 hours. I was on the phone in the Ambassadors Club. Dial estifies the perception of Nancy Reagan and the minds and the hearts of the American people is just that, a truly great First Lady who is given of herself for that in which she believes. So the college, the Board of Overseers, would like to give her something in return to just remind her occasionally how much we love her. It's just a little something that we hope perhaps she will take back to the ranch maybe and on perhaps some cold night when she's before the fire, she wraps up in it and she'll think of the glow of gratitude which is hers and the hearts and minds of those of us and this dinner committee in this room and Eureka College. So this is an antique quilt which was found for us by Georgie Packwood who knows how to go out and find antiques and it's quite old. I understand it's never been washed which is its patina and that is just to say our very heartfelt thanks. I think she truly deserves the applause that we offer her. This is Ronald Reagan. And now a reminder to sign that book and to remain in your seats following the President. Dear friend and member, Mrs. Nell Reagan, this gesture combines a salute to the President with the recognition of his ties to his home, to his family and to his college. We're gathered here tonight to honor a great leader and in this historic building, country and responsibility to the world. That responsibility calls for leadership and service that are tied together. For leadership without a commitment to serve is at best misdirected and service without the courage to lead is at best a token and at worst a failure. These two goals, leadership and service are tied together in the history of Eureka College. In the selection I am extremely proud and deeply honored to present Eureka College's most distinguished graduate, President Ronald Reagan. Thank you very much. Thank you President George Hearn and President of Eureka. Thank you everyone here tonight and all of you who are doing so much. We're here for something that Nancy and I hold close to our hearts, Eureka's Reagan's scholarships. And please forgive me if I reminisce for a few moments because you could just be bathed in warm nostalgia. Whenever I think of Eureka, I am filled with nostalgia for that campus beneath the elms. It had a slogan for many years of being a small school with a worldwide influence and something about that school doesn't seem to leave you at all. Everything good that has happened to me in the years since had its beginning there as well as for so many others. It was a wonderful time in my life that wasn't all taken up on the football field although I did let football and other extracurricular activities beat into my study time and as a result my grade average was closer to the C level required for eligibility than it was to straight A's. I think someone told me to my surprise that I wound up with a B minus. So when I got that honorary degree that Eureka gave me some years ago I told the audience that I it only amplified a sense of grief or of shame that I had felt for many years because I always had had the sneaky suspicion that that first degree they gave me was honorary. I learned a lot at Eureka and not just about economics which was my major. I think the principal thing I learned about economics as a major was that if you could place all the economists end to end they'd never reach a conclusion. That's a lesson that serves me well in my current occupation as an embarrasser of economists. As I said I learned a lot at Eureka. I learned for example about humility. Now that happens when you've been kind of the one of at least a number of football heroes in high school and suddenly you find yourself sitting on the bench a second to third string and with my economics lessons I've had opportunities to learn a little more about humility every once in a while since. I remember after I'd made about 50 feature motion pictures and was doing a series on television that lasted eight years I was walking down Fifth Avenue in New York New York one day and about 30 feet ahead of me a man coming my way stopped and he pointed and he yelled I know you I see you all the time on that screen and on that television and everybody on the street stopped and they form kind of two lines and he stalked me down the center and I'm at one end and here he comes and he's fumbling in his pocket all the time and talking about me and how much he knows what I've done and everything else and he gets to me and pulls out a pen and a piece of paper for an autograph and says Ray Milan. So I signed Ray Milan there was no sense of disappointment. But one thing I'll always cherish about Eureka besides lessons in football and humility is that the college took a chance on me. Now my family couldn't pay for the schooling. We didn't live on the wrong side of the tracks but we live close enough we could hear the whistles. But what I couldn't earn in summers and I did work every summer and saved every dollar that I earned in order to help. Why the college made up with scholarship, jobs and yes letting me defer part of my tuition until after graduation and I wasn't alone in that. They did that for a number of other students and this was in the depths of the Great Depression. And incidentally one of those jobs washing dishes was one of the better jobs I've ever had. I performed it in the girl's dormitory. But seriously in that time of such great strain and when you can imagine what happened to the endowment of a small college like that in that great crash and the Great Depression and you went to class every day and knew that the professors who were teaching you and without any grumble or complaint had not been paid for weeks and weeks and weeks and that the townspeople and the merchants and the grocers and so forth carried them on the books just with the knowledge that somehow things would turn out all right. Those were depression years and I'm so happy about the scholarship program that you've done me the honor of giving in my name. It gives the students the opportunity to work for their schooling and it also gives them something else I was lucky enough to have a mentor. That's a part of the program. Someone who would take an interest in them and their future. Now in my case was a fellow from Kansas City named Alt, Alt Sid Altschuler. Sid was a businessman there and my summer job for seven years part in high school and then through college was at a beach a river beach on the beautiful Rock River in a natural forest park called Lowell Park named for James Russell Lowell whose family had given it to the city and there was a lodge there and people would come out from the cities like Kansas City and Chicago and so forth with their families and it was one of those things I don't know whether it still goes on today in which they had come there with their parents as children now they came as parents with their children and I teach the kids to swim and finally I was there for that last summer after I'd graduated because I had to get enough money to try to go out and find a job 1932 the lowest year of the Great Depression and many of those men during the summers had said to me that when I got out of college come see them and I'd sort of relied on that but by 1932 many of those weren't coming back to the lodge anymore they had their own problems and they weren't saying that anymore but Sid Altschuler was there and I taught his two small daughters to swim that same summer and then Sid out of all of them said to me if you can tell me what you really want to do and what you want to get into he said I think I have some connections that if it touches on any of those that I can I can help even in these hard times but he said you're going to have to tell me what you want to do well there I was with my degree in economics a graduate with a bachelor arts degree and hadn't occurred to me really what I wanted to do or anything except get a job of some kind of rather it was those kind of times but he'd laid it on me and I finally went home and I laid awake half the night and finally it dawned on me that some of my extracurricular activities in addition to football had rubbed off playing captain stan hope in journey's end in the drama class play of the year going out with the glee club and doing comedy routines I didn't sing I talked but in a little town in Illinois back in the 30s you didn't go out and say I want to be an actor you well anyway I went to him and I said I think I can tell you what it is I would like to be in the world of entertainment and then knowing that radio might be the shortcut to anything else I said I'd like to get into radio I think I could be a sports announcer well I'd name something in which he had no connections at all but Sid gave me the greatest advice in the world and all you young people who are listening pay attention to your mentors he said maybe it's just as well that I don't have any connections because he said if I got you a job someplace the man giving you the job wouldn't be interested in you he'd be giving you the job because of me he said every place there are people that know that this isn't going to last forever this depression they're going to know that their future depends on getting young people into their business so he said what you should do is just start going to radio stations you needn't tell them whether you want to be a sports announcer just tell them that you believe in the future of that business and you'll take any job in order to get inside of radio and then take your chances from there well I did that it meant hitchhiking and I started I figured that if I started the top of the big stations in Chicago in the networks that wherever I got a job might be further up the line than if I started at the bottom well I don't know how many stations I went to but he was advised he told me that some place along the line I would meet a man of this kind and he said remember a salesman may have to make 200 calls before he makes a sale and wound up the down in the Quad Cities Iowa and Illinois a wonderful old Scotchman that played a role in my life told me that they had just hired an announcer the day before I got there where was I why didn't I know about this I didn't tell him I didn't listen to his station but on the way out I said to myself how does a guy get to be a sports announcer if he can't get a job in a radio station and I went down to the elevator which fortunately wasn't there and I heard a clumping Pete MacArthur was crippled up with arthritis on two Canes and he was coming down the hall and he was calling in a very profane way for that big so be to stop and wait so I waited for him and he came up and he said what's that you said about sports and I said well I think I'd like to to do that and that I could do that he said could you tell me about a football game and make me see it if I'm sitting at home listening to my radio and I said I think so he took me in a studio stood me in front of a microphone he said when the red light goes on you'll be alone here I'll be in another room listening you start broadcasting an imaginary football game well I remembered a game that we had won in the last 20 seconds with a 65-yard touchdown the key to the play an off tackle smash was for the right guard running interference to take out the first man in the secondary in order to let our man break loose in the game I missed my block but our man made the touchdown I replayed that fourth quarter for him and in the replay I nailed that fellow with a block and I was right about one thing tape in my heart it was always acting I really wanted I thought that radio'd be a quick jump for that and it turned out to be there some in Washington a wish I jumped in the river instead that wouldn't they help them because I was the lifeguard that's what my job was well sit all sugar isn't here but two mentors for those scholars are Al Hague and Selva Roosevelt and I just want to say thanks to the game to them and let me also say thanks to someone who isn't a part of the mentor program but whom I know has taken a special interest in one of our scholars Strom Thurmond young man is here as an intern in Strom's office and I thank all of you the kind of generosity that you're showing this evening is the kind that built not just Eureka College but America itself and could I just take a minute because maybe some of you who are being so kind don't know very much about that little school out there in the prairie when in the first place it is the oldest coeducational college west of the Alleghenies and it was started from some people who arrived there in that part of Illinois and a wagon train from the east and a man named Ben major whose family still lives there in college town his descendants decided that this is where they would stay he was the leader he sank an axe in a stump and he said here is where we will build our school and they built their school before they built their homes and it became walnut Grove Academy and then when graduated above that it became Eureka College but this little school so rich with tradition and has contributed so much and people like myself who went there you were never too poor but what if they could they could make it possible for you to get that education there used to be a giant Elm which finally has given up outside of one of the buildings called Burgess it was called recruiting Elm outside of Burgess Hall because Captain Burgess in the Civil War stood down beneath that tree and called up to the classrooms of the one building at that time of the college for them young men to come down and enlist in the Union Army now it isn't true that I was one of the young men there but as I say tradition that is so rich and as the as you've been told the wonderful thing about a small liberal arts college of that kind is not only that you get a good education but you can't hide you can't just go to class and back to your quarters again as you could in some of the great universities I've been a regent of the nine campus University of California my way of being governor I was a member of the board of the 23 college state college system of California as a sports announcer I saw the inside of a great many of the great universities if I had it to do over again I would go to Eureka College it means that much and I think it meant that much to me you can't hide everybody's needed whether it's for glee club or student officers or athletics or whatever it may be they grab you and then bring you in and you find out talents and abilities that you never knew you had so I just want you to know how deeply grateful I am and that what you what you have done and what you are doing for this institution is for something that is very worthwhile and maybe there aren't as many of them left in the country as there should be but I pray to God there will always be a Eureka College there in the heart of Illinois thank you all very much God bless you all I have two very brief presentations Mr. President I did not go to Eureka College and I have long lost a sense of priorities may I present the spouse of our honorary co-chairman and the chief of staff the honorable Donald Regan who by the way is a distinguished Harvard alumnus alum not alumnus right excuse me and now a special presentation by the president of the student body of Eureka College who is also a Reagan scholar and I said Mrs. Reagan then I said thanks for what you've done in the fight against drugs because there could be a lot of people here right now a lot of people in college on scholarships if it wasn't for drugs this lady hasn't jumped on a bandwagon she's been a bandwagon I just want to thank mrs. Reagan as you could tell the president loves Eureka College we love him there he's been a supporter not since he's been in the office but ever since he graduated he came back and he was the honorary chairman of pumpkin parades when we needed a new library in 1969 we called president Reagan when we needed a new physical education center we asked mr. Reagan he has been there for us as a recruiter contributor confidant board of trustee member for two terms and as a student it is correct he was a member of he was student body president also he was a swim team member he won national honor for a play area de capo area de capo he run a national honor for his role presentation there he was also on the football team he was a big part of Eureka College then he still is but when he graduated he never received a class ring so beyond on behalf of all the students of Eureka College the alumnus the alumni of Eureka College and also the Ronald W. Reagan scholars mr. president I'd like to present you with this 1932 class ring the president asked me to write remind you that is the school colors of maroon and gold and thank you now if we'd all rise and join in the singing of knee-thelms upon the campus and what you've done to these people he said would you like to say something an after-dinner speaker gets an encore no I would you have just heard it the alma mater there and again I can only just say I'm so grateful to all of you see I couldn't afford one but another tradition that I don't know whether it exists today and then I will quit is Nancy has my letter sweater thank you all again God bless you behind you to sign the memory book name city we thank you all for coming and many as much to say for a convivial drink of fellowship or sisterhood we welcome you