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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Ronald Reagan
Quote:
“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 new dawn ahead.”
-- From the letter announcing his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, November 1994
1911-1933 Early years
Feb. 6: Ronald Wilson Reagan born in Tampico, Ill., to John and Nelle Reagan.
1926: As a high schooler working summers as a lifeguard at Lowell Park in Dixon, Ill., he is credited with saving 77 lives over seven summers.
1928: Graduates from high school in Dixon, Ill., where he was student body president and a football, basketball and track athlete.
1932: Graduates from Eureka College, (Eureka, Ill.) where he majored in economics. Gets a job as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Davenport, Iowa. Casts first presidential vote (for Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
1933: Transfers to an NBC station in Des Moines, making regular trips to California to cover the Chicago Cubs in spring training through 1937. 1937-1953 Hollywood
1937: Signs a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers for $200 a week.
1938: Stars in “Brother Rat,” in which he plays the boyfriend of Jane Wyman.
1939: Plays a part in “Dark Victory,” starring Bette Davis.
1940: Stars as George Gipp in “Knute Rockne, All-American.”
1941: Appointed as an alternate to the Screen Actors Guild board.
1942: Stars in “Kings Row” as Drake McHugh, the performance widely regarded as his best.
1947: Elected president of SAG, a position he will hold for five consecutive one-year terms, then again from 1959-60. He also testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee about Communist infiltration of the movie industry.
1953: Becomes host of the CBS weekly TV series “General Electric Theater.” He travels the country making speeches, formulating his conservative philosophy and becoming known as a persuasive, conservative speaker. 1940-2001 Family Life
Jan. 26: Marries Jane Wyman.
1942: Daughter Maureen born.
1945: Adopts son Michael.
June 1947: Wyman gives birth to a child four months prematurely. The child dies, and the Reagans’ marriage, strained by his commitment to the Screen Actors Guild, is shaken.
June 6, 1948: Wyman and Reagan divorce. Later, director Mervyn LeRoy asks him to help a young actress whose name keeps appearing on Communist mailing lists. Reagan discovers there’s more than one Nancy Davis in Hollywood, and the one he’s been asked to help is not a Communist.
March 4, 1952: Reagan marries Nancy Davis. Daughter Patricia (Patti) born later that year.
1958: Son Ronald Prescott Reagan born.
2001: Daughter Maureen Reagan dies of cancer. 1956-1964 Political Awakening
1956: Campaigns as a Democrat for Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.
1960: Ends actors strike by recommending that studios create a pension and welfare plan for actors with a one-time contribution from studios of $2.65 million. In return, actors forfeit their residuals from TV showings of movies made before1960, but receive 6 percent of all gross sales to television after that year.
1962: Switches from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.
Summer, 1964: Reagan gives his “A Time for Choosing” speech for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, which kicks off Reagan’s own political career. 1966-1976 Governor/Candidate
1966: Elected governor of California, defeating incumbent Pat Brown.
1970: Wins second California gubernatorial bid with 53 percent of the vote after declaring war on student unrest -- particularly at Berkeley, which he considered a hotbed of Communism and promiscuity.
1971: Signs the nation’s first Welfare Reform Act designed to reduce welfare rolls. His other greatest act as governor was balancing the state budget.
1974: Sets out with wife Nancy for a national tour to gauge public support for a potential presidential campaign.
1976: Narrowly loses the presidential nomination to President Gerald Ford 1980-1989 Commander in Chief
1980: Elected president of the United States, beating President Jimmy Carter 51 percent to 41 percent in the popular vote and carrying 44 states, as well as gaining 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 49.
Jan. 20, 1981: Sworn in as 40th president of the United States as 52 U.S. hostages are released from Iran. The $16 million inauguration that followed was the most expensive in history to that date.
March 30, 1981: Seventy days into his presidency, Reagan is shot by John Hinckley Jr., in an assassination attempt. He jokes to surgeons that he hopes they are all Republicans.
April 28, 1981: Greeted by applause when he appears to sell his economic recovery program to Congress. Known as “supply-side economics,” “Reaganomics” and sometimes “voodoo economics,” it cut taxes and increased defense spending -- and though the plan had received little support in Congress before the assassination attempt, it was signed into law that summer.
Aug. 3, 1981: Fires 11,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike in what proved to be a turning point in the U.S. labor movement.
June 8, 1982: Delivers his famous “Evil Empire” speech to the British House of Commons, saying the Soviet Union is “the focus of evil in the modern world.”
March 1983: Announces his Strategic Defense Initiative -- “Star Wars” -- a satellite-operated defense system designed to attack incoming nuclear missiles.
November 1984: Reagan wins his second term by beating Walter Mondale with 59 percent of the popular vote and winning 49 states.
1985: Secretly agrees to sell arms to Iran in exchange for release of hostages. Reagan said he wanted to keep contact with Iranian moderates. In 1987, national security adviser John Poindexter admits that he approved shifting the arms sales’ profits to anti-Communist Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua to give Reagan “plausible deniability.”
1986: Overhauls the nation’s income tax code, eliminating several deductions and exempting millions of low-income families. The nation enjoys prosperity without depression or recession.
June 12, 1987: Reagan stands in front of the Berlin Wall and before a large crowd exhorts, “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Dec. 8, 1987: Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty to eliminate all U.S. Pershing II and Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range missiles in Europe, effectively ending the Cold War.
Jan. 20, 1989: Ends presidency, but leaves conservative mark on the Supreme Court, having appointed Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Sandra Day O’Connor as justices and elevating William Rehnquist to chief justice. Ronald and Nancy Reagan return to California. Later that year, the Berlin Wall falls, and Chinese students protest in Tiananmen Square. 1994-2004 After the White House
Nov. 5: Reagan reveals in an open letter to the nation that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Feb. 4, 1998: Washington National Airport renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
May 5, 1998: Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center dedicated in Washington, D.C. The building houses the Environmental Protection Agency and a free-trade center.
June 5, 2004: Reagan dies at his home in Los Angeles. He was 93.
Ronald Reagan is sworn in as governor of California by Associate Justice Marshall McComb on Jan. 2, 1967.
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Medal History
