The modest giantPage 2 of 2 -- In reminiscences this week, former staffers have described what it was like to work for the president. Several have recalled how, even when they were at the bottom of the pecking order, he never made them feel small or unworthy of notice. To the contrary: He noticed them, talked to them, made them feel special.
Reagan climbed as high as anyone in our age can climb. But it wasn't ego or a craving for honor and status that drove him, and he never lost his empathy for ordinary Americans -- or his connection with them, as we now know from his private correspondence. He was a lifelong letter writer -- perhaps the most prolific correspondent of any president since Jefferson. A collection of his letters was published last year ("Reagan: A Life in Letters"), and it is striking to see how many of them were written -- by hand, usually -- to angry or disappointed critics, many of them unimportant people he had never met. He is unfailingly polite and respectful; often he is touchingly earnest in his attempt to get them to see his side of an issue. And why would the president of the United States devote so much time to answering mail from complete nobodies? In part because he never forgot his own modest roots. He was a genuinely humble man, one who didn't scorn others as "complete nobodies." For who knew better than he just how far a "nobody" from nowhere might someday go? On June 3, 1984, Reagan visited Ballyporeen, the County Tipperary hamlet where his great-grandfather was born in 1828. "Today I come back to you as a descendant of people who are buried here in paupers' graves," he said. "Perhaps this is God's way of reminding us that we must always treat every individual, no matter what his or her station in life, with dignity and respect. And who knows? Someday that person's child or grandchild might grow up to become the prime minister of Ireland -- or president of the United States." In his first inaugural address, Reagan described George Washington as both "a monumental man" and "a man of humility." The two qualities merged in the nation's first president. They merged again in the 40th. May he rest in peace.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
|
