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| Photograph of Ronald "Dutch" Reagan (with "Dutch boy" haircut), Neil Reagan (brother) and parents Jack and Nelle Reagan, ca. 1914, shortly before the family moved to the Chicago home at 832 E. 57th Street, which was callously demolished by the University of Chicago, April 2-4, 2013. |
The Reagan Chicago flat will be demolished today. Thus will the last remnants of the building, in which God was cultivating the soul of a president and that uniquely winning personality, be decimated. Young Ronald “Dutch” Reagan developed memories there, which, as DNAinfo.com reported yesterday, and Drudge re-posted, he wrote about in his 1990 autobiography, An American Life:
When I was (three), we moved to Chicago where my father had gotten a promising job selling shoes at the Marshall Field’s department store. We moved into a small flat near the University of Chicago that was lighted by a single gas jet brought to life with the deposit of a quarter in a slot down the hall.
Jack’s job didn’t pay as well as he had hoped, and that meant Nelle had to make a soup bone last several days and be creative in other ways with her cooking. On Saturdays, she usually sent my brother to the butcher with a request for some liver (liver wasn’t very popular in those days) to feed our family at—which didn’t exist. The liver became our Sunday dinner.
In Chicago I got a serious case of bronchial pneumonia and while I was recuperating one of our neighbors brought me several of his son’s lead soldiers. I spent hours standing them up on the bed covers and pushing them back and forth in mock combat. To this day I get a little thrill out of seeing a cabinet full of toy soldiers.
Our stay in Chicago introduced me to a congested urban world of gas-lit sidewalks and streets alive with people, carriages, trolley cars, and occasional automobiles. Once, while watching a clanging horse-drawn fire engine race past me with a cloud of steam rising behind it, I decided that it was my intention in life to become a fireman.
After we’d been in Chicago for less than two years, Jack was offered a job at O.T. Johnson’s, a big department store in Galesburg 140 miles to the west of Chicago, and we moved again, this time to a completely different world. Instead of noisy streets and crowds of people, it consisted of meadows and caves, trees and streams, and the joys of small-town life. From that time onward, I guess I’ve always been partial to small towns and the outdoors.
On this morning, I guess I’m partial to small towns and the outdoors, too, Dutch. And, while I encountered wonderful-hearted folks on my visits to Chicago—I’ve never gotten more compliments on my hat!—as I told Lee Bey, “To paraphrase Billy Wilder’s classic line in Sunset Boulevard, in the end, Reagan is still big. It’s the hearts that got small.” —“Bulldozers roll on Ronald Reagan's boyhood home in Hyde Park,” Beyond the Boat Tour.
As President of the Friends of President Reagan’s Chicago Home, I want to thank my wonderfully supportive board, including founding members Peter Hannaford and Matthew A. Rarey, and permanent members Don Totten, Dan Proft, Nicholas Hahn III and Matt. I also want to thank other members of my marvelous “core team” including true friends like Fr. C. John McCloskey, Dick Vie, Jeff Phillips, Paul Fisher, Joe Morris, John Ruberry, Sam Guard, Ann Lewis, Robert Russell, A.C. Lyles, Craig Shirley, Diana Banister—and, of course, the irrepressible late Redd Griffin, on whose behalf I took up this cause—and so many others, some of whom had to work under the radar, given the “Chicago Way.” Some of my team provided only moral support, which was worth its weight in gold. We worked hard to advance a “just cause,” as Fr. C. John described it. But, it was not to be.
As President of the Friends of President Reagan’s Chicago Home, I want to thank my wonderfully supportive board, including founding members Peter Hannaford and Matthew A. Rarey, and permanent members Don Totten, Dan Proft, Nicholas Hahn III and Matt. I also want to thank other members of my marvelous “core team” including true friends like Fr. C. John McCloskey, Dick Vie, Jeff Phillips, Paul Fisher, Joe Morris, John Ruberry, Sam Guard, Ann Lewis, Robert Russell, A.C. Lyles, Craig Shirley, Diana Banister—and, of course, the irrepressible late Redd Griffin, on whose behalf I took up this cause—and so many others, some of whom had to work under the radar, given the “Chicago Way.” Some of my team provided only moral support, which was worth its weight in gold. We worked hard to advance a “just cause,” as Fr. C. John described it. But, it was not to be.
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| In front of President Reagan's Chicago home, 832 E. 57th Street, Friday, November 30, wearing that hat that won so many compliments! Credit: Matthew A. Rarey |
And, so I
return full-time to my first love—writing. As my friend Charles
Scribner III wrote me last night in this stress-melting classic line,
“Monuments in words such as yours will always outlast bricks and mortar!”
So, too, the monument Reagan constructed in An American Life has outlasted the home in which those memories about which he wrote were formed.
Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based writer, who was elected on March 4, 2013 to serve as president of the Friends of President Reagan’s Chicago Home by the Board of Directors. She had been informally serving in that capacity since Friends incorporated in the State of Illinois on January 16, 2013. She began spearheading the initiative on November 30, 2012.
So, too, the monument Reagan constructed in An American Life has outlasted the home in which those memories about which he wrote were formed.
Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based writer, who was elected on March 4, 2013 to serve as president of the Friends of President Reagan’s Chicago Home by the Board of Directors. She had been informally serving in that capacity since Friends incorporated in the State of Illinois on January 16, 2013. She began spearheading the initiative on November 30, 2012.
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LINKS TO ARTICLES
Articles in bold italics were either written (one co-written) by, or quote,
Mary Claire Kendall, President, Friends of President Reagan's Chicago Home:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/reagan-big-hearts-small_720609.html
http://www.chicagomag.com/Radar/Deal-Estate/April-2013/Tearing-Down-Ronald-Reagans-Boyhood-Apartment-Was-Just-Wrong/Articles in bold italics were either written (one co-written) by, or quote,
Mary Claire Kendall, President, Friends of President Reagan's Chicago Home:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/reagan-big-hearts-small_720609.html
http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130403/hyde-park/ronald-reagans-boyhood-home-being-demolished-by-university-of-chicago
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303589/President-Reagans-childhood-Chicago-home-demolished-University-Chicago-turns-parking-lot.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/Reagan's-Home-in-Chicago
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0401-reagan-20130401,0,3481356.story
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/19033975-452/mary-claire-kendall-and-nicholas-hahn-iii-save-the-chicago-home-of-ronald-reagan.html
http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/02/06/win_one_more_for_the_gipper.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maryclairekendall/2013/02/06/ronald-reagans-heart-two-emotional-landmarks/
http://washingtonexaminer.com/op-ed-the-real-story-on-ronald-reagans-childhood-home/article/2520514
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/12/11/historic-home-or-grassy-strip
http://washingtonexaminer.com/hyde-park-showdown-over-reagans-childhood-home/article/2515272
April 6, 2013—Correspondence with financial supporter:
And, finally, here’s the link to our first blog, December 14-January 19.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0401-reagan-20130401,0,3481356.story
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/19033975-452/mary-claire-kendall-and-nicholas-hahn-iii-save-the-chicago-home-of-ronald-reagan.html
http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/02/06/win_one_more_for_the_gipper.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maryclairekendall/2013/02/06/ronald-reagans-heart-two-emotional-landmarks/
http://washingtonexaminer.com/op-ed-the-real-story-on-ronald-reagans-childhood-home/article/2520514
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/12/11/historic-home-or-grassy-strip
http://washingtonexaminer.com/hyde-park-showdown-over-reagans-childhood-home/article/2515272
April 6, 2013—Correspondence with financial supporter:
“You fought hard Mary Claire. You did your best and will be
remembered for that.”
“Thank you, Ed. And, thank you for your support. This week’s events cast a big neon light on the fissure in America today. Of course, Reagan’s Chicago home should have be saved—that was a no-brainer. That it wasn’t says nothing about Reagan but about how small the hearts have become, as I commented in my summary statement to Lee Bey in this piece. On the other hand, as one distinguished friend commented, it showed how much we cared. And if our effort accomplished anything, it accomplished that. Now we just need to translate that passion into winning the battles Ronald Reagan cared so deeply about.”
“Thank you, Ed. And, thank you for your support. This week’s events cast a big neon light on the fissure in America today. Of course, Reagan’s Chicago home should have be saved—that was a no-brainer. That it wasn’t says nothing about Reagan but about how small the hearts have become, as I commented in my summary statement to Lee Bey in this piece. On the other hand, as one distinguished friend commented, it showed how much we cared. And if our effort accomplished anything, it accomplished that. Now we just need to translate that passion into winning the battles Ronald Reagan cared so deeply about.”
And, finally, here’s the link to our first blog, December 14-January 19.
