“John,” he said, “I went out with him for three nights, and I couldn’t keep up with him. He’d be up all night and then on the set the next day, his lines all memorized and ready to go, looking good. He was a true professional.”
The President was good-looking and naturally had many women after him, so I’ve been told. Yet he never would have bragged about it. I asked him, “I understand you were sought after too?”
“Well, I guess a little bit,” he said and smiled. While he wouldn’t elaborate, his friends sure told me. He was just too humble to brag.
The President was also graceful and a good slow dancer, but he wasn’t musical. I remember him singing in church once, and you wouldn’t want him in the choir. I never saw any records around or heard any music on his radio. I once asked him if he wanted the radio on in the limousine, and he said, “No.” I later asked him one or two times more, and then I dropped it. When he said “No,” that was exactly what he meant.
As I got to know the President better, his honesty impressed me greatly. Although in many ways he was smooth and always seemed a bit like a Hollywood leading man, he was forthright. That puzzled his critics. Some people say he wasn’t the smartest president. Maybe he wasn’t, but he knew his facts. His memory was phenomenal. He would read the scripts for the promotional videos shot at his office in Century City after his presidency, and he would always get them in one take. The producers and the directors couldn’t believe it. I remember one time they asked him, “Okay, Mr. President, can we do it again?”
“Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, no, it was great.”
“Then why are we going to do it again?” he asked.
They looked at each other for reassurance, and then someone would say, “Well, I guess we don’t have to do it again. Yeah, that’s perfect.” Some of the President’s friends called him “One-Shot Reagan.”
Even more than knowing his facts, he knew and understood people and human nature. Early on, he came to appreciate the fact that I knew my limitations—and everyone has plenty of them. I had only been to the ranch a few times when an incident took place. It illustrated to me just how well he understood that pride was one of the worst human vanities. One morning a military aide had a problem with his horse, so the President let him use one of his. Seeing that the aide was having a few problems readying the horse, I walked over to him and asked, “Sir, can I help you with your horse?”
He looked at me and answered, “I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. I’ve been riding horses for years.”
I continued to watch him for a few more moments and saw that he was still struggling. “Okay, fine,” I said as I walked away.
Next, the President came up. He was on his way to get Mrs. Reagan’s horse, No Strings, which was always the first part of his routine. He got the saddle and the grooming equipment and then started brushing her horse. He noticed right away what was going on, and he looked over at the military aide and then at me. I said, “Sir, I tried to give him some assistance. He told me he knows everything about horses. He grew up in Texas.” Not a word was said, but the President saw what I saw, the aide had put the saddle pad on incorrectly.
When the President was finished with No Strings, he next went to get his horse, El Alamein, a big gray Arabian thoroughbred. As he walked El Alamein over to where he had put his grooming equipment, he looked at the military aide again. The aide was now trying to put the bit in the horse’s mouth, and he had gotten it upside down and backwards. The horse was throwing his head, so the President tied up El Alamein and looked at me again over El Alamein’s back. I just shrugged my shoulders.
Finally he said, “John, he’s going to hurt my horse.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’m going to have to say something.”
Normally, he would never do that, but it was unsafe. Since I had already tried to help the aide, I was not going to go over there again.
The horse was still fussing and pitching his head as the President walked over to the aide. He politely asked him, “Excuse me. May I show you something?” He then took the bridle out of the aide’s hands, straightened it out, put the bit into the horse’s mouth, and the head stall around his ears. The horse started licking his lips as contented as could be.
Instead of saying, “Thank you, Mr. President, I appreciate it,” the aide said, “I knew there was something wrong with the equipment.” No one else said a word.
Not only was Reagan right about the bit, but he was the president of the United States, and it was his horse. He was just too polite to inform the aide that there was nothing wrong with the equipment.
* * *
MY LIFE, TOO, had a humble beginning. I was in the middle of five kids, and my father was a police officer. While the most money I think he ever made in a year was twenty-five thousand dollars, he provided for our large family. In retrospect, I’m amazed at how my father actually did it. I don’t remember ever wanting for anything. I don’t remember ever going hungry. I don’t remember being unable to see a movie. The family always had a vehicle.
Like the President, I had a wonderful mother. There were also some other women who loomed large in my formative years. Primarily, they were the Sisters of St. Joseph’s Order at St. Clement, a Catholic school, who taught me from grades one through twelve. I know for certain that I never would have accomplished as much as I have, whatever that may be, without being taught by the nuns. I still remember all of them—especially Sister Diaonysia.
We received corporal punishment from the nuns, and we needed it. Today if children went home and told their fathers that some nun hit them, there would be lawsuits flying. In my day, though, my father would hit me again for making the nun hit me.
Although we lived in Somerville, Massachusetts, which is right next to Boston, we attended St. Clement that was actually in Medford. Every day, I walked to school, as did my three brothers and one sister. We were years apart in age, but we all went to St. Clement at one time or another. Ed and Bob were five years older than I was, while Barbara was five years younger. My mother gave birth to my youngest brother, Chuck, when she was forty-five years old.
About thirty-five students stayed together all through those twelve years. In some ways, it was just like the movies that portray what school used to be like. There were inkwells in the desks, and the boys would dip the pigtails of the girl in front of them into the ink. The boys had to wear a suit or a sports jacket, a white shirt, and a tie every day, and the girls wore navy blue uniforms with white-collared blouses. Even then there was pressure to have the latest styles, so having a specific dress code took some financial strain off my parents. My mother passed the white shirts that my brothers had worn down to me. The dress code at St. Clement was based on the assumption that people act differently, depending on how they are dressed. While that is true to some extent, we would still tussle around, and now and again I would damage a sports jacket. The school yard we played on was cement, and things could get rough.
My relationship with my father was markedly different from the one Reagan had with his. In my life, my father played an important role. Although both of us had saintly moms, my mother’s word wasn’t as final as Nelle Reagan’s. My parents would talk about things. Even though my father had so many responsibilities, he still found the time to be my Little League baseball coach. He was a strong figure, and not only did he have a great reputation as a police officer and detective, but he had arrested many of the mafia-type figures from Boston.
Like Reagan, I had an