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Already a Year He’s been Gone?

It was a year ago, today, that I wrote:


Today, we were greeted with the sad news, that The Gipper, the Greatest President of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan, is gone from us.

Today, we remember a man, whose mind was filled with wide visions and positive actions.

The central figure in pulling down the iron curtain and ending the cold war…

The man who brought the 20th century to a close with America as the sole superpower…

The man who reminded America that it IS good, that freedom, a belief in God and personal responsibility are good things to be encouraged and cherished…

The man who exposed to us the great evil that communism represents, in all it’s forms….

The man who created the longest peacetime economic expansion in America’s history…

This great man for the last several years has had those visions restricted to his room, and another days breathing.

Having been in seclusion on his BelAir home since the revelation in 1994 that he was suffering with Alzheimer’s.

In truth, at age 93, he’s now been on a long trip toward the exit for several years, and likely would have been anyway without the Alzheimer’s. The picture grew steadily worse, with him having fallen in the bedroom back in January 2001, and suffered a broken hip. He has been frail and bedridden ever since. He spent his time since then being fed, washed and cared for 24 hours a day by medical staff. Grand care, by a loving staff, I am sure, but he could not leave his bed, even for the most basic of functions. Nor could he make himself understood.

The specter of one whose spirit so positively affected us all, to be so trapped for so long, is hurtful to each of us, individually and as a nation, and as a culture. But, perhaps it will help us to remember, first, that that great mind, that great spirit, is now free again.

It will also help, I think to remember his words; he was a far more eloquent speaker than myself, after all. It is, perhaps somewhat symbolic that Mr. Reagan should pass on, on the day marking the 60th anniversary of D-day. It was on this day in 1984, that Mr. Reagan remarked:

"Mr. President, distinguished guests, we stand today at a place of battle, one that 40 years ago saw and felt the worst of war. Men bled and died here for a few feet of--or inches of sand, as bullets and shellfire cut through their ranks. About them, General Omar Bradley later said, "Every man who set foot on Omaha Beach that day was a hero."

No speech can adequately portray their suffering, their sacrifice, their heroism. President Lincoln once reminded us that through their deeds, the dead of battle have spoken more eloquently for themselves than any of the living ever could. But we can only honor them by rededicating ourselves to the cause for which they gave a last full measure of devotion.

Today we do rededicate ourselves to that cause. And at this place of honor, we're humbled by the realization of how much so many gave to the cause of freedom and to their fellow man.

Some who survived the battle of June 6, 1944, are here today. Others who hoped to return never did.

"Someday, Lis, I'll go back," said Private First Class Peter Robert Zanatta, of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion, and first assault wave to hit Omaha Beach. "I'll go back, and I'll see it all again. I'll see the beach, the barricades, and the graves."

Those words of Private Zanatta come to us from his daughter, Lisa Zanatta Henn, in a heartrending story about the event her father spoke of so often. "In his words, the Normandy invasion would change his life forever," she said. She tells some of his stories of World War II but says of her father, "the story to end all stories was D-Day."

"He made me feel the fear of being on that boat waiting to land. I can smell the ocean and feel the seasickness. I can see the looks on his fellow soldiers' faces--the fear, the anguish, the uncertainty of what lay ahead. And when they landed, I can feel the strength and courage of the men who took those first steps through the tide to what must have surely looked like instant death."

Private Zanatta's daughter wrote to me: "I don't know how or why I can feel this emptiness, this fear, or this determination, but I do. Maybe it's the bond I had with my father. All I know is that it brings tears to my eyes to think about my father as a 20-year-old boy having to face that beach."

The anniversary of D-Day was always special for her family. And like all the families of those who went to war, she describes how she came to realize her own father's survival was a miracle: "So many men died. I know that my father watched many of his friends be killed. I know that he must have died inside a little each time. But his explanation to me was, 'You did what you had to do, and you kept on going.'"

When men like Private Zanatta and all our Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy 40 years ago they came not as conquerors, but as liberators. When these troops swept across the French countryside and into the forests of Belgium and Luxembourg they came not to take, but to return what had been wrongly seized. When our forces marched into Germany they came not to prey on a brave and defeated people, but to nurture the seeds of democracy among those who yearned to be free again.

We salute them today. But, Mr. President, we also salute those who, like yourself, were already engaging the enemy inside your beloved country--the French Resistance. Your valiant struggle for France did so much to cripple the enemy and spur the advance of the armies of liberation. The French Forces of the Interior will forever personify courage and national spirit. They will be a timeless inspiration to all who are free and to all who would be free.

Today, in their memory, and for all who fought here, we celebrate the triumph of democracy. We reaffirm the unity of democratic peoples who fought a war and then joined with the vanquished in a firm resolve to keep the peace.

From a terrible war we learned that unity made us invincible; now, in peace, that same unity makes us secure. We sought to bring all freedom-loving nations together in a community dedicated to the defense and preservation of our sacred values. Our alliance, forged in the crucible of war, tempered and shaped by the realities of the postwar world, has succeeded. In Europe, the threat has been contained, the peace has been kept.

Today the living here assembled--officials, veterans, citizens--are a tribute to what was achieved here 40 years ago. This land is secure. We are free. These things are worth fighting and dying for.

Lisa Zanatta Henn began her story by quoting her father, who promised that he would return to Normandy. She ended with a promise to her father, who died eight years ago of cancer: "I'm going there, Dad, and I'll see the beaches and the barricades and the monuments. I'll see the graves, and I'll put flowers there just like you wanted to do. I'll feel all the things you made me feel through your stories and your eyes. I'll never forget what you went through, Dad, nor will I let anyone else forget. And, Dad, I'll always be proud."

Through the words of his loving daughter, who is here with us today, a D-Day veteran has shown us the meaning of this day far better than any President can. It is enough for us to say about Private Zanatta and all the men of honor and courage who fought beside him four decades ago: We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free."

Here’s a few that caught my eye today:

"I've spoken of the "Shining City on the Hill" all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still.

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all..... "

...""Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way...."

"And so, good-bye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. "


Farewell, Mr. President. Ya done good.

Rest, now.

A year, already. It is hard for us to fathom the passage of time.

In retrospect, his actual death was an anti-climax, his work long having been done… his path to the exit having long been determined.

Randy Travis wrote recently that it’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it’s what you leave behind you when you go.

What Reagan left behind him was monumental. And he knew it, thankfully before the illness stole his self-awareness… his impression having long been made unerasably on the American culture, his repairs on the American spirit having long before, reinforced us as a culture, and as a people.

And yet, it’s not so long ago, that we don’t remember…. Not so long ago, that we’re not thankful for his being among us.