Kudos to Peter Hannaford, longtime Reagan aide and friend, for
calling attention to the University of Chicago’s plans to
demolish one of
Ronald Reagan’s earliest childhood homes. The home was a rented
flat in a four-story apartment building at 832 East 57th Street in
a Hyde Park neighborhood. As Hannaford notes, Reagan “had his first
memories in that flat.” In fact, the young Reagan came perilously
close to dying from pneumonia while in that apartment.
In short, history took place in that building. The University of
Chicago, however, has other plans: it hopes to bulldoze Reagan’s
home and replace it with a strip of grass bordering a new parking
lot.
Some concerned citizens think that would be a shame, and are
trying to stop the wrecking ball, but to no avail. As Hannaford
reports:
The Commission on Chicago Landmarks turned down an appeal to
give the building landmark status on the grounds that it “does not
have sufficient architectural significance” and “is not associated
with Mr. Reagan during his active and productive years.” As to the
first reason, the building is a good example of vernacular
architecture of the era. As to the second, this site, along with
all the other places the 40th president lived in as a boy, figured
in the development of his
character … and thus is important to understanding this very
significant president.
Hannaford is right, but what’s right often doesn’t matter much
anymore, especially to the university community, where so many
rights and wrongs are deemed merely relative. The prevailing
academic zeitgeist proclaims “diversity” and “tolerance,”
but those empty slogans are applied only selectively, namely to
things the left
wants us to accept. The tolerance stops short of welcoming
conservatives. And here, too, apparently, it will stop short of
welcoming this historic Reagan landmark. And so, the bulldozers
stand ready for action.
It is fitting that this action would take place at the hands of
the university community, and in the city of Chicago. Among
Chicago’s many dubious political distinctions, the
American Communist Party was founded there in September 1919 —
just down the street, at 1219 Blue Island Avenue. Once upon a time,
Communist Party USA was virtually destroyed by Ronald Reagan; now
it is confident and resurgent, inspired and glorying in Barack
Obama’s reelection (click
here).
As Chicago’s communists literally reported their achievement to
the Soviet Comintern — “Hail to the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat!” they crowed, “Long live the Russian Socialist Soviet
Republic! Long live the World Revolution!” — Ronald Reagan and his
family got out of dodge, en route to Dixon, Illinois. And it was in
Dixon (not Chicago) where the young Reagan was molded into the man
he became, and where he is duly appreciated today.
In Dixon, Reagan encountered not brooding American Bolsheviks
but good patriotic Americans like the Cleaver family, the
Waggoners, Lloyd “Brownie” Emmert, and the folks who ran the local
YMCA and the First Christian Church on S. Hennepin Avenue. He would
later refer to his time in Dixon as his “inheritance.”
The people there created in him “a kind of inheritance without
which I’d be lost and helpless,” said Reagan years later.
Reagan claimed Dixon and its people claimed him, happily and
proudly to this day. Today in Dixon, there is no shortage of Reagan
preservation projects by the locals. There’s the school he
attended. There’s the basketball court where he played. There’s the
Rock River at Lowell Park, where he lifeguarded. There’s the church
where he was baptized, which even includes the original baptismal
tank where he was dunked (by total immersion) in June 1922. There’s
the Reagan trail. And, of course, there’s the Boyhood Home —
eagerly, enthusiastically preserved.
Dixon, Illinois is Reagan’s America. Chicago, Illinois is
not.
To the contrary, Chicago is really
Obama’s America. From Hyde Park to David Axelrod, from Bill
Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to Rahm Emanuel, to its unions and
Democratic machine, Chicago gave us Barack Obama. And it seems in
no hurry to give us Reagan’s home.
The different receptions for Ronald Reagan in Dixon vs. Chicago
are as different as, well, red and blue. Dixon is symbolic of that
sea of red that, since Reagan’s first presidential victory in 1980,
goes Republican every four years. Chicago is representative of
those tiny, isolated blue spots so packed with liberals and
Democrats that they turn entire states Democrat every four
years.
We should expect Dixon to defend Reagan, and Chicago to
disregard him.
Of course, defenders of the University of Chicago’s move against
Reagan’s early home will claim a glaring flaw in my parallel,
namely: Reagan was raised in Dixon, but not in Chicago.
Sure, but does anyone doubt that the lack of appreciation for
Reagan in Chicago is not at least somewhat a reflection of
political interests, in contrast to Dixon?
Besides, Barack Obama wasn’t born in Chicago, but does anyone
doubt that someday Chicago’s “progressives” won’t hesitate to erect
a monument stretching to the moon — surely with taxpayer funding
— where The One once bestrode and sanctified the paths of the
Windy City? Obama’s home will become a political shrine to the
secular left. The very lane to the Obama household will look
like a leftist version of the Stations of the Cross, each juncture
pointing the way to the Boy Wonder’s onetime majestic dwellings.
The university community in particular will hail and make straight
the ways to the Obama abode.
In fact, as Peter Hannaford notes, “Meanwhile, while the
university is more-or-less ignoring the Reagan home preservation
effort, it is actively lobbying for an Obama Presidential Library.
President Obama’s own home is in the Hyde Park neighborhood.
Chicago politics being what they are, the betting is on that
project and not saving the cold-water flat apartment building in
which the only U.S. president born and bred in Illinois lived
during his boyhood.”
Yep, that’s about right. No surprise there at all.
The demolition of
Ronald Reagan’s Chicago home is scheduled for the end of this
year — i.e., very soon. That would be quite sad, and would also be
quite instructive.
