Yesterday In America

Posted on: Wednesday, June 9th, 2004 by Cheryl Felicia Rhoads

Outside View: Yesterday in America By Cheryl Felicia Rhoads A UPI Outside View commentary Published 6/9/2004 2:04 AM HOLLYWOOD, June 9 (UPI) -- I had not expected to react so emotionally to the news for, after all, Ronald Reagan had been sick for a long time. Nevertheless, I could not stop the tears after hearing the news from my brother. In my grief, I was somehow taken back in time to another city not known for actors or politicians. I was at the 1980 Republican convention in Detroit, 24 years ago this summer. On a sunny July afternoon, I tagged along with my brother, the "boy wonder" of the Illinois state Senate and a Reagan delegate, carrying with him the torch of our conservative Republican lineage. Our mother was born the same year and in the same state as Ronald Reagan. She started at Warner Brothers the same year as Reagan did. But Mom stayed in Illinois, working in the publicity department of Warner's Chicago office. Like Reagan, she had been a Democrat but she rethought her politics in middle age in the 1950's, becoming increasingly activist in her efforts. Mom wrote patriotic news columns and eventually ran the Chicago campaign office for Barry Goldwater in 1964. In 1980, as my brother was serving in the legislature, I was at the beginning of my own career in Chicago as an actress. That summer, instead of saying I was going to Detroit, I pretended to my liberal showbiz pals, that I was just going away for the week. I don't know what I think I was hiding, they already knew I was this freak of nature, a conservative ... so they figured it out. But, however shunned I might be, being a part of that Republican convention would be like going to Disneyland for me. I'll never forget the thrill of that week in Detroit. When it ended another young friend who was there would lament, "We can't leave the convention, it's our entire life." And it was! It was like going home in some way. We all knew that as conservatives, that one of our own was going to go all the way to the White House. Non-believers may have surrounded me in my profession, but the rest of the country was ready for this. During the trip to Detroit, my brother and I had connected up via our CB radio with three Missouri delegates also on their way to the convention. We chuckled with delight because these cheery strangers had identified themselves with the monikers of "Reagan One, Two and Three." A few days later, as I was watching the proceedings from the visitor's gallery, my brother waved to me from the main floor. He pointed to three jovial middle-aged men in short-sleeved shirts and straw hats, standing next to him. They were beaming as my brother mouthed to me across the crowded convention floor that it was our CB buddies. I don't know if my brother ever found out their real names. It didn't matter, because they had it right ... we were all "Reagans." He had us all heart and soul. Now, so long after that happy time, I drove with others once more to be near Ronald Reagan. We arrived at the funeral home in Santa Monica where a hearse may have transported Reagan's body but his spirit was still everywhere, especially in the tear-stained, inspired faces around me. I walked over to view the growing cluster of flags, flowers and notes to this other Hollywood Republican who had also been criticized by many liberals in his profession. Then I placed a photo of Reagan taken as he told Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." Beside it, I placed a candle, with "Guardian Angel watch over us" written on it. I don't even know where I got that candle. I just had it. When I returned, I found that another woman whose parents were conservative pals of my folks had e-mailed me. She had recently lost her own dad while my mother, Reagan's fellow Warner's employee, died three years ago. We reflected "that losing Ronald Reagan was like losing a parent, too." And it is. For many conservatives, Reagan was like our philosophical father. I will always remember the excitement of Ronald Reagan surprising the delegates by breaking tradition, coming to the convention the night he won the nomination. He did not want to wait until the next night when he'd give his official acceptance speech. Like the jolly delegates from Missouri calling themselves Reagan 1, 2 and 3, the real Reagan had such an eagerness. Mostly though, I'll never forget that July afternoon we so eagerly drove to see nominated this great man who would change America...and the world. It seems like it was just yesterday, Now I live in California and it is not 1980 but, incredibly, 2004. Some of those same friends whose censure I once feared have themselves become conservatives. Like Reagan and like my mother, they changed their politics in mid-life. One even said to me, after the Great Communicator had died, "I wish Reagan had been around the last two years to explain things to people." Yet, Ronald Reagan was perfect for the time when he was here. Still, I long to be transported back to that summer convention in 1980 to see it all begin again. For you see, it was our entire life that week in Detroit.

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Articles by Cheryl Felicia Rhoads

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