Instead of marmalading over the highly eulogizable life of President Ronald Reagan, I thought I just bring back to light a couple of ad-hoc mentions I made to him in previous blogs.

Was a Reagan backer when most Republicans still considered him an undesirable fringe *Conservative*.

  —202 Things About Me (only half of which are true)

That was very true.

After being born on this earth, isn’t it strange what becomes of each and every one of us?  I mean, when I joined the military, it was with the most fervent intent to fight in a war of liberation.  And quite possibly die.  I was almost certain of the assignment—and that was my rationale for joining.  But then the Iran-Contra affair and Col. Ollie North blew a hole in the looming conflict. And the battle that I joined to enjoin was averted.  And the non-aftermath flattened my conscription out into a few tours of peaceful duty. 

       —April 12, 2003

My certainty of the assignment was based upon my assessment that Reagan would become president and go immediately to war to free our hostages in Iran. The Iran Hostage Crisis began Nov. 4^th 1979 during the Carter administration, but Jimmy Carter proved incompetent to end it.  I joined before the 1980 presidential election and graduated basic training on the day of Reagan’s inauguration, Jan. 20^th 1981,  fully expecting orders for the Iran battlefront.  All during basic training, our drill sergeants screamed at us to prepare for the looming war in Iran—and that to the trepidation of most my other fellow enlistees, but it served as a reassurance to me.

So my confidence in enlistment was my certainty of Reagan’s ascendance.  My passion for joining, however, was that all during the hostage crisis, I was psychically cast into that hostage world.  Though stateside, I was, nonetheless, telepathically included in that 444 day siege of anguish far, far away.  Death and dungeons.  Power and peril.  I felt it all.  Somehow the abduction of the hostages had also involved a seizure of my psychic-prowessed soul.  I had no choice: to free myself, I had to go…

But Ronnie saved the day!  Of course, I was jubilant when the hostages were freed in the first moments of the Reagan presidency.  But the ‘Lt. Dan’ in me (“Now, you listen to me.  We all have a destiny.  Nothing just happens, it's all part of a plan,”  –from the movie Forrest Gump)  protested.  Reagan, the peacemaker, had averted “my war.”   Grateful double-damn.