Very interesting read on Reagan. I have more appreciation for him now.

Jack 99 · August 22, 2000, 11:18 AM

I was never the biggest Reagan fan, even though I realize he probably saved this country from Socialism (can you imagine what another 4 yrs of Carter would have done to this country?)

Anyway, after reading this I think I have a little more perspective on the man now. I always assumed his ranch was a plush, palacial affair. This is really interesting to read what it was really like:
http://www.pilotonline.com/news/nw0821ron.html

Virginia man leads effort to preserve Reagan's legacy

By WARREN FISKE
© 2000, The Virginian-Pilot

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - It feels as if The Gipper never left.

His sweat-stained baseball cap sits on a hatrack by the front door, looking as
if it just endured another day of clearing horse trails.

The size 10 1/2 D riding boots stand on a shelf in the bedroom closet. There's
a Water Pik on the bathroom sink and a half-used tube of Head and
Shoulders in the shower.

And on the living room table, of course, there's a nearly empty jar of jelly
beans.

There's a keen sense that, at any moment, the front door will burst open and in
will walk Ronald Reagan from a long day in the saddle on his beloved
mountain-top ranch.

It is the job of Marc T. Short -- a Virginia Beach native and a graduate of
Norfolk Academy's Class of '88 -- to preserve the stunning 688-acre spread
as a shrine to the former president's conservative legacy.

Reagan, 89, hasn't set foot on the land in five years. He lives more than 100
miles away, in a gated Bel Air mansion, lost in the advanced stages of
Alzheimer's disease. Word is that he remembers little, if anything, of his family,
life or the home he christened Rancho del Cielo -- the ranch in the sky.

Short, 30, is executive director of Young America's Foundation, a nonprofit
organization founded in 1969 to promote conservative views on college
campuses across the nation. Two years ago, the group bought the ranch and
has been using it for seminars to steep university students in Reagan's
philosophy.

Short is a true believer. His father, Richard Short, is a retired Virginia Beach
insurance executive and well-known fund-raiser for the state GOP. Marc
Short began earning his stripes as a politics major at Washington & Lee
University, where he was a founder of The Spectator, a conservative student
publication designed to counter what he called ``the liberal values being taught
by the faculty.''

Upon graduating, he took a job with the YAF. He left to work in Oliver L.
North's 1994 campaign in Virginia for a U.S. Senate seat. When the effort
ended in defeat, Short became director of a political action committee headed
by North. He rejoined YAF in 1998 as executive director and moved to
Santa Barbara a few months after the group bought the Reagan ranch and all
its furnishings for $4.5 million.

The job is almost too perfect for Short. Although he was only a child when
Reagan went to the White House, Short regards the 40th president as one of
his greatest heroes.

``Clearly, Ronald Reagan was one of America's greatest presidents,'' he said.
``He came in when America's confidence was low and restored it. He cut
taxes, ended stagflation, brought down interest rates. He won the Cold War
without firing a single shot. He put fewer people in harm's way than Bill
Clinton did.''

But Short is concerned that historians may take a less charitable view of
Reagan, whose two terms also saw huge budget deficits and the Iran-Contra
scandal. The lasting judgments of Reagan, Short frets, may be inked in the
slanted scrawl of liberal intellectuals.

``A lot of academics were critics who condemned Reagan's philosophy before
he was elected and to give him credit now, they would have to admit they
were wrong,'' Short said. ``They're not going to do that, so there have to be
defenders of the Reagan legacy who keep the record straight.''

The ranch is key to that goal. The acquisition has caused conservative
benefactors to open their wallets, and the YAF's annual budget has tripled to
$10 million a year. Many of Reagan's top advisers -- including Caspar
Weinberger, Edwin Meese and William Clark -- have joined YAF's board of
directors. The group has 28 full-time employees, including Short's wife,
Kristen,and campus outreach is at an all-time high.

The ranch is not open to the general public. But upon invitation, it is available
to YAF benefactors and conservative student leaders. Short hopes to
purchase nearby property for construction of a dormitory and lecture hall.
Former first lady Nancy Reagan has been active in the effort. She visited the
ranch two years ago to return dozens of personal items, make sure the
furniture and lamps were in their proper places and recount life at the retreat
that her husband bought for $580,000 in 1974.

It's hard to imagine Nancy Reagan -- known for her designer dresses and
high-society friends -- comfortable in so rustic a setting. ``If you spent a
couple of hours at the ranch with Mrs. Reagan,'' Short said, ``you'd come
away with a different appreciation, just seeing how emotional she was in giving
away the property.''

You also might come away with a better understanding of Reagan himself. It is
a place that is humble and grand; a refuge where you can feel the breath and
see the hand of a very private actor turned world leader, whose inner thoughts
remained a mystery to even his closest advisers.

``When you get there,'' Reagan once said of his ranch, ``the world is gone.''

Getting there, however, is not easy. The isolated spread is about 30 miles
north of Santa Barbara, high on a twisting, steep mountain road that gets
washed out in heavy rains and blocked by scrub oaks.

Reagan, when he was president, arrived by helicopter, landing on a tarmac,
now gone, at the top of the 7,000-foot mountain.

He spent 345 days of his presidency -- almost one-eighth of his tenure -- on
the ranch. He signed his famous 1981 tax cut into law during a news
conference on his gravel driveway. He entertained Mikhail Gorbachev,
Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II inside.

How surprised they must have been. The house, a 1,500-square-foot white
adobe structure, was built in 1898. It is without air conditioning and has
baseboard heat only in the bedroom. It has sliding windows with aluminum
frames and a faux-brick vinyl floor.

The two living rooms are, well, what you'd expect in a ranch. Thereare lots of
worn wicker and bamboo chairs with American Indian cotton print cushions,
Naugahyde tables and animal-skin rugs. The bookshelves are stocked with
dime-store Western novels. There are antlers over the doors, animal heads on
the walls and a bumper pool table in one corner. The kitchen is small and has
yellow electric appliances dating from the 1970s. To the side,there's a small
maid's roommade of cinderblock.

The bedroom is bright yellow -- the Reagans painted it themselves. On the
night table is a phone that put Reagan in direct contact with the Secret
Service. Through the window is a view of a no-longer functioning outhouse
with a crescent moon, a remnant from the original owners.

From the head of the dining table, where Reagan always sat, is a pretty view
of Lake Lucky, where the Reagans canoed.

``You can tell why Reagan was called `The Great Communicator,' '' Short
said. ``He lived simply, like most of us. He didn't need all the trappings of the
presidency.''

There are hints of a self-effacing humor throughout the ranch. There's a brass
plaque on the front door saying: ``On this site in 1897 nothing happened.''
There's a greasy tractor in the shed, adorned with a presidential seal.

And there are traces of sentiment. The tree where he carved a heart containing
Nancy's and his initials. A stone cemetery for 16 pets.

The splendor of the place, however, is truly in the land. Reagan blazed more
than seven miles of trails on the ranch, where he and Nancy rode horses.
Along one path is a vista where they could gaze 40 miles in all directions,
including one view over the Pacific Ocean.

Reagan, once asked why he spent so much of his presidency on the remote
ranch, replied by quoting the Scriptures. ``I look to the hills,'' he said, ``from
whence cometh my strength.''

Bunkster · August 22, 2000, 11:45 AM

These two sites offer a couple of the best recent pieces on Reagan. As they were done by C-SPAN, you are guarenteed of them being bias-free.

The first is a tour of the Reagan Library in Simi Valley:
http://store.yahoo.com/c-spanstore/153719.html

The second is done from the ranch, and depicts all that was mentioned in your post:
http://store.yahoo.com/c-spanstore/151636.html

Regards

Jack 99 · August 22, 2000, 12:50 PM

"And there are traces of sentiment. The tree where he carved a heart containing Nancy's and his initials. A stone cemetery for 16 pets."

This is what kind of got me. There's a real genuine-ness to it. Ronald Reagan, maybe he was governor of California or a millionare actor or maybe even President of the United States at the time, took his deceased pets out to a little spot, dug a hole and put a rock there to mark the spot. Can you imagine such a thing from Clinton? Or even Bush? You think there's any trees anywhere with "Bill loves Hillary" on them anywhere? You think the Bush family ever went without air conditioning in thier home? When was the last time do you think Gore or Bush or Lieberman got their hands dirty (literally, not figuratively)?

Probably our last great President of the Republic.

Dark Avenger · August 22, 2000, 03:27 PM

Anybody who subscribes to this mawkish sentimentality about a half-assed cowboy who was already suffering Alzheimer's best not be seen posting their laments about the downfall of the BOR on this BBS!

Not only was the "War of Drugs" an invention of the Reagan White House as was the drugs for guns for Contras and other extra-Constitutional activities.

I think that the 8 years of his royal pain in the ass Bill Clinton has just affected your memories of the Reagan era.

One bright note from those years is the priceless photo of Nancy sitting on Mr. T's lap kissing his forehead for his contribution to the "War on Drugs". Who needs drugs with such surreal displays ??? Oh yeah, and Dutch saved all those M-1s so I could get them mail order from the government Bill Clinton now presides over.

Now I guess I better duck . . .

------------------
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek
not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

Jack 99 · August 22, 2000, 04:19 PM

No need to duck. I said I'm not the biggest Reagan fan. He "got it" to a point, but was still not exactly a Patriot when it came to strict adherence to the BOR and Constitution. One thing for sure, he's head and shoulders above anything since or anything we're likely to have in the near future.

He also probably saved this country from the worst kind of liberalism that Carter represented (weak, mewling, apologetic). Maybe my posts did come off a little sentimental. So what? The point is the guy was genuine in who and what he was. We can call him the "great communicator" and pretend he was just a good actor turned politician, but I think it went deeper. When Ron Reagan's head hit the pillow at night, he'd said what he meant and meant what he said. The contrast to Clintoon is striking.

To find out his favorite place in the world was a ranch with some old crumby appliances and no AC is pretty interesting. Can you imagine Gorby and the queen and Thatcher going up there to that ranch house? Can you see Clintoon staying, let alone enjoying, a setting like that?

August 22, 2000, 11:18 AM	#1
Jack 99 Senior Member Join Date: July 5, 1999 Posts: 1,085	I was never the biggest Reagan fan, even though I realize he probably saved this country from Socialism (can you imagine what another 4 yrs of Carter would have done to this country?) Anyway, after reading this I think I have a little more perspective on the man now. I always assumed his ranch was a plush, palacial affair. This is really interesting to read what it was really like: http://www.pilotonline.com/news/nw0821ron.html Virginia man leads effort to preserve Reagan's legacy By WARREN FISKE © 2000, The Virginian-Pilot SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - It feels as if The Gipper never left. His sweat-stained baseball cap sits on a hatrack by the front door, looking as if it just endured another day of clearing horse trails. The size 10 1/2 D riding boots stand on a shelf in the bedroom closet. There's a Water Pik on the bathroom sink and a half-used tube of Head and Shoulders in the shower. And on the living room table, of course, there's a nearly empty jar of jelly beans. There's a keen sense that, at any moment, the front door will burst open and in will walk Ronald Reagan from a long day in the saddle on his beloved mountain-top ranch. It is the job of Marc T. Short -- a Virginia Beach native and a graduate of Norfolk Academy's Class of '88 -- to preserve the stunning 688-acre spread as a shrine to the former president's conservative legacy. Reagan, 89, hasn't set foot on the land in five years. He lives more than 100 miles away, in a gated Bel Air mansion, lost in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease. Word is that he remembers little, if anything, of his family, life or the home he christened Rancho del Cielo -- the ranch in the sky. Short, 30, is executive director of Young America's Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 1969 to promote conservative views on college campuses across the nation. Two years ago, the group bought the ranch and has been using it for seminars to steep university students in Reagan's philosophy. Short is a true believer. His father, Richard Short, is a retired Virginia Beach insurance executive and well-known fund-raiser for the state GOP. Marc Short began earning his stripes as a politics major at Washington & Lee University, where he was a founder of The Spectator, a conservative student publication designed to counter what he called ``the liberal values being taught by the faculty.'' Upon graduating, he took a job with the YAF. He left to work in Oliver L. North's 1994 campaign in Virginia for a U.S. Senate seat. When the effort ended in defeat, Short became director of a political action committee headed by North. He rejoined YAF in 1998 as executive director and moved to Santa Barbara a few months after the group bought the Reagan ranch and all its furnishings for $4.5 million. The job is almost too perfect for Short. Although he was only a child when Reagan went to the White House, Short regards the 40th president as one of his greatest heroes. ``Clearly, Ronald Reagan was one of America's greatest presidents,'' he said. ``He came in when America's confidence was low and restored it. He cut taxes, ended stagflation, brought down interest rates. He won the Cold War without firing a single shot. He put fewer people in harm's way than Bill Clinton did.'' But Short is concerned that historians may take a less charitable view of Reagan, whose two terms also saw huge budget deficits and the Iran-Contra scandal. The lasting judgments of Reagan, Short frets, may be inked in the slanted scrawl of liberal intellectuals. ``A lot of academics were critics who condemned Reagan's philosophy before he was elected and to give him credit now, they would have to admit they were wrong,'' Short said. ``They're not going to do that, so there have to be defenders of the Reagan legacy who keep the record straight.'' The ranch is key to that goal. The acquisition has caused conservative benefactors to open their wallets, and the YAF's annual budget has tripled to $10 million a year. Many of Reagan's top advisers -- including Caspar Weinberger, Edwin Meese and William Clark -- have joined YAF's board of directors. The group has 28 full-time employees, including Short's wife, Kristen,and campus outreach is at an all-time high. The ranch is not open to the general public. But upon invitation, it is available to YAF benefactors and conservative student leaders. Short hopes to purchase nearby property for construction of a dormitory and lecture hall. Former first lady Nancy Reagan has been active in the effort. She visited the ranch two years ago to return dozens of personal items, make sure the furniture and lamps were in their proper places and recount life at the retreat that her husband bought for $580,000 in 1974. It's hard to imagine Nancy Reagan -- known for her designer dresses and high-society friends -- comfortable in so rustic a setting. ``If you spent a couple of hours at the ranch with Mrs. Reagan,'' Short said, ``you'd come away with a different appreciation, just seeing how emotional she was in giving away the property.'' You also might come away with a better understanding of Reagan himself. It is a place that is humble and grand; a refuge where you can feel the breath and see the hand of a very private actor turned world leader, whose inner thoughts remained a mystery to even his closest advisers. ``When you get there,'' Reagan once said of his ranch, ``the world is gone.'' Getting there, however, is not easy. The isolated spread is about 30 miles north of Santa Barbara, high on a twisting, steep mountain road that gets washed out in heavy rains and blocked by scrub oaks. Reagan, when he was president, arrived by helicopter, landing on a tarmac, now gone, at the top of the 7,000-foot mountain. He spent 345 days of his presidency -- almost one-eighth of his tenure -- on the ranch. He signed his famous 1981 tax cut into law during a news conference on his gravel driveway. He entertained Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II inside. How surprised they must have been. The house, a 1,500-square-foot white adobe structure, was built in 1898. It is without air conditioning and has baseboard heat only in the bedroom. It has sliding windows with aluminum frames and a faux-brick vinyl floor. The two living rooms are, well, what you'd expect in a ranch. Thereare lots of worn wicker and bamboo chairs with American Indian cotton print cushions, Naugahyde tables and animal-skin rugs. The bookshelves are stocked with dime-store Western novels. There are antlers over the doors, animal heads on the walls and a bumper pool table in one corner. The kitchen is small and has yellow electric appliances dating from the 1970s. To the side,there's a small maid's roommade of cinderblock. The bedroom is bright yellow -- the Reagans painted it themselves. On the night table is a phone that put Reagan in direct contact with the Secret Service. Through the window is a view of a no-longer functioning outhouse with a crescent moon, a remnant from the original owners. From the head of the dining table, where Reagan always sat, is a pretty view of Lake Lucky, where the Reagans canoed. ``You can tell why Reagan was called `The Great Communicator,' '' Short said. ``He lived simply, like most of us. He didn't need all the trappings of the presidency.'' There are hints of a self-effacing humor throughout the ranch. There's a brass plaque on the front door saying: ``On this site in 1897 nothing happened.'' There's a greasy tractor in the shed, adorned with a presidential seal. And there are traces of sentiment. The tree where he carved a heart containing Nancy's and his initials. A stone cemetery for 16 pets. The splendor of the place, however, is truly in the land. Reagan blazed more than seven miles of trails on the ranch, where he and Nancy rode horses. Along one path is a vista where they could gaze 40 miles in all directions, including one view over the Pacific Ocean. Reagan, once asked why he spent so much of his presidency on the remote ranch, replied by quoting the Scriptures. ``I look to the hills,'' he said, ``from whence cometh my strength.''

August 22, 2000, 11:45 AM	#2
Bunkster Senior Member Join Date: March 19, 2000 Posts: 167	These two sites offer a couple of the best recent pieces on Reagan. As they were done by C-SPAN, you are guarenteed of them being bias-free. The first is a tour of the Reagan Library in Simi Valley: http://store.yahoo.com/c-spanstore/153719.html The second is done from the ranch, and depicts all that was mentioned in your post: http://store.yahoo.com/c-spanstore/151636.html Regards

August 22, 2000, 12:50 PM	#3
Jack 99 Senior Member Join Date: July 5, 1999 Posts: 1,085	"And there are traces of sentiment. The tree where he carved a heart containing Nancy's and his initials. A stone cemetery for 16 pets." This is what kind of got me. There's a real genuine-ness to it. Ronald Reagan, maybe he was governor of California or a millionare actor or maybe even President of the United States at the time, took his deceased pets out to a little spot, dug a hole and put a rock there to mark the spot. Can you imagine such a thing from Clinton? Or even Bush? You think there's any trees anywhere with "Bill loves Hillary" on them anywhere? You think the Bush family ever went without air conditioning in thier home? When was the last time do you think Gore or Bush or Lieberman got their hands dirty (literally, not figuratively)? Probably our last great President of the Republic.

August 22, 2000, 03:27 PM	#4
Dark Avenger Senior Member Join Date: March 1, 1999 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 176	Anybody who subscribes to this mawkish sentimentality about a half-assed cowboy who was already suffering Alzheimer's best not be seen posting their laments about the downfall of the BOR on this BBS! Not only was the "War of Drugs" an invention of the Reagan White House as was the drugs for guns for Contras and other extra-Constitutional activities. I think that the 8 years of his royal pain in the ass Bill Clinton has just affected your memories of the Reagan era. One bright note from those years is the priceless photo of Nancy sitting on Mr. T's lap kissing his forehead for his contribution to the "War on Drugs". Who needs drugs with such surreal displays ??? Oh yeah, and Dutch saved all those M-1s so I could get them mail order from the government Bill Clinton now presides over. Now I guess I better duck . . . ------------------ "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

August 22, 2000, 04:19 PM	#5
Jack 99 Senior Member Join Date: July 5, 1999 Posts: 1,085	No need to duck. I said I'm not the biggest Reagan fan. He "got it" to a point, but was still not exactly a Patriot when it came to strict adherence to the BOR and Constitution. One thing for sure, he's head and shoulders above anything since or anything we're likely to have in the near future. He also probably saved this country from the worst kind of liberalism that Carter represented (weak, mewling, apologetic). Maybe my posts did come off a little sentimental. So what? The point is the guy was genuine in who and what he was. We can call him the "great communicator" and pretend he was just a good actor turned politician, but I think it went deeper. When Ron Reagan's head hit the pillow at night, he'd said what he meant and meant what he said. The contrast to Clintoon is striking. To find out his favorite place in the world was a ranch with some old crumby appliances and no AC is pretty interesting. Can you imagine Gorby and the queen and Thatcher going up there to that ranch house? Can you see Clintoon staying, let alone enjoying, a setting like that?