by Scott Farris
CHAPTER 5
BOYS WHO LOVED BOOKS
Like most boys, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy dreamed about being a hero one day, but as children they did not seem to possess the stuff of heroes. Both were undersized for much of their youth, and especially dwarfed by their more robust older brothers. Kennedy was often deathly ill, and Reagan’s myopia was so bad he could hardly see without his glasses. They were above-average students—at least in the courses that interested them. But unlike, say, Bill Clinton as a child, neither was seen as a natural leader or overachiever. In truth, no one who knew these sensitive, often lonely boys—not family, not friends, not teachers—ever expressed the slightest possibility that either might grow up to become president of the United States.
Yet Reagan and Kennedy grew up in an age when anything seemed possible, when American “optimism ran rampant.” The United States had emerged from the Great War a bona fide world power—perhaps already the world power. New technological marvels—airplanes, telephones, radios, motion pictures, X-rays—appeared on an almost constant basis. Small wonder, then, that when he became president, Kennedy was fully confident that America could send a man to the moon and back, and Reagan had complete faith that American know-how could devise a space shield to protect the world from a nuclear holocaust. As the journalist Theodore White wrote of Kennedy and Reagan’s generation, they were “brought up to believe, either at home or abroad, that whatever Americans wished to make happen, would happen.”
It was also a time when men everywhere were doing great deeds. The newspapers seemed to laud a new hero every day: adventurers like Peary and Lindbergh, scientists and inventors like Einstein and Edison, athletes like Dempsey and Ruth. Reagan, born February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, and Kennedy, born May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, may have been separated by distance and family income, but they were united in the joy of reading about these heroes as well as heroes of old and heroes of myth. And while some of their childhood ambitions, most particularly the desire to be great football players, were thwarted, they knew deep inside, because each had been tested by physical and emotional hardship that matured them beyond their years, that if they had the chance, they too were capable of great things, just like the men they read about in books.
When Kennedy’s widow, Jackie, approached Theodore White, who was doing a Life magazine retrospective on Kennedy after the assassination, she urged White to picture Jack “as this little boy, sick so much of the time, reading history, reading the Knights of the Round Table, reading Marlborough. For Jack, history was full of heroes . . . Jack had this hero idea of history. . . .” Kennedy did spend much of his life sick in bed. As Robert Dallek, the biographer who had the most extensive access to Kennedy’s medical records, has noted, from the time Kennedy nearly died of scarlet fever just before he turned three, “not a year passed without one physical affliction or another.”
Reading provided Kennedy with a mental escape from his sickbed while distracting him from a home life that was often stressful, despite the idealized portraits of the Kennedy clan that often appeared in Life or Look magazine. There were the problems between Jack’s parents, which led to his mother leaving the home (without her children) to protest Joe’s adulteries when Jack was only three. Then there were Jack’s specific problems with his mother. As a boy, Jack was denied the physical affection he seemed to crave because Rose scrupulously followed the child-rearing theories of L. Emmett Holt, who warned mothers against kissing their babies—but encouraged them to smack their children if they misbehaved. “My mother never hugged me . . . never!” Jack later complained.
Other adults seemed to notice his maternal longing, for the nurses who cared for him seemed to make a point of fawning over Jack, whom one described as “the nicest little boy I have ever seen.” As Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, even as a small child Kennedy came across as “an irresistibly charming child with an uncommon capacity to stir emotions in people, creating in each of them the feeling that he and they somehow shared a special bond.”
Some credited this ability to Jack’s sensitivity to his sister Rosemary’s condition, which helped make him more empathetic and possessing of “a marvelous capacity for projecting himself into other people’s shoes.” Other friends said this was bunk; the unusual, even bizarre dynamics within the Kennedy household, they said, left Jack with “a total lack of ability to relate, emotionally, to anyone.” In this view, Kennedy was constantly reaching out to strangers, not out of empathy but out of need.
The chaos of a household that eventually comprised eight siblings plus hosts of nursemaids, servants, and hangers-on, and the constant moving between winter homes and summer homes, was heightened by the raucous intrafamily competition in all things, especially between Jack his more accomplished older brother, Joe Junior—competitions Jack seldom won. But the one area where Jack believed he excelled Joe was in “mental ability.” He was much better read than his brother. As a young boy, Jack was partial to adventure stories that included Treasure Island, Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and, as Jackie would later make known, stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
As he grew older, Kennedy’s tastes grew more sophisticated, especially in regard to world history. When Jack was hospitalized at age fifteen, a friend who visited him recalled that books surrounded his bed, and that he was midway through Winston Churchill’s massive history of the First World War, The World Crisis. For those who thought Jack callow, it was the type of surprise his mother had come to expect from a boy she acknowledged, “fairly often . . . distressed me” because he “thought his own thoughts, did things his own way, and somehow just didn’t fit any pattern.”
Reagan, who first demonstrated his “photographic memory” by teaching himself to read at the age of five, described himself as “a bookworm of sorts,” and perhaps became a lover of books for many of the same reasons Kennedy did. The Reagan family, too, had its stresses. His father’s drinking led his parents to have some “pretty fiery arguments.” There was the frequent moving as Reagan’s father kept seeking better employment opportunities. There were also strange interludes, Reagan recalled, usually shortly after his parents’ arguments, when “out of the blue my mother bundled us up and took us to visit one of her sisters and we’d be gone for several days. We loved the unexpected vacations but were mystified by them.” The unpleasant fighting between his parents was no doubt a key factor in developing Reagan’s later well-known aversion to confrontation, and his insistence as president when aides got into a heated argument that they withdraw and work out their problems among themselves before returning to him with a recommendation. While Kennedy responded to the chaos of his home life by becoming comfortable with sloppiness, Reagan longed for order.
Reagan speechwriter and biographer Peggy Noonan said, “I always had the feeling he came from a sad house and he thought it was his job to cheer everyone up.” Whether Jack Reagan was truly an alcoholic or not may be an open question, but the more important point is that Reagan and his mother, Nelle, believed he was and reacted accordingly. In her book Adult Children of Alcoholics, Janet Woititz, PhD, writes that children of alcoholics often “live in a fairy-tale world, with fantasies and dreams,” and that they have trouble developing intimate relationships.
Dr. Woititz’s observation may be true of any family where there are high levels of stress, for Kennedy and Reagan were each comfortable being alone. One of Reagan’s treasured memories of childhood was the delightful discovery in the attic of a newly rented home that the previous tenant had left behind a collection of birds eggs and butterflies in glass cases. “I escaped for hours at a time into the attic, marveling at the rich colors of the eggs and the intricate and fragile wings of the butterflies,” Reagan remembered. “The experience left me with a reverence for the handiwork of God that never left me.”
Spurred by the discovery in the attic, Reagan recalled reading many books about nature as a child, b
ut his favored reading material was escapist fare that would support Dr. Woititz’s theories about the children of alcoholics retreating into fantasy. Reagan was especially fond of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars and his Tarzan novels. He was engrossed by stories of boys thrust into unexpected adventures. He read most of the Rover Boys series about prank-playing students at a military school who often help solve crimes, and later moved up to the Frank Merriwell books about the star athlete at Yale who was also forever solving crimes and righting wrongs.
Some have suggested Reagan’s reading never went beyond such simple fare. Washington insider Clark Clifford famously labeled him “an amiable dunce.” Reagan may not have been as intellectually curious as Kennedy, but like Kennedy he was an avid reader his entire life. There were stories about Reagan, while president, failing to read his briefing books at night because he and his wife, Nancy, had discovered The Sound of Music or another old movie playing on television. But Nancy insisted that Reagan was usually “up late at night reading, reading, reading,” with his personal library indicating a particular passion for American history.
The fact that Reagan and Kennedy both valued and understood the power of words is self-evident not only by their facility with them as politicians but also by their briefly making their livings as writers. Kennedy authored two best-selling books and worked as a reporter for Hearst immediately after the war. He also wrote the bulk of his famous inaugural address. In addition to being a sportscaster, Reagan worked as a sportswriter in Des Moines before he embarked on his career in the movies, thought about becoming a screenwriter, and wrote most of his speeches and radio commentaries until well into his presidency.
A book, in fact, changed Reagan’s life, and it was directly linked with how he responded to his father’s drinking problem. So important to Reagan’s childhood were the book and the story behind it that he discussed it in detail in both of his memoirs.
As Reagan told the story, in February 1922, when he was eleven years old, he came home one night from a basketball game at the YMCA to find his father “drunk, dead to the world” on the family’s snow- covered front porch and no one else at home. His first inclination, Reagan said, was to step over his father and enter the house, to pretend he wasn’t there. But then he felt himself “fill with grief for my father at the same time I was feeling sorry for myself. Seeing his arms spread out as if he were crucified—as indeed he was—his hair soaked with melted snow, snoring as he breathed, I could feel no resentment against him.” Reagan said he then reached down, grabbed a fistful of his father’s overcoat, dragged him into the house, and helped him to bed.
Reagan clearly saw this episode as a coming-of-age story in which he has matured and become responsible by confronting something he does not want to do, but doing the right thing anyway. The story is likely more complicated, however. Reagan’s son Ron said the story “couldn’t have happened” exactly the way his father told it, for an eleven-year-old weighing at most 90 pounds could not possibly pull the 180-pound Jack into the house; more likely, Reagan managed to rouse his father long enough to help him into the home. Also at question is why Reagan would reveal and emphasize a story so humiliating to his father. Reagan biographer Garry Wills concludes that Reagan’s story is less about his relationship with his father than it is designed to highlight his relationship with his mother. Reagan, like his mother, was “an unembarrassed moralist,” ultimately forgiving but also convinced that people bring their troubles upon themselves through sinful behavior, and Wills says Reagan believed most readers “will approve of this attitude.”
Whatever actually happened on that front porch, it is clear it had an impact on Reagan and that he shared it with his mother, for a few months later she gave her son a life-changing book apparently designed to comfort him by showing how boys in similar situations could rise above such family problems. The book was That Printer of Udell’s: A Story of the Middle West, written by Harold Bell Wright. Wright had been a minister in the Disciples of Christ who turned to novel writing as a form of ministry, even though his books often attacked institutional religion (especially the Catholic Church) in favor of “practical Christianity.” Wright’s books, including such bestsellers as The Shepherd of the Hills and The Winning of Barbara Worth, sold millions of copies during the first half of the twentieth century.
That Printer of Udell’s tells the story of a young lad name Dick Falkner, the son of an alcoholic, who arrives in a Midwestern industrial town seeking work as a printer. He struggles to resist the temptations of the big city, especially alcohol. Down on his luck, he seeks help (or just a hot meal) from a series of local churches, each of which turns him away. Eventually he finds work as a printer for publisher George Udell and becomes friends with a local Christian who urges him to become involved in the community. Now established and admired for his sincerity and leadership ability, Dick falls in love with a minister’s daughter, Amy, and is put in charge of the church’s reading room, which he uses to lure the city’s youth away from the saloons. One night, finding a vagrant lying in the snow (as Reagan had found his father), Dick expresses outrage at the haphazard way in which the community helps the needy, making no distinction between the undeserving and the truly needy. Dick takes an abandoned lumberyard and turns it into a homeless shelter for the poor who are willing to work. Now the community’s top youth leader, the eloquent Dick, who favors brown suits (just as Reagan later would), marries Amy and is rewarded for his contributions to the community by election to Congress. After finishing the book, Reagan told his mother, “I want to be like that man.” He also asked to be baptized into Nelle’s church, the Disciples of Christ, which he was on June 21, 1922.
Probably too much has been made by some historians of how Wright’s book influenced Reagan’s political thinking and foreshadowed his views on welfare and government assistance, with its notions of deserving and undeserving poor, and the idea that poverty is best addressed by caring individuals rather than institutions. What the book does do, however, is offer a window into Reagan’s view of religion, and his belief that good works are more important than doctrine.
It also seems clear that the book inspired Reagan to self-consciously choose to live his life a certain way. As his son Ron said, “My father didn’t create his personal narrative to put one over on anyone. He wanted to be seen—he wanted to truly be—an estimable individual who made his way through life as a positive force in the world, a man people would admire for all the right reasons.”
The simple directness with which Reagan created his own role, one that he consciously and unconsciously played for most of his life, has confounded many who seek a deeper psychological explanation for a man who rose to become a dominant world leader. For example, Edmund Morris, Reagan’s authorized biographer, conceded that even after fourteen years working on Reagan’s biography, which included years of extraordinary and unprecedented personal access to Reagan, Reagan remained “a mystery to me.” Reagan’s son Ron suggests Morris and others are looking so hard for secret clues that they miss the obvious. Ronald Reagan wanted to be a hero, just like those he read about in books, and he possessed the discipline (and good luck) to become what he wanted to be. “Don’t we want our presidents to be heroes?” Ron asked. “Ronald Reagan was the inverse of an iceberg.”
Reagan proved to himself that he had heroic potential while still a teenager. He had been drawn to swimming because it was one sport where his poor eyesight was not much of a handicap, and he won a number of local swimming races. For seven summers, the first when he was fifteen years old, he worked as a lifeguard at Lowell Park, located three miles outside of Dixon, where there is a beach along the Rock River. Being the lifeguard (he was the only one) was not glamorous. It was hard work, involving twelve-hour workdays that began in the early morning with Reagan picking up a three hundred-pound block of ice as well as hamburger and supplies for the park’s food stand. But the pay was good; eighteen dollars a week in an age whe
n many men labored for a dollar a day, plus all the dime hamburgers he could eat and nickel root beers he could drink.
After some practice swims to keep himself in shape and to measure the mood of the river, Reagan took his place in the lifeguard’s chair around 10:00 a.m. and stayed there, watching over sometimes hundreds of swimmers, until the park closed shortly after dark. At least two of Reagan’s seventy-seven reported rescues occurred after 9:30 p.m. His rescuing of distressed swimmers became second nature; while governor of California, Reagan dove into the pool at the governor’s residence to rescue a seven-year-old girl who had gone under during a party for legislators and their families.
Addressing insinuations later in life that he had overestimated or padded the numbers by diving in to occasionally “save” an attractive young lady who was in no real distress, Reagan said, “I guarantee you they needed saving—no lifeguard gets wet without good reason. . . . A wet suit was a real hardship, and I was too money-conscious to have a spare.”
Reagan occasionally wrote up accounts of his rescues for publication in the local papers. Perhaps he did so because he seldom received any other recognition, such as thanks from those he likely saved from drowning. Asked why he was seldom thanked, Reagan said, “I believe it’s a combination of embarrassment and pride. Almost invariably they either argued they weren’t in any trouble or were so mad at themselves they wouldn’t admit someone else had succeeded where they had failed.” As president, Reagan displayed a sign on his desk that read: There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he does not mind who gets the credit.
Given his family’s wealth, Kennedy as a youth never had to hold a job, as lifeguard or anything else, but he demonstrated a different type of heroism by enduring with good cheer a remarkable series of illnesses and a horrific set of treatments that must have been not only painful and uncomfortable but also terribly humiliating for an insecure adolescent.