Ronald Reagan's father wasn't the greatest role model. "I was eleven years old the first time I came home to find my father flat on his back on the front porch," he recalled. "He was drunk, dead to the world. His hair was soaked with melting snow. I bent over him, smelling the sharp odor of whiskey. I managed to drag him inside and get him to bed."
Fortunately for Reagan, his mother Nell, a devout Christian, provided the leadership and moral direction that father couldn't. She encouraged him to learn from his father's failure, and take control of his life.
She gave him a book entitled That Printer of Udell's, which told the story of a young Midwesterner, Dick Falkner, "who discovers, through a series of bitter experiences with an alcoholic father, that he has the gift of oratory. Through his good looks, his voice, and convictions of character, he manages to create a whole social movement in his town."1 The story concludes with Falkner going off to Washington to take his message to the world.
The book was an epiphany for young Ronald, who went to his mother when finished and said, "I want to be like that man." Destiny took hold, and "The Great Communicator" was born.
And 58 years later, Ronald Wilson Reagan, just like his hero Dick Falkner, was off to Washington.
