Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1911-2004

One day when we’re older, he will die, and there will be a great funeral with a flag-draped coffin and a riderless horse with the boots turned backward…

It wouldn’t be sad. I could even imagine it as jolly. He would die with his boots on, “having known not… bitterness nor defeat.” He would have just turned one hundred the day he was thrown from the horse that was bit by the snake as they paused in a gallop through the brush to watch the sun disappear behind the hills…

–Peggy Noonan, from “What I Saw At The Revolution”

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It didn’t quite happen that way, and contrary to the above, it is sad, despite the inevitability of Reagan’s illness and the blessed release he’s been granted today after a decade of suffering and loss. But since I don’t have the words at the moment, I’ve borrowed a few of Noonan’s.

I’ve also posted links to a selection of Reagan’s own words at my site.

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