IN 1979, RONALD Reagan was running for the presidency of the United States and he and his staff wanted to use my office after his segment on the Good Day Show, and after that he wanted to have an interview with the local paper. When I came in the next morning I saw that the door to my office was closed, so I waited until the door opened; and then I went in and was introduced to Mr. Reagan. We shook hands. I then said to him: “You know Governor, there hasn’t been that much class sitting behind that desk since I left here last night.” I thought I was trying to be light and funny but there was no reaction from him. I thought that was rather strange so I pressed on.
“You know, when I came here to Boston in 1972, the Board asked me what my politics were and I told them that I was a Ronald Reagan Republican and I can bet you I was one of the few Republicans around here at the time,” I told him. Once again there was no reaction from him. No laugh. Nothing. I thought it was funny but I was very surprised at his blank face and lack of acknowledgement that I was talking and joking with him. I was now getting very uncomfortable but I was intent on walking out of there with something from Governor Reagan. So I pressed on once again.
“You know Governor, when I was a young man living in California in 1964, and you made your speech for Barry Goldwater, I was so intrigued with what you were saying that I had to pull over and concentrate on your message. Not only at that time did you sell me on Goldwater, but you made me a lifelong Ronald Reagan Republican.” Once again I looked directly at him. No reaction. The only thing I could do at this point was thank him for coming and watch him walk out the door.
Later I walked over to his assistant and had a chat with him. “Gee, I seemed to have just struck out with Mr. Reagan. I can’t understand it. I talked and joked with him but he never reacted to anything I said.”
“Bob, don’t take it personal,” his staff person said. “First of all, it’s very possible that he may not have even heard you. His hearing is not too good. But you know it could also be possible that he didn’t like your stories.”
I was in shock at what this person had just said to me. I looked at him in a funny kind of way and then said, “Yeah, that’s possible…I guess.”
“And it’s also possible that for some reason, he just didn’t like you.”
Now I was devastated, but somehow I found a way to laugh it off.
When WCVB-TV originally went on the air in 1972, one of their mandates was that they would not sell political time, but rather they would give it away to candidates. Up until the time when Reagan came in, I was taking Sunday shows and afternoon shows and trying to figure ways to generate as much revenue as possible because the Board would not let me sell political time of any kind. Shortly after Reagan left my office that day, his people called up and wanted to buy time on the station for his campaign. I told them that we did not sell time to political groups and they told me that they would not accept that. They wanted to buy time and they were going to figure out a way to do it, so they went to the FCC and made a case that they needed to buy television to succeed in New Hampshire. And lo and behold, the FCC said that we could now go ahead and sell political time. So we opened our doors for political spots and the money was just pouring in. Any spot we had, they bought.
I would, some years later, run into Ronald Reagan again. Sometime around 1989, I received a call from his office and was invited to come over and meet him in his retirement office with Marjie. I was thrilled to go and Marjie and I went over to meet him. When we arrived, there were about twenty-five guards all around him. Mrs. Reagan wanted to keep his mind active so she was constantly inviting people over so he could talk and keep his mind going. While we were there, he got up from behind his desk and started showing us all of the pictures around his office. Each picture had a story that went with it and he would tell us that story. At that time, people knew very little about his Alzheimer’s disease. Reagan was an eloquent tour guide and would show us a picture of him riding horses with the Queen of England, and then he would suddenly stop and say, “Where was I? What was I talking about?”
As we were going out, I said to him, “You know Mr. Reagan, Marjie and I were married at Forest Lawn Cemetery (and I knew that was where he was married to his first wife) and people would laugh at us all the time over the fact that we were married in a cemetery.” He looked at me and said, “I was never married in Forest Lawn. Nancy and I were married in North Hollywood.” I knew he had either forgotten his wedding with Jane Wyman, or didn’t want to admit it.
A year later I was invited to play golf with him, but I chose not to because I heard that he would ride in his golf cart and say nothing to anyone all day. It was something that I just did not want to do.