Ronald Reagan

He was born above a bakery in Tampico, Illinois, and his father — a shoe salesman who drank — called him Dutch almost at once. The family moved wherever the work was until Dixon. At 11, by his own later account, he came home to find Jack Reagan flat on his back and drunk on the front porch in the snow, and dragged him inside without telling anyone. He spent seven summers guarding a swimming beach on the Rock River and cut a notch into a log for every person he pulled out — 77 by the end. Eureka College gave him a degree in 1932. Then radio, where he called Chicago Cubs games in Des Moines that he could not see, inventing the pitches between telegraph clicks.

Fifty-three pictures, none remembered as well as one line about a dying halfback. Six consecutive terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, straight through the blacklist, and one more a decade later. A hard turn rightward, a televised half hour for Barry Goldwater in October 1964 that made him a candidate for something, eight years governing California, and a near miss at the nomination in 1976. Then the tax cuts, the deficits, the missiles and Iran-Contra, which BriefHistory sets out in full. The prior question is how a New Deal Democrat out of a union local ever got there.

On April 10, 1947 he sat down with FBI agents and gave them names — actors he believed were communists or close to it. He was running the actors' union at the time, and the Bureau carried him on its books as a confidential informant, filed as T-10. That October he testified before the House committee, arguing against outlawing the Communist Party while the guild he led enforced the blacklist anyway. The marriage did not survive the period. Jane Wyman filed in 1948, a year after their premature daughter Christine lived a single day, and the divorce was final in 1949. Thirty-two years later a ricocheted bullet stopped less than an inch from his heart and he lost more than half his blood before surgeons found it.

On November 5, 1994 he released a handwritten letter telling the country he had Alzheimer's disease and was beginning the journey that would lead him into the sunset of his life. He lived another 10 years and died of pneumonia at his house in Bel Air in June 2004, at 93. An organized campaign by his admirers had already put his name on Washington's National Airport in 1998 and set out to attach it to something in every American county. Historians have moved him steadily up into the upper tier. The arguments have not closed — the deficits, the AIDS years, Iran-Contra. In July 2026 the wooden rescue board he used on the Rock River came back to Dixon.

Ronald Reagan's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Knute Rockne, All American film
  He played George Gipp and got a slogan out of it that outlived the film 1940
• Kings Row film
  The performance he considered his best 1942
• A Time for Choosing speech
  A televised address for Goldwater that turned the speaker into the candidate 1964
• Economic Recovery Tax Act law
  The largest tax cut in American history to that point 1981
• Tax Reform Act law
  It collapsed the rate brackets and closed a generation of shelters 1986
• Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty other
  The first agreement to abolish an entire class of nuclear weapons 1987

• 1926 aged ~15 Starts seven summers as a lifeguard at Lowell Park He notched a log for each rescue and reached 77.
• 1932 aged ~21 Leaves Eureka College for a radio booth in Iowa He called Cubs games he could not see, off a telegraph wire.
• 1937 aged ~26 Signs a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. after a screen test
• April 10, 1947 aged 36 Gives FBI agents the names of actors he suspects of communism The Bureau logged him as informant T-10.
• March 4, 1952 aged 41 Marries Nancy Davis
• October 27, 1964 aged 53 A televised speech for Barry Goldwater makes him a national figure
• March 30, 1981 aged 70 Shot outside the Washington Hilton and loses more than half his blood The bullet ricocheted off the limousine and stopped under an inch from his heart.
• November 5, 1994 aged 83 Announces his Alzheimer's diagnosis in a handwritten public letter
• June 5, 2004 aged 93 Dies of pneumonia at his Bel Air home at 93

• Sandra Day O'Connor 1930–2023
  First woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by President Reagan. appointed
• Antonin Scalia 1936–2016
  Justice whose advocacy of originalism and textualism transformed American legal interpretation. appointed
• William Rehnquist 1924–2005
  Chief justice who led the Court’s conservative shift toward federalism and limits on congressional power. elevated to chief justice
• Barry Goldwater 1909–1998
  Senator and presidential nominee whose 1964 campaign helped create the modern conservative movement. succeeded the movement of
• Milton Friedman 1912–2006
  Nobel Prize-winning economist whose free-market ideas profoundly influenced American economic policy. influenced by
• Alan Greenspan 1926–2026
  Chaired the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006 across several financial crises. appointed