Ronald Reagan: June 5th, 2004

The first presidential death to happen in my lifetime happened when I was 9 1/2 years old. I had just completed 3rd grade at Washington Elementary and my family and I were in the throws of the first glorious days of summer vacation. It had begun with the introduction of our first pet: a sweet, yellow lab named Jif (after the peanut butter).

My brothers and I had just finished watching a TV show when Dad asked for the remote. He flipped the remote and CNN came on. A headline read: Former President Ronald Reagan dead at 93 today.

"Huh," Dad said as he stroked Jif's fur from his perch on our striped couch. "Good fucking riddance." My brothers and I jumped at the swear word. We weren't allowed to say words like that. Mom entered the living room.

"What's going on?"

"Reagan hit the bucket. It's all over the news."

"Well, he had Alzheimer's for awhile."

"Yeah, but not before he introduced us to voodoo economics and screwed over the poor. But what would you expect from a two-bit actor in the White House? Why the GOP call him a saint I'll never know. I sure as hell won't miss him. Let's hope George W. Bush loses re-election this year."

It would be a few years before I got into U.S. presidential history, so at that time I really did not know who Ronald Reagan was. I would later learn he had been our 40th President during the 1980s. He would be held up by the GOP as the epitome of conservatism like Franklin D. Roosevelt was held up by the Democrats as the epitome of liberalism.