Lessons My Father Taught Me

by Michael Reagan

  Dad didn’t understand everything I was going through, but he tried. I know he worked hard at making it up to my sister and me. He never forgot his first family after he remarried and started a second family.

  Here, then, are some lessons I have learned from being the son of Ronald Reagan:

  Love your family. And remember, love isn’t just a feeling—love is a verb, an action word. Dad demonstrated his love for Maureen and me through his actions, by spending as much time with us as he could, by going out of his way to visit us at boarding school, and by being a friend, guide, and mentor to me.

  Love means understanding—and Dad worked hard at understanding his kids. Looking back, I realize how hard Dad tried to understand me and what I was going through—just as he tried to understand my brother Ron. True, Dad didn’t realize how much I wanted to be at Disneyland on opening day—but he understood the conflicting loyalties I felt, and he put me at ease by inviting Mom’s new husband, Fred, out to the ranch.

  And family love is a two-way street. As children, we need to love our parents by understanding them—and yes, forgiving them. Mom and Dad made many sacrifices for me that I just wasn’t aware of. I went to school with Bob Hope’s kids and Bing Crosby’s kids, and we were all going through the same issues. We all hated being at boarding school, and we wondered if our parents really loved us. We didn’t know that all the actors and actresses in the Hollywood community talked to each other at cocktail parties and asked each other questions like, “Where are you sending your kids? Oh, that’s a fine school. We’ll send our kids there, too.”

  When I became an adult, I was able to look back and realize that Mom didn’t send me to boarding schools because she didn’t love me. She sent me to the best schools because she loved me very much. Mom worked very long hours in a demanding industry, so she sent me to some excellent schools—but I didn’t want to be in the best boarding schools. I wanted to be with my family. That’s understandable. But the decisions my mother made were also understandable, once I became an adult.

  We can sit and stew in our childhood anger, blaming our parents for all our problems. We can use them as an excuse for our own failures. Or we can choose to understand and forgive them, and we can thank them for the sacrifices they made out of their love for us. I’m glad I was able to understand, forgive, and appreciate my parents before it was too late. When I forgave my mom and dad, my eyes opened wide and I could see their greatness and I could feel their love—and I finally knew how fortunate I was to be the son of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman.

  Say “I love you” out loud. My father came from a generation in which men didn’t say “I love you” to their kids. Dad told me he envied the freedom I had to show affection to my son Cameron and my daughter Ashley. In his day, fathers didn’t spend “quality time” with their children, and they didn’t give hugs to their sons. Late in life, he managed to overcome those inhibitions and became a man who could express affection without embarrassment.

  People can change. How about you? I know you love your family—but does your family know it? Have you told your kids you love them? Have you shown your love through your hugs, your touch, your words of affection and affirmation? If you are not telling your children you love them, if you are not giving them hugs and affirmation, you should ask yourself who is giving them the love they need. Trust me, if they aren’t receiving love from you, they will find it someplace else. Don’t wait—tomorrow might be too late. Tell your kids you love them, and show them you mean it.

  Listen to your family. I’m grateful that when I was ready to talk to my father about those childhood issues, he was willing to listen. He even came to me and asked me for help in understanding my brother Ron. Dad was a good listener, and that’s why he was a great leader and a great father. When I would ask Dad questions, he’d always look me in the eye so that I knew he was listening and taking my questions seriously.

  Listening is a learnable skill. A lot of people who think they are good listeners really aren’t. If your kids are talking to you and you’re looking at your phone and checking your texts or social media, you’re not really listening. You have to put the phone down and really give them 100 percent of your attention. Give them a nod, a smile, an arm around the shoulder, and some verbal feedback so they’ll really know you’re hearing them. And please, turn off the phone during meal times and family times.

  Make time for your family. Dad had a busy schedule when I was growing up. He didn’t “find time” to spend with me—he made time. He set aside as much time as he possibly could so that he could be a strong and loving influence in Maureen’s life and mine. In the eyes of a child, love isn’t spelled l-o-v-e. It’s spelled t-i-m-e. If you want your children to know you love them, spend time with them.

  Dad wasn’t a perfect father, but he was a good father, and he understood the importance of spending time with his kids. It’s impossible to put a price tag on the memories I have of all the weekends I spent at the ranch with my father. Looking back at those happy times, I realize that they spell l-o-v-e—a father’s love—in my life. I wouldn’t trade those memories for all the gold in the world.

  I remember the day my father left office, January 20, 1989. I was at home in California, sitting with my wife Colleen and watching television. On the screen, Dad stood at the door of the presidential helicopter, Marine One, delivering a final salute and a wave. Then he stepped inside. Soon he would board the presidential airplane for his last flight from Andrews Air Force Base to California. I thought of how intense and all-consuming my father’s schedule had been during the eight years of his presidency and how little I had seen him during his White House years.

  As I watched Marine One carry my father off the White House lawn and into the sky, I came to a decision. I turned to Colleen and said, “I’ve done my last weekend, Colleen. I will never give another speech or do another event on the weekend unless you approve it. I will be at home with you and the kids every Saturday and Sunday. Weekends are family time. That’s my promise to you.”

  Why did I make that promise to Colleen at that particular moment? On one level, I was so proud of my father and all he had accomplished as president. But at the same time, I was keenly aware of all that his presidency had cost our family. Everyone in the Reagan family had sacrificed. Everyone had paid a price during the eight years we had shared Dad with the world.

  Being a politician is a good news / bad news proposition. The good news is that you won the election—and the bad news is that you won the election. As soon as you win, your life is not your own. People start tugging at you. Events take over your life. You must speak at this fund-raiser, attend that dinner, and preside over those meetings. There’s an old political adage: if the party had wanted you to have a family, it would have issued you one when you signed up.

  People often ask, “What were the best times you ever had with your father?” I answer, “The times before he got into politics. After he entered political life, he just didn’t have as much time as he used to.”

  Another question people often ask is, “Why are Ron and Patti so liberal? Why are your brother and sister so different from you and your dad?” It’s a good question, and I have thought about it a lot over the years. The fact is, Ron and Patti both loved our father, yet they never voted for him. As I often say when I speak to adoption groups, if Ronald Reagan had not adopted me as his son, he would have been the only conservative in the family! My sister Maureen, with her support for the Equal Rights Amendment, was more of a moderate Republican than a conservative. Nancy was always trying to get Dad to moderate his positions and move to the political center. Of all his family members, I was the only one who was truly a Reagan conservative.

  I was born in 1945, so I got to spend more than twenty years with my father before he ever campaigned for political office. I was able to spend weekends with him at the ranch, ride horses with him, shoot ground squirrels with him, go swimming in the pool at the ranch, and spend all those hours in the car with him
, talking to him or listening to him sing patriotic songs. Dad would have the car radio tuned to Chuck Cecil’s Swingin’ Years, and I’d keep switching it over to The Beach Boys. Those were great times with Dad—and Maureen had four more years of those times than I did.

  It was different for Patti, who was born in 1952, and Ron, born in 1958. Patti was thirteen when Dad got into politics and Ron was about seven. Both were at a vulnerable age when the Republican Party took their father away from them. Instead of weekend trips to the ranch with his children, Dad was attending political luncheons and cocktail receptions. His new family consisted of his staff, his advisers, and his constituents. He did what he could to spend time with his children, but the reality is that a political career is all-consuming. Who suffered? Patti and Ron.

  So it’s understandable that Patti would be liberal—because in her mind, the conservatives, the Republicans, took her father away from her. The party of “family values” robbed her of time with her father. And it’s understandable that Ron would be a liberal and an atheist, because who were Ronald Reagan’s biggest supporters? The Moral Majority—conservative Christians. It’s not hard to see why Ron might blame Christianity for taking his father from him.

  I’m who I am, in no small part, because of the things that happened to me as a child—both the good things and the bad things. And you, the person reading this book, are shaped in many ways by the things that have happened to you when you were a child. That doesn’t mean you have no free will. That doesn’t mean you can’t change, can’t grow, can’t be healed of old wounds. It simply means that the events of your past still affect you in the present—and will continue to influence you in the future.

  When I was growing up, I was separated from my parents by divorce and boarding school. When Ron and Patti were growing up, they were separated from their parents by the Republican Party, Christian conservatives, and politics. And they were angry. And they refused to vote for my father because they didn’t want him to win. The country wanted a president, not a dad—but Ron and Patti wanted a dad, not a president.

  This is my theory about our family dynamics. I haven’t discussed this theory with Ron and Patti, and I don’t know if they would agree. I can only say that this is the truth as I see it. It becomes easier to understand our family when we look at some of the wounds each family member suffered in their childhood. It becomes easier to forgive, easier to stop being angry, and easier to accept one another.

  Dad was aware of the toll that politics took on our family life. He believed in what he was doing for America, but he understood that the demands of his political life stole time from his family. I remember how, during the 1980 campaign, he made a point of picking up the phone and calling Maureen and me at various times just to stay in touch. Dad’s example spoke to me and convinced me that I needed to be more protective of the precious time I have with my wife and children.

  So on January 20, 1989, as I watched Marine One take my father away from the White House and into the mists of history, I turned to my wife and made a solemn promise to honor our family. And she will tell you that I kept that promise. I can probably count on my fingers the number of times I have given a speech or made a personal appearance on a weekend since I made that vow. The few times I was away on a Saturday or Sunday, I did so with Colleen’s blessing and approval. If she had said no, I would not have gone.

  I want my wife and children to always know that I love them. I want them to never have any doubts. The first lesson my father taught me was one of the most crucial of all: love your family.

  2

  Work Hard, Work Smart

  WEEKENDS AT THE RANCH with Dad revolved around work.

  There was plenty of time for fun and play after our chores were done. But chores came first—and Dad always made chores seem like part of the fun. I’ve never known anyone who took more pleasure in splitting firewood or painting a fence post than my father. He loved to work, and he taught me to take satisfaction from a job well done.

  Dad majored in economics at Eureka College in Illinois, so he was well acquainted with the classic works on free market economics, such as Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. He had a clear understanding of how work creates wealth and the importance of creating incentives for work and disincentives for laziness and dependency. He believed that the government should get out of the way of people who want to create wealth by their labor—and he passed those values on to me.

  Our Saturday drives up the Pacific Coast Highway to the Malibu ranch were often like a classroom on wheels for me—and Dad was the teacher. I would pepper him with questions, and he’d always have the answers. One Saturday morning, when I was about nine years old, I asked my father for a raise in my allowance. At the time, I was getting a dollar a week, and I wanted two.

  “Michael,” Dad said, “when I get a tax cut, I’ll raise your allowance.”

  “A tax cut? How much do you pay in taxes?”

  “The government takes most of what I earn—as much as 91 percent.”

  “Ninety-one percent! What does the government do with all that money?”

  “Well, the government does a lot of good things—and some that are not so good. Some of that money goes to buy tanks and airplanes to defend our country. Some goes to build highways. Some goes to a program called welfare.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sometimes, when people are down on their luck, they need a helping hand. And there are people who are disabled and can’t work for a living, so the government helps them out. And some people are able to work, but they don’t want to—and the government pays them, too.”

  “But you shouldn’t have to work hard to support people who don’t want to work.”

  “True, Michael—but when the government pays you not to work, why work?”

  That was my introduction to the confiscatory tax rates of the pre-Reagan era. Until my father got some tax relief, there would be no raises for me. That conversation took place in 1954 or so. Nearly a decade later, in January 1963, President Kennedy announced his plan to cut spending and slash tax rates in order to boost the economy. Though President Kennedy was assassinated in November, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, pushed through the Revenue Act of 1964, which honored JFK by cutting tax rates by about 20 percent across the board.

  By that time, I was a nineteen-year-old high school senior. What did Dad do after he got his tax cut? He remembered the promise he had made to me a decade earlier: “Michael, when I get a tax cut, I’ll raise your allowance.” It’s true—he raised my allowance from one dollar a week to five. He kept his word.

  That’s when I learned that tax cuts benefit everybody—the rich, the poor, the old, the young. Little did I know that Dad would one day be elected president and would slash those top marginal rates even further, to 28 percent. And in the process, he would revive a dying economy.

  Even though this is a book about the lessons my father taught me, my mother was a great teacher as well. Like Dad, Mom taught me about the importance of a strong work ethic. All my rich friends—the brats of Beverly Hills—we’re getting ten-speed Schwinn bikes. It wasn’t their birthday, and they didn’t earn their bikes by doing chores—they just had their bikes handed to them for the asking. I knew my mother could afford to buy me a bike, so I went down to Hans Ort’s Cyclery in Beverly Hills and picked out a shiny blue bike. Then I went home and asked Mom to buy it for me.

  Mom said no.

  I asked why.

  She said, “I build men. I don’t build boys. How badly do you want that bike?”

  I told her I wanted that bike more than anything.

  “Well,” she said, “you’re going to have to get a job and earn it.”

  “But I’m only ten years old.”

  “That’s old enough to deliver newspapers.” So Mom checked the classified ads and found a job for me, selling newspapers in front of the Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills on Sunday mornings. So my mother lent me the money for the bike, and I signed
a promissory note that she wrote out—and there I was, ten years old, in debt to my mother for my ten-speed bike. I paid her back, little by little, Sunday after Sunday, with the proceeds of my newspaper job.

  As any child would, I went to my father and tried to enlist his help so I wouldn’t have to keep that job and pay my debt. But Dad said, “Nope, it’s in your mother’s hands, and I’m not interfering.”

  I wasn’t happy about it at the time, but today, I’m glad that Mom taught me that lesson. I’m glad I learned at an early age that the world doesn’t owe me anything, and if I really want something, I have to earn it myself. As Mom said, “I build men. I don’t build boys.”

  Muscles and Brains

  When I was at the ranch with Dad, he would often pay me to help them with his chores. He knew better than to pay me by the hour. Instead, he paid me by the chore. He wanted me to associate getting paid with being productive. He didn’t want me to think I could get away with collecting my pay for just clocking in and clocking out.

  I enjoyed working alongside my dad. I wanted his nod of approval and his “Good job!” even more than I wanted the money. Sometimes the jobs could be unpleasant, like mucking out the horse stalls and chicken coops. But on the whole, I was eager to do anything Dad asked of me, because I was eager to please him.

  He taught me at a young age the importance of doing a job with care, pride, and excellence. One of the most important jobs I helped with was clearing the fields of large rocks. We would go through the fields and load large stones into the Jeep or onto a flatbed trailer pulled behind a tractor. He told me it was important not to miss any rocks because he didn’t want his thoroughbreds to stumble and break a leg. He’d use the stones to build equestrian jumps to train his horses.