Like a lot of boys, Dutch wanted to be a sports star. He was always a good swimmer, but he had never done well at team sports. He couldn’t seem to catch balls or aim well when he threw. One day, Dutch happened to try on his mother’s eyeglasses. Suddenly, he could see! All his life he had been nearsighted but didn’t realize it. He had just assumed that the world looked fuzzy to everyone.
Nelle took Dutch to an eye doctor. He came away with thick, horn-rimmed glasses. The kids at school teased him a little. He didn’t care. He wore his glasses to play sports and did much better.
Baseball was his favorite sport, but he never became a really good hitter. At the plate, he was “ball-shy.” Maybe he still couldn’t see the ball as well as the other boys did. But Dutch ran track, and he also made his high-school football team.
By this time, the Reagans had settled down in Dixon, Illinois. Dutch felt at home in Dixon. After years of being a loner, he was one of the most popular boys in his class at Northside High School.
Besides playing football, he starred in school plays and worked on the yearbook. He wrote short stories for the literary contest and took art classes. He was elected president of the drama club and president of his senior class.
When he graduated in 1928, each student was asked to pick a quotation that would be printed under his or her picture in the yearbook. Dutch chose one from a poem his mother had taught him: “Life is just one grand, sweet song: so start the music.”
Dutch’s high-school girlfriend was named Margaret Cleaver. She co-starred with him in a drama club production. Margaret was a pretty girl, but for some reason everyone called her “Mugs.” Her father was the minister of the church Dutch went to.
Mugs’s father was planning to send her to Eureka College. It was a Disciples of Christ school near Peoria, Illinois. When Mugs visited the campus, Dutch went along. He loved what he saw.
Eureka was a small school, but the elm-shaded campus reminded him of descriptions of Harvard and Yale that he had read about in books.
In 1928 most high-school graduates in the United States went straight to work. Out of every hundred students, only two or three went on to college.
Neil Reagan was already working in a cement plant. Dutch’s dad was now a partner in a shoe store in Dixon. He was doing better than before, but there was still not enough money to pay for four years of college.
So Dutch went to see the Eureka College president. He told him that he was an all-around athlete, who would be a credit to the school.
The president was impressed by his confidence. He arranged for a scholarship. Dutch would earn the rest of his money by working part-time. To help pay for room and board, he washed dishes in his fraternity house.
Almost as soon as Dutch started at Eureka, there was a crisis. The college was short of money and planned to cut out some courses. There was a meeting, and Dutch made a strong speech against the cuts.
Before he knew it, Dutch was leading a student strike. The strike ended with a compromise after a few days. But Dutch was elected to the student senate, becoming president in his senior year.
The football coach was another problem. He took one look at Dutch and decided he was too small for football. Dutch was still growing. He trained hard for a year to build himself up. In his sophomore year, he became a varsity guard.
Dutch was just an average student at Eureka. But he was so busy that it was a miracle he passed his courses at all. Besides playing football, he was also the star of the swimming team and the track team.
When basketball season started, he became a cheerleader and president of the Boosters Club. He was a reporter for the school paper and an editor of the yearbook. He starred in seven class plays and won a prize in an acting contest at Northwestern University.
“You could make it as an actor,” one judge told him. That sounded exciting but not very practical.
While Dutch was studying at college, the country had fallen on hard times. The stock market crashed in October 1929. The country entered what became known as the Great Depression. Jack Reagan had lost his shoe store. Neil was out of work. The family was getting by on what Nelle earned sewing.
Jack was a big fan of the new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected just after Dutch’s college graduation. Jack was sure that FDR would lift the country out of the Depression.
Dutch was worried about telling his family that he wanted to go into show business. So he applied for a job at a local department store. But the store hired someone else. After that, Dutch felt free to look for work in radio. He borrowed Jack’s old Oldsmobile and drove from town to town. He would beg the heads of the local radio stations to give him a chance.
Whatever he said must have worked!
Within a few years, Dutch Reagan was one of the most popular sportscasters in the Midwest. He covered college football and Chicago Cubs games for station WHO in Des Moines, Iowa.
Strangely, Dutch didn’t get to see the baseball games he broadcast. A reporter at the ballpark forwarded the facts to local radio stations by telegraph. Sitting in the studio, Dutch knew the ball and strike count, who hit the ball and got on base, and who had made an error. He used his imagination to fill in the rest.
One day, in the middle of a game, the telegraph went dead. There was a full count on the man at the plate. Dutch couldn’t disappoint his audience, so he stalled, telling them that the batter had hit a foul ball into the stands. Then another foul ball. And another. After nine imaginary foul balls, the situation was getting ridiculous.
Suddenly, the telegraph sprang to life. Dutch was relieved. “Well, he struck out,” he told his listeners. Then he hurried to catch up with the action.
In 1937 Reagan was sent to Los Angeles to cover the Chicago Cubs. The team was in spring training there. Dutch got a friend to fix up a screen test for him at one of the big Hollywood movie studios. A week later, he was offered a contract. Dutch Reagan was going to be an actor, after all.
Part of being a movie star was getting a makeover. The studio changed his hair and clothes. It told him to stop wearing his glasses. It even changed his name. “Dutch Reagan” just wasn’t a good name for a movie actor. Everyone stood around trying to think of a new name.
“How about Ronald Reagan?” said Dutch.
“Hey, that’s not bad,” said the man in charge.
That was the end of Dutch Reagan. For the first time in his life, he would be known by his real name. |