NFF Gold Medal Recipients
Biography
Ronald Wilson Reagan had many different titles: broadcaster, actor, governor, but most importantly, president. Born and raised in small towns in Illinois, Reagan graduated from Eureka College (Ill.), where he was a three-year varsity football player and student body president. He then worked as a radio broadcaster in Iowa for Chicago Cubs games, but moved to Hollywood in 1937 after a trip with the Cubs in California resulted in signing a contract with Warner Brothers Studios.
Reagan served as President of the Screen Actors Guild and later as a spokesman for General Electric, where he got his start in politics. In 1940, he played the role of George "The Gipper" Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All American, where he acquired the lifelong nickname "the Gipper".
After delivering a rousing speech in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 and in 1976, but won both the nomination and general election in 1980, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter. Reagan’s running mate was 1991 NFF Gold Medal recipient, George H.W. Bush.
As president, Reagan implemented sweeping new political and economic initiatives, such as his supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics.” In his first term he survived an assassination attempt, took a hard line against labor unions, escalated the War on Drugs, and ordered an invasion of Grenada to reverse a Communist coup
He was re-elected in a landslide in 1984, proclaiming that it was "Morning in America". Reagan claimed 49 of 50 states and 525 electoral votes, a record that still stands today. His second term was primarily marked by foreign matters, such as the ending of the Cold War, the 1986 bombing of Libya, and the revelation of the Iran–Contra affair. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union occurred during his presidency.
Reagan left office in 1989. In 1994, the former president disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier in the year, and he died ten years later at the age of 93. A conservative icon, he ranks highly in public opinion polls of U.S. Presidents and is credited for generating an ideological renaissance on the American political right.
