Capitol to protest it.

He strongly supported capital punishment.

In 1968 and 1976, he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination. Four years later, he won the nomination, and then defeated incumbent president Jimmy Carter.

Ronald's campaign included, lowering taxes to stimulate the economy, less government interference in people's lives, states' rights, and a strong national defense.

George H. W. Bush was Ronald's running mate.

Debategate, was a political scandal that took place in the final days of the 1980 presidential election. Reagan's team had somehow acquired President Jimmy Carter's top secret briefing papers that Carter used in the preparation for the October 28, 1980, debate with Reagan.

On November 4, 1980, Ronald won over Carter, carrying 44 states and receiving 489 electoral votes. Ronald also won the popular vote.

Ronald was 69 years old at the time of his inauguration. Until Donald Trump came along, Ronald was the oldest president-elect to take the oath of office. Ronald was also the the first person elected as President to have been divorced.

After taking office, Ronald began implementing his  "Reaganomics", which were his economic policies associated especially with the reduction of taxes and the promotion of unrestricted free-market activity. This spurred economic growth, economic deregulation, and reduction in government spending.

In his first year in office Ronald appointed Sandra Day O'Connor as America's first female Supreme Court Justice. He also appointed Clarence M. Pendleton Jr., of San Diego as the first African American to chair the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

In 1981, Ronald became the first president to propose a constitutional amendment on school prayer stating,

"Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions. 

No person shall be required by the United States or by any state to participate in prayer."

On March 30, 1981, Ronald was leaving the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. when he was shot at six times by John Hinckley, who was loitering by a poorly guarded exit. Ronald only was hit once because the bullet ricocheted off the presidential limousine and into his’s chest. A police officer was wounded, as well as a Secret Service agent, and press secretary James Brady. The attack left Brady partially paralyzed. Hinckley was obsessed with actress Jodie Foster and he claims that he tried to kill Ronald in order to impress her. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on June 21, 1982.

Also in 1981, the AID's crisis arrived in the United States. Some say Ronald largely ignored the crisis and did little about it. By the time Ronald had given his first speech on the epidemic, it was six years into his presidency. 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with AIDS and 20,849 had died of it. By the end of  the year Reagan left office, 115,786 people had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States, and more than 70,000 of them had died of it.

However federal funding for AIDS-related programs was $2.3 billion in 1989 and nearly $6 billion total over his presidency.

In 1982, Ronald signed legislation establishing a federal Martin Luther King holiday.

Ronald began the War on Drugs campaign in 1982 saying that "drugs were menacing our society". He promised to fight for drug-free schools and workplaces, expand drug treatment, strengthen law enforcement and drug interdiction efforts, and bring fourth greater public awareness.

Ronald ordered a massive buildup of the United States Armed Forces. He revived the B-1 Lancer program that had been canceled by the Carter administration, and he produced the MX missile. 

In 1982 Ronald impeded Moscow's proposed gas line to Western Europe. It hurt the Soviet economy, but it also caused ill will among American allies in Europe who counted on that revenue. Ronald retreated on this issue.

On March 3, 1983, Ronald predicted that communism would collapse, stating,

 "Communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written."

In September of 1983, Ronald's administration suspended all Soviet passenger air service to the United States, and dropped several agreements being negotiated with the Soviets after Soviet fighters downed Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Moneron Island. The flight carried 269 people, including Georgia congressman Larry McDonald. Ronald stated that that act was "massacre" and said that the Soviets had turned "against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere."

Ronald deployed the CIA's Special Activities Division to Afghanistan and Pakistan. They trained, equipped and lead Mujahideen forces against the Soviet Army. This action credited him for assisting in ending the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The CIA also began sharing information with the Iranian government, which it was secretly courting. This cost billions of dollars, advanced the career of a Mujahidin commander named Osama bin Laden and led to the emergence of the Taliban.

He did all of this in order to curtail the Soviet Union's influence over Central Asia.
He also continued the war after the USSR's retreat.
This helped bring about bin Laden's ascendancy in the region.Reagan illegally sold weapons to the unfriendly Iranian government to fund right-wing rebel forces in Nicaragua.

This leading to the Iran-Contra scandal.

In March 1983, Ronald introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative. This was a missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. He believed that this could make nuclear war impossible.

In 1983, Ronald sent forces to Lebanon for a peacekeeping mission during the Lebanese Civil War. On October 23, 1983, two truck bombs struck buildings, that housed that peacekeeping operation, in Beirut, Lebanon. The attack killed 241 U.S. and 58 French peacekeepers, 6 civilian, and the 2 attackers. Ronald sent in the USS New Jersey battleship to shell Syrian positions in Lebanon, he then withdrew all the Marines from there.

On October 25th, 1983,  Ronald, citing the threat posed to American nationals on the Caribbean nation of Grenada by that nation's Marxist regime, ordered the Marines to parachute into battle during Operation Urgent Fury. Operation Urgent Fury was the first major military operation conducted by U.S. forces since the Vietnam War. After several days of fighting, the U.S. was victorious, with 19 American fatalities and 116 wounded American soldiers. In mid-December, after a new government was appointed by the governor-general, U.S. forces withdrew.

When Ronald ran for re-election in 1984, he defeated former vice president Walter Mondale in a landslide with the second-largest electoral college victory in American history.

In 1986, Reagan signed a drug enforcement bill that budgeted $1.7 billion to fund the War on Drugs and specified a mandatory minimum penalty for drug offenses. This was highly criticized  for promoting significant racial disparities in the prison population and for doing nothing to change the availability of this drugs on the street.

On January 28th, 1986, the night of the Space Shuttle Challenge disaster, Ronald delivered a speech, written by Peggy Noonan, in which he said:

"The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave ... We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God.'"

On Tuesday, April 15, 1986, in retaliation for the West Berlin discotheque bombing, that resulted in the injury of 63 American military personnel and death of one serviceman, Ronald authorized the use of force against the country. In the late evening of April 15, 1986, the United States launched a series of airstrikes, code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon, on ground targets in Libya. To explain his actions, Ronald said,

"When our citizens are attacked or abused anywhere in the world on the direct orders of hostile regimes, we will respond so long as I'm in this office.

Ronald signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act which enacted on November 6th, 1986, which was passed in order to control and deter illegal immigration to the United States. This made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants, required employers to attest to their employees' immigration status, and granted amnesty to approximately three million illegal immigrants who entered the United States before January 1, 1982, and had lived in the country continuously.

The Iran Contra Affair came to light in November 1986. when Ronald Reagan conceded that the United States had sold weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It was part of a largely successful effort to secure the release of six U.S. citizens being held hostage in Lebanon.
Some of the money from the arms deal had been covertly and illegally funneled into a fund to aid the right wing Contras counter revolutionary groups seeking to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Ronald escalated an arms race with the USSR while engaging in talks with Gorbachev.

Speaking at the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987, Ronald challenged Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!"

When Gorbachev visited Washington in December 1987, he and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. 

In 1988, he vetoed the Civil Rights Restoration Act, arguing that the legislation infringed on states' rights and the rights of churches and business owners. His veto was overridden by Congress.

In 1988, near the end of the Iran–Iraq War, the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes accidentally shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 civilian passengers. 

He was the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower to serve two full terms, after a succession of five prior presidents did not.

In November 1994, Ronald announced, through a letter, that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier that year. The letter read,

"I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease ... 

At the moment I feel just fine. 

I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done ... 

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. 

May God always bless you."

Ronald's son Ron said he had suspected early signs of his father's dementia as early as 1984 and former CBS White House correspondent Lesley Stahl said that in her final meeting with the president in 1986, Ronald did not seem to know who Stahl was at first. However, all four of Ronald's White House doctors said that they saw no evidence of Alzheimer's while he was president.

Ronald did suffered an episode of head trauma in July 1989, after being thrown from a horse in Mexico. A subdural hematoma was found and surgically treated later in the year. The fall supposedly hastened the onset of Alzheimer's disease. 

He passed away of pneumonia, complicated by Alzheimer's disease, at age 93, at his home in the Bel Air district of Los Angeles, California on  Saturday, June 5th, 2004, at 1 p.m. 

He had a seven day state funeral, which was executed by the Military District of Washington. 

Ronald Reagan was the first former U.S. president to die in the 21st century.

In this life Ronald Reagan won many honors including, being made an Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, the Presidential Medal of Freedom the Republican Senatorial Medal of Freedom. 

Did you know that Ronald Reagan loved jelly beans and black licorice was is favorite flavor? He was trying to kick a pipe smoking habit. He wasn't a fussy eater, but he hated brussels sprouts and tomatoes.

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