NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001

"The tragedy is that he will not know he is 90, will not be aware of the celebrations in his honor, will not be aware that even the libs are coming around to the realization that he was a special president," said his longtime friend and aide Lyn Nofziger.

Old age has not been kind to this great and good man.

As the nation knows, Ronald Reagan suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. In January he fell and broke his hip and is now recovering in his home in Bel-Air Calif., looked over by his beloved wife of almost 49 years, Nancy.

"We will celebrate Ronnie's 90th birthday very quietly here at home with a birthday cake [likely his favorite, chocolate], of course,'' Mrs. Reagan told the Associated Press.

"He looks fine. I mean, you know, his skin, and he's got a full head of hair. ... I mean, when the barber comes to cut his hair, he has to thin it!'' she said on a CNN "Larry King Live'' show scheduled for broadcast today.

But today’s birthday won’t be the festive occasion for the former president his friends recall.

"Ronnie's birthday was always the fun event of the year – sometimes at the ranch with cowboy clothes and the horses milling around, sometimes at Chasen's [restaurant] with the Washington leadership,'' his old friend Merv Griffin recalled.

"But always his acknowledgment of his birthday was the same. This year it would have been, `Thank you for acknowledging the 51st anniversary of my 39th birthday.' "

Instead of celebrating a birthday about which he knows nothing, he’ll be dealing with his injured hip.

"The doctors tell me that his hip appears to have broken when he put weight on the leg in a somewhat twisted position, and this is what caused him to fall,'' Mrs. Reagan said, explaining that a pin, plate and screws were used to repair the hip and he was able to go home a week after surgery.

"Right now he is involved in simple physical therapy that has him sitting up twice a day in a special orthopedic chair that helps to keep his leg straight,'' she said.

"He has been sitting in it longer each day, and the doctors and physical therapists are encouraged that this is giving him the strength to begin with weight-bearing therapy in the next seven to 10 days.

"He has a healthy appetite, his color has completely returned to normal, and he's even sleeping better.''

"It’s a terrible tragedy," Nofziger, Reagan’s communications director when he was governor of California and president of the United States, told NewsMax.com.

"He doesn’t know who he was, he doesn’t know what he did, he doesn’t know of the affection most Americans have for him."

Most tragic is the fact he will never know how his reputation has grown in recent years.

"It’s interesting to notice that all of a sudden people are waking up to the fact that he was a pretty good president," Nofziger said.

"The wonderful thing about Reagan was that he knew what he was and who he was and what he wanted to do. He knew where he wanted to go, and he didn’t let other things bother him when he set out to get there. He knew what he believed. He wasn’t always worried about whether this was right or that was right."

Writing in Britain’s Sunday Times, Andrew Sullivan drew the measure of the man.

"Reagan stood for two simple but indisputably big things: the expansion of freedom at home and the extinction of tyranny abroad. He achieved both. When he came to office, top tax rates in the United States were 70 percent. Against the odds, Reagan slashed the top rate to 28 percent and ignited the economic boom that is still with us.

"... Reagan understood what tax cuts were about. Back in 1976, he made the case in one of his innumerable radio addresses: 'Our system freed the individual genius of man. We allocate resources not by government decision but by the millions of decisions customers make when they go into the marketplace. If something seems too high-priced, we buy something else. So resources are steered toward those things people want most at the price they are willing to pay.' "

That was classic Reagan, Sullivan wrote. "Simple. Intelligible. True. Some people believe he was a moron, incapable of intellectual engagement. A brief perusal through his dozens of addresses will put the lie to that. He grappled directly and bravely with the main issues of his day. He was a believer in the media as a way to communicate ideas that could change lives. In this sense, he was one of the most intellectual presidents in history."

Few now would question the fact that Ronald Reagan almost singlehandedly brought down the Soviet Union and did it by sticking to his guns in the face of the vicious criticism of the "better red than dead" liberals who portrayed him as a warmonger who would drag the world into a nuclear holocaust.

Instead he ended the Cold War and helped bring freedom to the captive nations of Eastern Europe.

"I will never forget the moment I heard his 'evil empire' speech," Sullivan recalled.

"It was broadcast on [BBC], with skeptical British commentary about this inflammatory new president who knew nothing about the complexities of late communism. But for all the criticism, what came through to my teenage brain was an actual truth. Yes, the Soviet Union was evil. Who now doubts that?

"He alone saw that communism was destined to be put on the ‘ash-heap of history,’ as he told the House of Commons. And he helped put it there."

In a lighter sense, Sullivan recalled the sense of humor that never deserted Reagan, even in some of his darkest moments.

"He was also pricelessly funny. As he was wheeled into the operating room after a bullet almost took his life, he looked at the solemn, green-suited doctors and said, "Please tell me you're Republicans."

"It takes time to recognize greatness, and it sometimes appears in the oddest of forms. When he dies, this country will go into shock," Sullivan predicted. "For Americans know in their hearts that this unlikely man understood the deepest meaning of their country in a way nobody else has done for a generation."

Happy birthday, Mr. President. And God bless you as He blessed America by giving us you as our leader in perilous times. May future generations of young Americans follow your example.

Note to NewsMax.com readers:

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