So Reagan developed other talents. Not particularly musical, he was drum major in the YMCA band. Until a late growth spurt, he was small and not well coordinated. But he became a strong swimmer, and in 1926, at 15, got himself hired as lifeguard at Lowell Park on the Rock River. He worked there for seven summers and gained local fame for rescuing a total of 77 swimmers caught in the wide river's strong current.

Meanwhile Jack Reagan was not doing so well. The first house the Reagans rented in Dixon, the only one Reagan mentioned in his autobiographies, was a two-bedroom with electricity and running water, on a pleasant hill: solidly middle class. But Jack Reagan's alcoholism and the travails of the shoe business kept the family on edge. It was on this doorstep that the 11-year-old Ronald found his father dead drunk one winter evening. Nelle Reagan took in sewing and dressed her second son in hand-me-downs. In 1923 the Reagans moved to "a larger house," Reagan wrote in his last autobiography, on the north side of the Rock River, and Ronald went to the new Northside High School, while his brother stayed at the supposedly rougher Southside. But the north side house is actually smaller, on a street that borders an industrial area; Lee County records show it was assessed 16 percent less in taxes than the one they left. Later the Reagans moved to two smaller houses and, after Jack Reagan's shoe store failed during the Great Depression, ended up living in one room. In 1937, their son the movie star bought a house for them in Los Angeles.

In the 1920s families like the Reagans almost never sent sons to college; Neil Reagan went to work in the shoe store after high school. Ronald Reagan had other ideas. With money he saved from his work as a lifeguard, and after wangling a discount from the ordinary tuition, he enrolled in Eureka College in 1928. This was an extraordinary act, a declaration of independence from his parents (occasionally his mother would send him 50 cents) and an indication that he had ambitions to go far beyond what his parents had achieved.

What were those ambitions? Reagan never said, but signs point toward show business. Nelle Reagan ran dramatic readings at her church, and she persuaded an initially reluctant Ronald to take part, too. In high school he won the lead role in the senior play. His gift for quick memorization, his husky voice and self-effacing charm, his lifeguard physique—all found an outlet in acting.

Dixon was, improbably, as good a place as any in America to observe the rising media of the day. It had enough movie theaters for any teenager to keep up with the latest silent films and talkies. Only 100 miles away, Dixon received Chicago radio stations, the first of which went on the air in 1921, when Reagan was 10. In the 1920s Chicago, not New York or Los Angeles, was the leader in national radio. Chicago stations originated nationally popular programs like Amos 'n' Andy; Chicago stations were the first to broadcast the national conventions in 1924, the Kentucky Derby and Indianapolis 500 in 1925; a Chicago station was the first, in 1925, to broadcast baseball away games by having an announcer improvise from telegraphed-in reports of the play-by-play.

Reagan evidently saw radio as his avenue upward. After graduating from college in 1932, he hitchhiked to Chicago and went to stations seeking a job. Told that he needed experience and should go to "the sticks," he got radio jobs in Davenport and Des Moines, Iowa. Always congenial, seemingly unassuming, and humble, this "regular boy" quickly achieved affluence and fame in Depression America—evidence of steely ambition he developed in Dixon but kept hidden ever after.

Previous Page