 The President of the United States and of Mrs. Reagan. Ladies and gentlemen, will you remain standing as we seek God's blessing and have the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag, and both will be led by the Honorable Donald Hodel, Secretary of the Interior. On this earth and that we have an even shorter number of productive years in which to serve you, open our hearts and minds to your guidance and inspiration in that. Additional introduction, and on my right, Mrs. George Hearn, the spouse of the President of Eureka College, Mrs. Hearn. You know, I think occasions such as tonight are truly one of the most noble, and I used to tell foreign consultants who came to our shore that perhaps only in America, and I say that with pride, do we come together in our diversity because we are unified in the broad principles that bind us. And tonight, and at some time, to these cause after cause after cause. So I said, Virginia, don't have to worry. He's going to be totally a name on a masthead, just an honorary chairman. He accepted. And then I'll have dedication to young people, to the youth, to the very future of our society, to our peoples, and to our republic. I first met Nancy Reagan before the 1980 campaign. She probably doesn't remember that ocean and a dinner. And we had been given a rather challenging goal, which I found awesome at the time in that 1980 campaign as it was inaugurated. She plunged ahead and we more than succeeded our goal. Who wants to tell you about a crusade for the presidency? We didn't meet our goal. We doubled our goal, then we tripled our goal, and I was hoping the plane would stay there the rest of the day. I know what it means when Nancy Reagan puts herself into the causes which she holds women in 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 does you the 24th president of Eureka College, Dr. George Hearn. Mr. President, Mrs. Reagan, distinguished guests, several weeks ago I received a letter from members of the First Christian Church in Dixon, Illinois. 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 scholarships. 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, Neath 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 eat 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 it only amplified a sense of grief or 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. Now, 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. Now, 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 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 as 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 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 formed 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 Rameland. So I signed Rameland. There was no sense in 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 lived 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, my other 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, it was a fellow from Kansas City named 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 their 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 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 it hadn't occurred to me really what I wanted to do or anything except get a job of some kind or other 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 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 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 named 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 were 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 and replace 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 figured that if I started at the top at the big stations in Chicago and 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 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 sobie 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 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 stood him there now I was right about one thing tape in my heart it was always acting I really wanted and I thought that radio would be a quick jump for that and it turned out to be there's some in Washington who 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, Sid Altshuler isn't here but two mentors for those scholars are Al Hague and Selva Roosevelt and I just want to say thanks 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 this 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 but 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 it 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 the young men to come down and enlist in the Union Army now it isn't true that I was one of the young men but as I say