 that park is where he wrote to a waterfowl. But all of that for me, and the whole thing, the high school athletics and going on to Eureka College and for much of the same thing, it was a wonderful way to grow up in a time and a community where, believe it or not, I never saw a key to Eureka House. And I don't know of anyone who locked their houses. I've been asked this to ask you, do you have any college in the country today? Why did you pick Eureka College? Well, when I was, again, a small boy and after we moved to Dixon, the minister's son, the church that we attended, was a great high school football star, full bag. And he went to Eureka College and that sort of planted the idea in my mind. I was quite imbued with hero worship at the time. And then it didn't hurt a bit when the girl that I was going with later on in high school and who was the daughter of the then minister of the church. She and her older sisters, they went and then she was going to Eureka and so I went to Eureka. What did you gain at Eureka in your mind that you could have possibly taken with you later on through your very careers? Well, I just have to say that that experience is lived so rich in my memory. It's hard to describe why. And yet I think very much that everything good in my life began there. And if I had it to do over again, I'd go to the same place. It was, as I said in a biography once that I wrote, it was everything that you thought about in the image of college. Rich in tradition, small, beautiful campus, highly covered buildings for real. And it was during the depths of the depression. And what did you take away from there? Well, I saw the faculty of that little school which was so hard hit. Of course all schools like that live in a kind of a genteel poverty. But when you had an endowment, as schools do have, that zero plummeted the way stocks and securities did in the Great Depression. You had a faculty that went for months at a time without any pay. But didn't complain and didn't shirk their duty and were in class every day doing what they were supposed to do. And the townspeople in this small college town carried them on the books with complete trust and confidence that everything would come out alright as it did. It wasn't just that you learned something in a classroom, it was the entire experience. But one thing about a small school, you can't hide. And it brings out talents and abilities in everyone because you need everyone. It isn't like some of the large universities today where you can go there and be totally anonymous except for maybe a small circle of friends. And some student that might have come to college with no intention of ever doing anything but going to class. You needed them when there were committees for homecoming ceremonies and so forth. Whether it was for athletics or any of the other functions, extracurricular activities, you went out and so students were drafted into these things and found horizons broadened and found themselves able to do things that they never would have attempted. And it was all born of the need for a school that small. Everybody has got to pitch in and do something. Fifty years ago this weekend, and it may not be this weekend, maybe you remember the day more than that, you went through graduation. Saturday, Sunday, you're going to be back at your reading college seeing the graduation again. Fifty years later, in that time you've gone on to an actor or governor, ultimately the president. This is your first visit back to your reading, I believe, since becoming president. You did campaign there in October. That's right. Yes. I had visited back at the camp as many times. In the past, as a matter of fact, twenty-five years ago I spoke at graduation there. Also, there was some kind of a chain. There's the Ivy Chain. Ivy Chain, that's it. And as far as I know, this will still be part of the ceremony in which, with a chain of real Ivy, all of the seniors, the chain is cut between them as they go their separate ways. As I say, it's rich in tradition. What will be your feeling going through that ceremony again, fifty years later, and realizing what's happened in your life since the moment you picked up your diploma there? Well, actually, yeah. But I'll try to express my gratitude to that place because maybe what's happened in my life wouldn't have happened without the experience I had there. If you could, and this is somewhat of a difficult question, describe Ronald Reagan for me. Oh. I don't know that that's possible. Six feet one, one hundred and eighty-five pounds of brown hair. I still have my own teeth and I do not wear makeup. I do not dye my hair. In fact, I didn't wear makeup when I was in pictures. But I know you wanted more of a different description than that, but I wouldn't know. You can't possibly drop some sort of a, if someone said to you, Mr. President, I want five words that describes your personality. Dr. McKinsey? Yeah, I feel that. I'd leave them to someone else. What was it like growing up during the Depression during that time in Dixon? Well, remember the Depression hit after my graduation from high school, that's due to the great crash in twenty-nine. And up until then, actually we had been through something in the roaring twenties, not nearly as draconian as we're going through here, but there had been inflation and there had been the boom of the twenties. But the crash came all at once on that Black Friday in October. And then at the college, in that first year, you became immediately aware of the, well, everyone did, and then going through college in those years, there was a drabness to life in general. It even turned out that, believe it or not, the automobile industry, all cars, there was no choice of colors. They were all painted black. It was more economical. They could bring them out at a lower price if they did that. You saw a colored car of anything other than black, it was an old one. But it was very, it was constantly on your mind. You were aware all the time of this drag and the, there were no things such as unemployment insurance and so forth that could ease a thing like a recession now. You had suddenly 25% of the workforce unemployed. And in my own hometown of Dixon, which actually has some, some manufacturing and industry, a wire screen company, the largest boredom milk plant in the world was there at the time, a great Sandusky cement plant, and literally overnight, they were just terminated. And suddenly the fathers of the kids you knew were unemployed. My own father had a kind of a work financial partnership. He did the work and someone else had financed a shoe store. He managed a shoe store and hung on for a while. But before we were out of college, that went, the shoe store was gone. And he went from a number of jobs to sometimes traveling salesman on the road with straight commission. You had to sell or you couldn't buy gas to get to the next town. And then finally to the 32 election, when our little Republican community went Democrat, and we were Democrats then, he was given a job in charge of what was called Relief, not Welfare, Relief. And it, he shared an office with the county supervisor of poor and they shared one secretary. And that was the entire Welfare bureaucracy in that town. And they didn't receive checks, they received a kind of a script similar to food stamps. And also every week when they came in for this, the people who were dependent on it, and as I say, these were our friends and the fathers of the kids I'd gone to school with, they would be given maybe produce that the government had been able to buy a surplus and it could be potatoes or it could be oranges from California or any one of a number of things and that would supplement their script that they could take to the stores. And yet in all of that, there was a camaraderie. There were no such things as status symbols anymore. Anyone that could do any kind of work would do it and never think that they were doing anything menial or demeaning to themselves. But there was a helpful spirit among people and a lower crime rate than we have in times of prosperity. Ever in that time of growing up with Dixon and Orga Riga, did you ever dream, I guess every little boy dreams of becoming a president, did you ever dream it and so when? No, as a matter of fact, holding public office was as far from my mind throughout my entire life up until along about 1965 as it could possibly be. Now I became interested in public affairs and I think that was an inheritance from Eureka, from that society where you all had to pitch in. So when I became an actor and had some box office draw, I would try to campaign for people I believed in, for causes I believed in being able to attract an audience. And so I believed in that kind of involvement. But it was after I had made a speech on the National Network for Barry Goldwater in 64 that people came to me and began talking about the governorship and I dismissed them out of hand. I said, no, you pick the candidate and I'll go campaign for him. And they kept after us till the place that Nancy and I couldn't sleep. And finally we asked ourselves, because they kept putting on the basis that with the party all torn apart as it was that we could win and bring everything together there. And we finally were asking ourselves, what if they're right? And that was the first time and I grudgingly yielded, not through any ambition and that kind of a career life. And I sometimes think that I'd never thought beyond the election that they'd stress winning so much that when I finally said yes, I kind of had a feeling it would all be over in November. And it was only after I got campaigning that I said, wait a minute, I'll have the job. I'm sure you're quite aware, Northern and Central, I know I consider you somewhat of a son or something. You're the president there, but they also remember Dutch this, Dutch that, I remember Dutch. And of course the stories come out after you become the president. One that's come out is your rendition of a scoring a touchdown against Illinois State. You played offensive guard, right? Yeah. You, apparently, I don't know how you got the ball or what happened if it was a fumble or what, but everyone tells me for you to tell that story. Well, I didn't make the touchdown. Oh, you didn't make the touchdown? In my last three years of college football, I averaged all the two minutes of every game. And you played both ways, so offense and defense. And I was about the lightest guy in the line and usually outweighed by the fellow opposite. And it so happened that we were one point ahead. You remember who you were playing by chance? What? You remember who you were playing? Yes, Illinois State Normal. Oh, that's right. Right there in your hometown. Yeah. And we were one point ahead. And so they started throwing bombs, passes all over the field. And I had kind of on my own developed a defensive tactic that I thought be trying to rush the passer from in there in the center of the line and guard. And we didn't have, we had a weak pass defense. We were always getting clobbered with passes. And one of the reasons was our whole backfield. There wasn't anyone in the backfield that was over about five feet nine. So they could have their man covered, but he could reach up above them and get that pass. So what I'd done was I would check my man if I thought it was going to be a pass, check my man in the line. And when I saw him fading back out for a pass, I would turn and go out into the flat zone into the secondary on pass defense. And that, my senior year, I intercepted a few passes. Well, on this particular day, I started and as I went over, I realized looking back at our secondary, everyone had been sucked over one side of the field and there was one lone Illinois state normal receiver angling down the field all by himself. And I started after him. And I was behind him and I saw with a look in his face as he was looking back that the ball must be coming. And at the last second I turned and went up in the air and caught the ball. But by this time with only about a minute to play, and there we were over on the side of the field and way down there on about the 20-yard line, our 20-yard line, the goal 80 yards away, just coming down with that ball in my hands, I realized I didn't have what it took to start running for that goal line. And I thought if I kind of juggle the ball for a minute as if I'm getting control of it, he'll tackle me and the game will be over and I won't have to run. And he didn't. And suddenly I'm juggling and no one has touched me and I started to straighten up and with this he just put his arms around me and said, Tag, you're it. And I could hear the crowd laughing. I guess I hadn't gone any place. If I'd have been a smart enough, I'd have fallen down. And believe it or not, with only seconds to go, I saw a substitute coming in for me. Coach Ralph McKenzie, who took the game very seriously, met me at the sideline and he wanted to know what happened. All I could say was I'm tired. But that was my chance at a touchdown that I never made. What they may have been talking about though was the audition that was given me when I tried to get a job in radio and got the job this time after being turned away and I don't know how many stations. I was hitchhiking around all northern Illinois and Chicago and everything. I was in Davenport, Iowa, WOC, and the program director. For the first time I mentioned sports that I was interested in being a sports announcer. I've never said that before. I just said, I want a job in a radio station. Doing anything. And he caught up with me before I got to the elevator and said, what was that? And I told him, he took me in a studio and stood me up in front of a microphone and he'd be in another room listening and when the red light went on I was to start broadcasting an imaginary football game. Well, we had a game in my senior year against western state, normal McComb, in which we won in the last 20 seconds with a 65-yard run. Now my position in that run was that I came out of the line and led the interference as a running guard and my target was the first man in the secondary and the play didn't work very well if you didn't get that first man. Well, in reality I missed him but our quarterback Bud Cole and went the 65 yards for the touchdown. I've never known how, but I can assure you that in that, I chose that game so I have to have names that I can remember to talk about and I chose that as the imaginary game I broadcast. I assure you I got the man in the secondary, the most beautiful block that I described eloquently in that rebroadcast. What is it like, so I can generate a little interest back on, what is it like going back to Eureka now after all these experiences you've had? Oh, it was wonderful. As I say, and I don't think it's just true of me, I think I know certainly the era that I was there, those graduates who will come back for that 50th anniversary, it has always been an important part of their lives. And to go back there now as a young commencement speaker, but I'm already sensing the atmosphere, the weather better be good because in my mind it's a sun-shiny day. It is. But it's, no, it's always been, as I say, close to my heart and a wonderful feeling to be asked back. I think any commencement speaker, however, is a little scared because you know from your own memory, and of course the young people don't realize that many years later you remember that well, but from my own memory, I remember your reaction to commencement speakers as a kind of a necessary evil that you had to put up with. Now you're the evil, huh? Yes. One more maybe? Okay. Another rumor going around is that you and fellow teaks on Friday nights used to go to Roanoke, Illinois. And this is apparently during the prohibition era. You're now going to attempt to deny or confirm a rumor. The rumor is that that's where you guys picked up moonshine to take back to the fraternity. And in those prohibition days, for piddlesweets there is no question but that there were some trips and that was the town where it seemed to be available. I never made such a trip at any time, first place. I never had the transportation. The only ones that could do that were those that did have some. And usually the transportation, what is a matter of fact, the transportation always belonged to those students who were from Eureka because the college, as most schools did in those days, had a rule that you could not come to college with a car. And I'm not sure that it's a bad idea. We shouldn't still follow, but transportation wasn't allowed, but so there were some we call them the town students that lived there and could get the family car. But yes, there was some experimenting. Again, as I say, it was against the law and all, and you thought you were being real devolution, doing something of the kind. But actually, since it would have meant expulsion from school if it had ever been found, it was not too common. And it was an adventure that maybe occasionally took place, but you were well aware of the risks. So you're denying it? I never, honestly, never made one of those trips. First place, I can also add, not only not having the transportation, I wouldn't have been able to buy anything. I've washed dishes and deferred half my tuition, ended up having to borrow. I went through school totally without any outside family help. There was none. And every summer I would save, because I had a seven-day-a-week job that took you well into bedtime, because as you know in the Midwest, people go swimming in the evening after dinner. And so I couldn't spend anything. I was there seven days a week, so I'd have a couple of hundred dollars saved that I could go back to school with. Had a half scholarship for half tuition as a needy student, and also I think helped along because I played football. Well, I think they're giving us the sign. Mr. President, I am extremely honored to be able to sit here and chat with you like this, especially realizing that all the worldly and nationally events will continue to go on. Well, this has been a trip down memory lane. I appreciate it. Well, I hope you have a good time there this weekend. I know they're all looking forward to it. I'm sorry we have to... Greg, did you have one special question that hasn't gotten to you yet or something you wanted to ask, or have you gotten to all the prize ones? I haven't gotten to all the prize ones. I guess what I'm trying to do here is draw the man who came out of nowhere basically and with nothing, and in time became a famed actor of the governor of California and eventually the president. So I guess what I'm striving for here is your feelings and what you brought with you. That chair right now, what is in that chair that you lead this country with? Well, I think that we're all the product of everything that's happened in our lives. And I suppose one of the things that when I think back to those towns where I lived, to that school, are all those people along the line and in the years since that we're willing to reach out a helping hand. This could be an advice and counsel. It could be the fact that I couldn't have gone to school. If that little school so beset with its own financial problems, I had not made it possible for students like myself because there were others in the same boat to get an education because the jobs were given by the school, the deferral of tuition, scholarships and so forth, the help that you had. And then it went on to, like that man that gave me that audition in the studio. And on later years, when I went to Hollywood, believe it or not, the kindly actors and actresses on the set with stars and well-established who go out of their way to give you a lesson and give you advice and correct something that you were doing wrong or not doing enough of at the work. I like people. Well, it's been a pleasure.