While channel surfing came across this interview with Paula Zahn. It is rare I would not quickly change the channel. This is one amazing and moving story showing the pure humanity of President Reagan and Nancy.
Summary...
President Reagan had visited a local elementary school that his White House was adopting. The principal selected one very lucky first grader, Rudy Hines, to be the president's pen pal. You might think a couple of letters would be exchanged and then it would be over.
But in this case, something quite extraordinary happened. Ronald Reagan and Rudy Hines exchanged letters, hundreds of letters, for more than seven years. For this inner city boy, it was an education. Rudy got a glimpse of politics, history and diplomacy through the prism of his pen pal, the president. But perhaps more importantly, Rudy gained an adviser, a mentor, a lifelong friend.
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PAULA ZAHN NOW
Remembering the Great Communicator; Interview With Senator John McCain
Aired June 7, 2004 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): He was a man of words.
RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You were young the day you took these cliffs. Some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why?
ZAHN: He was a man of letters.
REAGAN: In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal. America's is.
ZAHN: He was a man who loved to communicate with pen and paper.
REAGAN: My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's s arm steadying your ways.
ZAHN: Tonight, Ronald Reagan, the thoughtful communicator.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZAHN: Good evening and welcome. Thanks so much for joining us tonight.
The sound bites, the quotes, the one-liners, even the occasional mistake that, when we look back, seem to distill Ronald Reagan's presidency, phrases like evil empire, tear down this wall, there you go again. But what few of us understood then was that this president was a man who loved to write. Reagan the actor had learned from Hollywood how to get the most out of the written word.
And what he wrote in thousands of letters shows us the depth of his thinking and the warmth in his heart. So tonight, we focus on Ronald Reagan, a man of letters.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZAHN (voice-over): President Reagan was unquestionably a man of words, writing more than 5,000 personal letters in his lifetime, letters to his loving wife, his famous Hollywood friends, influential world leaders, and Rudy. It began in 1984 with this letter from President Reagan. "I was delighted," Reagan wrote, "to see your letter on my desk today. I am proud to have you as my pal." President Reagan had visited a local elementary school that his White House was adopting. The principal selected one very lucky first grader, Rudy Hines, to be the president's pen pal. You might think a couple of letters would be exchanged and then it would be over.
But in this case, something quite extraordinary happened. Ronald Reagan and Rudy Hines exchanged letters, hundreds of letters, for more than seven years. For this inner city boy, it was an education. Rudy got a glimpse of politics, history and diplomacy through the prism of his pen pal, the president. But perhaps more importantly, Rudy gained an adviser, a mentor, a lifelong friend.
Reagan gave him advice on everything from homework to friendships. These letters were filled with stories about the president's dogs, his hobbies, even the doodles he made in high-level meetings. And it wasn't just letters. President Reagan often sent photographs as well, the president and the first lady at the Great Wall of China, the president at the ranch, the president with world leaders.
And on the back of each picture, a handwritten note from Reagan to his friend Rudy. Through the years, Rudy and the family made dozens of trips to the White House, including one to celebrate the president's birthday. Rudy came with balloons and cupcakes in hand for his friend.
And then, in 1984, the president and first lady turned the tables when he and Nancy stopped by Rudy's home for dinner, a little different from the state dinners Nancy became famous for.
STEPHANIE LEE, MOTHER OF RUDY: Fried chicken and rice and salad. And they seemed to enjoy it.
ZAHN: A quiet fried chicken dinner on the living room couch in front of the TV. Now 20 years after the correspondence first began, these letters and photos are not just keepsakes, but cherished memories of a young boy and his very devoted pen pal.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZAHN: Joining us now, all grown up, is Rudolph Hines, along with his mother, Stephanie Lee.
Great to have both of you with us tonight.
RUDOLPH HINES, FORMER PEN PAL OF PRESIDENT REAGAN: Thank you.
LEE: Thank you.
ZAHN: What a piece of history. I've been looking through this book and you have not only pictures that the president took the time to sign on the back and tell you who was in the pictures, but dozens and dozens of letters that he wrote to you over the years. We want to look at an excerpt right now from the first letter that he wrote to you dated, March 20, 1984. And the handwriting in the P.S. at the bottom reads: "I was so pleased to get your letter, I got excited and started to sign my name in the wrong place." Clearly, the president was trying to have fun with you. You were only 6 years old at the time.
HINES: Correct.
ZAHN: Were you surprised at how he was able to connect with you?
HINES: I was surprised that he took the time to sit down and write a letter. I was just a 6-year-old kid, really.
ZAHN: He was a good letter writer, wasn't he?
HINES: Yes, he was. Yes, he was.
ZAHN: I want to share with our audience another letter that was dated April 9, 1984, where the president said: "You said that one of your hobbies was painting. That's fine. And it's something you can get a lot of pleasure from throughout your life. I didn't paint when I was your age, but I liked to draw cartoons and still do. What I do is called doodling and usually is done when I'm in a meeting of some kind. I've enclosed a few from a recent meeting."
What did you think of his doodles?
HINES: They were pretty good, actually. Unfortunately, I was never as good an artist as he was, but the doodles he sent, he sent me, I think there were four, four different ones on one page, they were quite good, quite good.
ZAHN: Did you have any idea at that stage in your life -- because you're basically a little kid -- what the impact of his communication meant?
HINES: I didn't really make a big deal of it at the time. I knew who he was, that he was president. But he was just a friend I wrote letters to. He just happened to be the president.
ZAHN: Just happened to be the president.
Now, mom, you had to know what a big deal this was, that a president that had so much to do would take time out of his day to, in many cases, personally hand-write the letter?
LEE: Well, the grownups around Rudolph at that time were quite flabbergasted. They were totally impressed and just gaga with the fact he was signing them and writing them and sending him pictures and everything.
ZAHN: And it obviously was something that the president did because he wanted to do it. He wasn't doing this for show.
LEE: Right. ZAHN: That had to get you right here.
LEE: It did. It probably had more of an impact on us as the months passed and we saw exactly what was coming. They were quite prolific in their writing to each other. And we were very amazed at what was coming, what was coming in the ordinary mail for Rudolph.
The mailman would just get a real kick out of delivering the mail and leaning it up against the door and says, got another letter from the president today. The mailman was a trip, but the neighbors and the family clearly enjoyed the whole process.
ZAHN: So the president not only sent you letters. There was one Christmas where he sent you a check. But you never cashed it, did you?
HINES: No, I did not. No, I did not. We still have it.
ZAHN: And we have a picture of it. Why didn't you cash it?
LEE: Actually, he got the money.
ZAHN: He did get the money.
LEE: His dad and I gave him the money, but we kept the check. The accountant, I think, called about six months later and said, are you guys going to cash the check? And we said, no.
ZAHN: And I don't blame you. What a piece of history you have.
Rudolph Hines and Stephanie Lee, please stay tuned. We're going to take a short break here.
When we come back, we're going to hear about your invitation to the president to dine at your home with the first lady. That story when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAHN: We're back with Rudolph Hines and his mother, Stephanie Lee, talking about his childhood memory of President Reagan, who adopted him as a pen pal.
Welcome back.
HINES: Thank you.
LEE: Thank you.
ZAHN: Now, one of the best parts of your history is that you actually invited the president to eat at your home with the first lady. How did that come about?
LEE: Rudolph sent a letter to the president. He asked the president if he'd like to come over and have dinner. Actually, it was supposed to be at his grandmother's house because she had a vegetable garden that year and he says, but if you want to come, please call in advance so my mom can get the laundry up off the floor.
I was totally mortified by that, but I didn't -- the letter went out to the president and I didn't give it a second thought.
ZAHN: So when he arrived, what was it like?
LEE: Not when he arrived. When they called and said that, can he come? It was absolutely -- I said, well, I need a day to clean up. I need a day to kind of straighten up a little bit, borrow some furniture or cook some food. And he came. It was amazing, absolutely amazing.
ZAHN: Describe to us how the president behaved. He didn't get out of the White House all that often. In fact, he often talked about feeling imprisoned in the White House and he wished he could have had more opportunities to do what he did with the two of you. Was he relaxed?
LEE: He really was.
We had gotten some information that said, please do what you normally do in your home. And we normally ate on trays, because we lived in a small apartment. And they said, fine, just do that. And so that's what we did. We had TV trays and we served them on that. And they talked. And they were so casual. It was like bringing family over and tucking them in the sofa and letting them eat. It was great.
ZAHN: Did you dress up that night?
LEE: Are you kidding me? It was summertime and it was hot and we dressed accordingly. So it was fun.
ZAHN: So, Stephanie, do you remember what you talked about?
LEE: They actually talked about their life in the White House, what it was like to have family in the White House. They talked about their early years. Mrs. Reagan told this story about how she used to be a nurse's aide at a hospital and she was instructed to bathe this patient.
And the patient had a sheet over him. And she said she gave that patient a really, really good bath. And when the supervisor came by to her and said, well, "Why did you bathe that patient?" she said, because you told me to. And she says, no, that patient is dead. You were supposed to do the one next to it. We were on the floor. It was just totally hilarious. She was very comfortable.
She was sitting back on the sofa sort of tucked in the corner. And they were very animated about very ordinary things, about him being a lifeguard, about growing up in Illinois. We were very much enchanted, very much so.
ZAHN: How great, that they could be so at ease with all of you.
LEE: Very (CROSSTALK)
ZAHN: And, of course, meanwhile, the neighborhood is going nuts.
(LAUGHTER)
LEE: Yes.
ZAHN: Let me share with our audience another letter the president wrote to you after you asked him a number of questions about his relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev and the U.S. relationship with the Soviet Union.
The president wrote: "I don't have many answers to your questions about Gorbachev's family or his hobbies. We never got around to that kind of conversation, possibly because all our talk had to be through interpreters. You are right. It would better if he could understand our language, or of course, if I could talk Russian. Just between us, on another subject, I was rooting for the Redskins, even though, in my job, I'm not supposed to take sides. I think it's going to be quite a Super Bowl."
Did you ever think he would be a witness to history that way and have a president respond to some very specific questions you asked?
HINES: No, not in a million years. I figured I will get just a generic response that typical politicians give when people write letters to them. But he was not a typical politician. He actually sat down and took the time and carefully thought out his responses to my letters. And I really appreciated that.
ZAHN: It certainly is a measure of a man.
Just a final thought of what this relationship meant to you as a mother to watch Rudolph correspond with the president in a very meaningful way.
LEE: You know, after a while, you stopped thinking about him as president of the United States. I mean, always as adults, we knew exactly what was going on, but, clearly, it was turning into something a lot more than that. And his father and I both very much appreciated the relationship that he developed with Rudolph, because, as you can see, it turned out to be something that no one would have thought of.
ZAHN: It's a beautiful story and thank you for sharing part of your story with us tonight.
HINES: Thank you.
LEE: Thank you.
ZAHN: Good luck to you.
HINES: Thank you.
ZAHN: Rudolph and Stephanie, thanks for your time. LEE: Thank you.
ZAHN: And much of what Ronald Reagan was heard, not read. Coming up in this hour, the man and his message, a revealing look at how Reagan found the words that spoke to a nation.
Coming up next, though, I'll ask Senator John McCain about riding the Reagan wave right to Washington.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAHN: Tonight, the body of President Reagan lies in repose in the Reagan Presidential Library. It is the first stage in a week of ceremonies, which will include the first state funeral for a president in the U.S. capital in some 31 years.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZAHN (voice-over): This morning, Nancy Reagan, surrounded by family and friends, arrived at the funeral home in Santa Monica, California, the beginning of a five-day remembrance of her husband. Mrs. Reagan looked on as eight military pallbearers loaded the president's flag-draped coffin on to the hearse. The family followed the casket on a 40-mile drive to the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.
REV. MICHAEL WENNING, RETIRED SENIOR PASTOR, BEL AIR PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: The lord our God is in our midst. and as we were in procession I couldn't help but think of the love and the outpouring that has begun in the nation for a great president, a great world leader and a faithful servant of almighty God.
ZAHN: A final moment with the president, and then the family departed. Waiting five miles away in a holding area were public mourners, including some who had lined up overnight.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We didn't get much sleep, but you know what? The whole part about it is to be able to pay tribute to the greatest American that I think we've ever had.
ZAHN: Throughout the day, thousands of people were shuttled on buses to the library, where they filed past the coffin. Among the mourners, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. President Reagan will lie here in repose for two days before being flown to Washington, D.C., where he will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.
Across the country, the president was remembered, a two-minute moment of silence at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange, a makeshift memorial at his college alma mater in Eureka, Illinois, and reflections by politicians on Capitol Hill.
SEN. BILL FRIST (R-TN), MAJORITY LEADER: He believed we must protect freedom wherever it may be threatened and plant its seeds wherever freedom may take root.
(END VIDEOTAPE) ZAHN: Nobody knows how precious freedom is more than Senator John McCain who, for five and a half years, was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese. In whispered conversations or code tapped out on prison walls, McCain and fellow captives would find comfort knowing that California Govern Ronald Reagan supported their mission in Vietnam. Senator McCain and Reagan would later become friends.
And joining us a little bit earlier was Senator John McCain.
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