anybody cry at Reagan's funeral?

[hot_pastrami]

Originally posted by lumberjim
last post on the page

Hmm. How apt. As I was reading that, I got an image in my head of the Leave-it-to-Beaver-ish "Radar" character from M*A*S*H spewing those questionable, self-ego-gratifying comments, with a few "golly!"s and "gee-whiz!"es inserted as appropriate.

Ah, perspective.

[Cyber Wolf]

I will always be more impressed with Reagan in that he had pretty humble and "average" beginnings, moved through all kinds of careers and ended up as Prez. He wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, didn't grow up having everything handed to him and he actually worked his way up. I've always been more impressed with how a person gets to his station rather than the station itself.

I was born only a couple of years before he took office and during his terms I couldn't even spell Apartheid, thought communism was a religion and, for much of that time, couldn't point out Germany on a map, let alone Berlin. Nintendo, Transformers and jelly shoes were much more important. Now I'm older and understand things that happened and I caution myself against giving one man the credit for so much. He alone didn't cause communism to fall. He alone didn't run the national debt to deplorable heights (or depths as the case may be). He couldn't have done a thing without Congress, without the Justices and certainly could have done nothing without the people who voted for him. So I would give the credit to everyone who made it possible for Reagan to, for example, stand up there and demand the wall to be taken down. He couldn't have done that with all the people who backed him. Way to go, youse guys!

As far as his funeral, I wouldn't have cried...I'm not the kind of gal to cry at the funerals of people I didn't know personally. However, my eyes did mist over during the procession to the White House. It touched me how so many people gave their afternoon to stand 4-8 bodies deep along the street in the 90 degree heat for nothing more than a glimpse of the casket as it came by. It also touched me how many international figures came to say goodbye despite their current positions of power, their opinions of Reagan or the sides they fought on. Great big fat kudos to Gorby for coming to say good bye, that's Respect, that is. What will stand out in my mind the most though is the planes roaring over the casket as it reached 4th street. It had been planned for it to happen as they crossed 4th street. The whole procession was a few minutes behind schedule and there was worry that the planes would come too early or too late. But they pulled it off. PERFECTLY. The precision and timing of that manuever was flat out PERFECT and I was really glad they pulled it off.