Notes From a Friend in High Places
Reagan's Letters Brought D.C. Boy A Look at History
By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 12, 2003; Page A01
Rudy Hines was born and raised in Southeast Washington and hasn't ventured far afield. He lives a half-mile from where he grew up, and he works two part-time jobs in his neighborhood, at a store catty-corner from the elementary school he attended and at a soul food lounge about two blocks away.
But it was here, as a child in Congress Heights, that Rudy got a view of high-level diplomacy, national politics and international history -- and a bit of grandfatherly counsel. Rudy was President Ronald Reagan's official pen pal for almost five years, and some of their correspondence is included in the just-published collection "Reagan: A Life in Letters."
Along with letters on Reagan's desire to end the Cold War or the rationale for limiting the free speech of a communist are nuggets of advice he gave to the Congress Heights Elementary School student.
"I know you work very hard. I do too, but we have a lot of fun writing each other," Rudy, 6, wrote on April 3, 1984. "My hobbies are painting and watching golf. I like to read and write too. At recreational reading time, the children pull out the rugs and read the newspaper."
On April 9, 1984, Reagan responded: "You . . . mentioned reading and that is good. Rudolph, if you get in the habit of reading stories for pleasure you'll never be lonely. Sometimes I worry that TV is going to rob young people of the great pleasure there is in a good book."
Later, Rudy asked the president for advice: "Right now, I'd love to take karate lessons but I don't know how to bring the subject up to my folks. Do you have any suggestions?" he wrote on Sept. 1, 1985.
The president responded Sept. 9, using a variation of the name that Rudy sometimes adopted: "You asked me about learning Karate and how to broach the subject to your parents. Ruddy, being a parent myself, I can tell you your parents are the best friends you'll ever have. The best way is to simply talk it over with them. The decision they make will be based on what they think is best for you right now. . . . I can recall some turn-downs by my parents when I was young. At the time I was pretty upset and thought my parents were wrong but, as time went by, I usually looked back and decided they had been right."
Hines, a Dunbar High School graduate who didn't go on to college, is now a strapping 6-foot, 280-pound man with the same sweet smile he had as a child. He recalls taking the relationship in stride, and he is shy and not eager to step into the spotlight, despite his friendship with the president.
"I didn't think it was a real big thing at the time. . . . I just put down anything that was on my mind. I would ask him questions, ask him what were some of the major details of what he did as president or that I got an 'A' on something," said Hines, 26. "He was always nice to me, and that's all I really cared about."
But there were glimpses into some momentous events, like the president's first visit to a communist country:
"On Wednesday the 18th of April, Mrs. Reagan and I have to start on our trip to China. . . . The trip is to meet with the government leaders of China and see how our two countries can become better friends," Reagan wrote in 1984.
On April 22, 1986, Reagan wrote his young pen pal: "From there [South Asia], we'll go to Tokyo for the annual economic summit with the leaders of England, France, Italy, West Germany, Canada and Japan. It will be a busy time. We have a lot to talk about, including terrorism and what we can do about it."
Known as the Great Communicator, Reagan was a prolific letter writer from age 11 to 83, when he wrote his famous "My Fellow Americans" letter to the nation revealing that doctors had found that he had an incurable brain disease, Alzheimer's. Now 92 and living with his wife, Nancy, in California, Reagan has been out of the spotlight for almost a decade.
"Reagan: A Life in Letters" was released Sept. 23 by Free Press of New York and contains more than 1,000 letters written before, during and after Reagan's two terms in the White House. Few have been published before, said chief book editor Kiron K. Skinner.
The collection was culled from some 6,500 letters found at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., in private collections across the country and in other presidential libraries. It includes correspondence to heads of state Leonid Brezhnev and Margaret Thatcher and to media magnate Walter Annenberg, National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., former president Richard M. Nixon, advice columnist Ann Landers, California real estate developer Paul Trousdale, actor Mickey Rooney, Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner and Reagan's children, Patti and Ron Jr. Reagan's letters, most of them originally written in ink on a yellow legal pad and then typed by secretaries, spanned the gamut, from his thoughts on a space-based missile defense program to the virtue in telling the truth.
It is in the chapter titled "Pen Pals" that the relationship between Reagan and Rudy Hines emerges, an association that particularly interested Skinner.
"What really struck me was a picture of a little black boy [that Rudy included in his first letter to Reagan] -- that this was the president's official pen pal -- because I couldn't tell from the letters initially the race of the child," Skinner said. (Rudy makes only one reference in his letters to race, after Reagan visited his school in January 1986 to commemorate the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday that he signed into law. Reagan told the story of his black college football teammate who was maliciously injured on the field by a white player from the opposing team. "I hope I never meet anyone who would hurt me just because I am a different color," Rudy subsequently wrote Reagan.)
In an interview Monday, Skinner said she believes that Rudy's relationship with Reagan is noteworthy. "For me, as a black American, the story took on a special meaning. It defied expectations, and the relationship went beyond correspondence. . . . Yes, they were from different backgrounds, difference races and different ages. But it's just a real conversation."
"Reagan: A Life in Letters" grew out of Skinner's 1996 research for a book on the Cold War, a project that took her to the files at the Reagan Presidential Library. What Skinner found was a trove of letters and other personal papers so large that she called in two of Reagan's former advisers -- Annelise Anderson, a Reagan aide at the Office of Management and Budget, and her husband, Martin, who was Reagan's first domestic policy adviser -- for help.
Skinner, now an assistant professor of political science at Carnegie Mellon University and a Hoover Institution research fellow, and the Andersons collaborated on "Reagan: A Life in Letters."
Hines became the president's pen pal in March 1984 when Reagan visited Congress Heights Elementary, since renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School. The White House had decided to adopt the school in 1983 as part of the National Partnerships in Education program. Students got special privileges, such as visiting Air Force One, the Rose Garden and the Roosevelt Room in the White House. In March 1984, Reagan visited Congress Heights Elementary to announce a new twist.
"There has to be some kind of personal relationship when you're doing this," Reagan told the children and teachers. "I want to have a student from here be a pen pal, and we'll exchange letters."
That student was Hines, chosen by Principal William Dalton for his reading and writing skills. "He was a low-key, very intelligent kid," said Dalton, who retired as principal in 1990. "He was just a normal child who happened to learn the skills we were trying to teach." Also, Hines lived across the street from Congress Heights Elementary with his mother, Stephanie Lee, who was willing to become an active participant in the relationship. Rudy's father, Chett Hines, also lived close by and was very involved in his son's life.
Now living in Lorton and working as a nurse in the admissions testing center of Washington Hospital Center, Lee has preserved the more than 175 Reagan letters and photographs -- as well as a $50 check from his personal checking account in Beverly Hills that Reagan sent to Rudy as a Christmas present in 1985. And there are the White House photographs from the September 1984 visit the Reagans made to Lee's one-bedroom apartment in Southeast, where Rudy lived.
The White House contacted Lee and asked her to host the president and first lady for dinner and to keep it a surprise for Rudy. Rudy had invited the Reagans for dinner, writing: "You have to let us know in advance so my mom can pick up the laundry off the floor."
When the Reagans arrived, they asked to eat just like Rudy and his mom would have, Lee recalled, and they did. A photograph shows the Reagans sitting on the sofa across from the television, eating homemade fried chicken, wild rice and salad off of TV trays. In a statement Monday, Nancy Reagan remembered that night as "a wonderful evening."
The Reagans also brought a present for Rudy, some of his classmates and the school principal: front-row tickets for a Michael Jackson concert at RFK Stadium scheduled for that night.
"I want to thank you for the visit to my house and the jar of jelly beans," Rudy wrote to Reagan. "The Michael Jackson concert was great! Tell Mrs. Reagan I think she would have jumped when they shot off the fireworks. She would have liked Michael Jackson's singing too. I enjoyed the show."
Seven months later, Reagan invited Rudy and several hundred schoolmates to "The Greatest Show On Earth," seating his pen pal next to him and giving him the whistle he used as honorary ringmaster of the Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey circus. Rudy got a special invitation to attend Reagan's second inauguration in 1985 but couldn't attend because cold weather forced the ceremony into the Capitol Rotunda, where there was little room for spectators.
Lee keeps the scrapbooks with all the Reagan mementos in a bank safety deposit box and said neither she nor her son plans to cash in on the collection.
"The fact we never capitalized on [the relationship or letters], I think that's what made it work," Lee said. "That relationship was quite wonderful: an old white guy talking to a young black kid as a pen pal. That was a rare event . . . and something that kids don't do anymore. . . . It's a perfect example of the way the world should act."
Hines does not recall the last letter he wrote to the president but thinks it was in early 1989 when he was in the sixth grade, just after Reagan left office. He thought it would be difficult to continue the correspondence cross-country, and he didn't want to infringe on Reagan the private citizen, Hines said.
"Unfortunately, we didn't continue," he said.
In her statement, Nancy Reagan said: "My husband and Rudy Hines were pen pals, so Rudy holds a special place in his heart. . . . I was pleased to hear recently that he's doing well and I know my husband would be as well."
Hines, a 1995 Dunbar graduate, said he thought occasionally about reviving the letter-writing relationship over the years, a notion he knew would never come to pass because of Reagan's illness. He still has the jar of jelly beans, along with several books the president gave him for various birthdays or Christmas.
Hines said he is trying to decide what career he wants to pursue, while working part time at Liff's Market and as an occasional deejay at Georgene's Lounge in Southeast.
Hines said he has no plans to profit from his Reagan memorabilia.
"I don't really see them in that light," Hines said. "I know they were important at the time, but I was just a young black kid in Southeast. . . . They'll probably be with me until I'm 80, God willing." |
