Today would have been Ronald Reagan’s 103rd birthday.  If you are interested, there will be a ceremony at the Reagan Library celebrating the occasion, and you can watch it live HERE.

The ceremony begins at 11:00 am PST, or 2:00 PM EST

To honor President Ronald Reagan on the anniversary of his birthday, the President of the United States has designated that a program be held at President Reagan’s Memorial Site at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library each year. Please join us at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library as we pay tribute to President Reagan on the anniversary of his 103rd birthday.

Brigadier General John W. Bullard, Jr., Commanding General at United States Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, will conduct the ceremony,which will commence at 11:30 a.m. with a music prelude beginning at 11:00 a.m. by the Camp Pendleton Marine Division Band. The ceremony includes a color guard, chaplain, a brass quintet, a 21-gun salute, a flyover, the placing of an official White House wreath on President Reagan’s gravesite and keynote remarks by The Honorable William Bennett. The ceremony will be held outdoors at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Just prior to the birthday activities, Dr. Bennett will be signing copies of his new book, Is College Worth It? A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education, at 10:00 a.m. Books must be purchased from the Reagan Library Museum Store to receive signature.

The ceremony will be held outdoors at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, located at 40 Presidential Drive, Simi Valley, California 93065.

I will never forget the day I stood in a long line in the local school gymnasium to vote for Ronald Reagan.  I even remember what I was wearing!  My mother was still living, and standing behind me in line.

There are so many memories of the Reagan years.  My first big memory of Reagan as President is when he appeared on television to explain his economic plans.  How he would lower taxes, and that it would stimulate the economy.  I wasn’t sure how that would work (at the time), but I was impressed by the way in which he explained it.  He truly was a great communicator!

Other memories concern his speeches.  There are so many great ones to pick from.  A standout was after the Challenger disaster:

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

Another you may want to revisit is Reagan’s farewell to the Nation:

An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties.

But now, we’re about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom–freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs [protection].

So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important–why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who’d fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, “We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.” Well, let’s help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual.

I do miss him.  What are your memories?