Long after he had left Illinois, Ronald Reagan would beam when someone
mentioned Dixon, his hometown, or Lowell Park, the spot on the Rock River
where he worked as a lifeguard from 1927 to 1932. On visits to his
presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., he would point to an old photo of
himself in a trunk suit and declare, “I was a lifeguard on the Rock River in
Dixon. I saved 77 lives.”
Reagan was the only president born and raised in Illinois. Here are
noteworthy destinations for a Reagan tour in his native state:
TAMPICO
Reagan was born on Main Street of this Whiteside County farm town, in a
three-bedroom flat above a bakery. The apartment. now the Ronald Reagan
Birthplace, has been decorated with 1911-era furniture, but none of it ever
belonged to the Reagans.
You’ll get a stronger feel for the president’s life in the museum
downstairs, where you can see a 4th-grade report card from Tampico Graded
School (Reagan was a “B” student) and posters from his movies, including
“Girls on Probation” and “The Winning Team.”
Amy McElhiney, a lifelong Tampico-area resident who manages the site with
her husband, Lloyd, made a rug with a red footprint and the words “Ronald
Reagan Stept Here.”
Reagan stepped in the footprint when he visited Tampico in 1992 to attend a
Mother’s Day service at Tampico Church of Christ. The rug is now on the floor,
so visitors can follow in the president’s footstep. Another nice memento: a
“TAMPICO” banner held by locals at Reagan’s first inaugural parade in 1981,
accompanied by a photo of the president pointing and grinning when he spotted
it from his car.
“We had a very nice compliment,” Lloyd McElhiney said. “Someone — they’d
been to the library (in California)– said this place was so magically
Reagan.”
After visiting the birthplace, stop for pie at Dutch Diner Family
Restaurant. “Dutch” was Reagan’s boyhood nickname.
Tampico is about 130 miles west of Chicago. Take Interstate Highway 88 west
to Illinois Highway 40, then go south to Illinois Highway 172. Ronald Reagan’s
Birthplace, 815-438-2130.
DIXON
“Dixon is part of me,” Reagan once said. Reagan’s father, a shoe salesman,
moved the family here in 1920, taking a job as manager of the Fashion Boot
Shop. They rented a house at 816 S. Hennepin Ave., which is now the Ronald
Reagan Boyhood Home. As a boy in this house, Reagan couldn’t afford a piggy
bank, so he stored his change under a loose tile in the hearth. While
restoring that hearth, workers left one tile unglued. When Reagan visited for
the dedication in 1984, he knelt down and slid four pennies beneath it. Later,
a Russian visitor who heard that story knelt down and kissed the tile, said
manager Marilyn Jones.
The visitor “loved what this man had done for his country,” Jones said.
Unlike the birthplace, the boyhood home has a piece of furniture Reagan
actually used. Reagan’s old neighbors donated a rocking chair the future
president sat in when he stopped by to listen to the radio.
Some of the tour guides remember him as a young man. Lillian Peterson says
her girlfriends used to insist on walking past the lifeguard’s station in
Lowell Park, exclaiming, “He’s so handsome.”
The Historical Museum in the Loveland Community House (513 W. 2nd St.) has
a small Reagan exhibit, which includes his high school yearbook (he was
misidentified as “Donald”) and a plaque that used to rest by the riverside log
on which Reagan notched the 77 swimmers he saved from the Rock River. The log
has been washed away, but the beach in Lowell Park is still a beautiful place
to picnic.
“That river, which has been called `the Hudson of the West,’ became a great
part of my life,” Reagan once said. “I enjoyed canoeing and swimming there. I
hiked along its shores, climbed its limestone bluffs, and went tramping
around, exploring the wooded country nearby.”
Dixon is about 100 miles west of Chicago. Take Interstate 88 west. Ronald
Reagan Boyhood Home, 815-288-3404.
EUREKA
Reagan became a big man on the Eureka College campus for, of all things,
leading a strike. During Reagan’s freshman year, the school’s president wanted
to cut classes to save money. Reagan was one of the leaders of a student
walkout that forced the hapless president’s resignation. Reagan later lettered
in football, swimming and track, and had his first success as an actor,
starring in “Aria de Capo,” an anti-war drama that won little Eureka second
place at a national one-act play contest held at Northwestern University.
Eureka’s basketball team plays in the Reagan Physical Education Center,
named for the president and his brother Neil, another grad. The college’s
Donald B. Cerf Center has more than 2,000 pieces of Reagan memorabilia,
including his varsity letters and the football jersey he wore as a guard for
the Golden Tornadoes. A television plays old Reagan movies constantly.
Reagan has visited Eureka more than a dozen times since he graduated in
1932. On Oct. 17, 1980, during the stretch run of his first presidential
campaign, Reagan spoke at a pep rally, exhorting the football team to “win one
for the Gipper” against Concordia.
The next day, Eureka lost, 14-7. But two and a half weeks later, Reagan
won.
———-
Eureka is about 120 miles southwest of Chicago. Take Interstate 55 south to
U.S. Highway 24, then drive west. Donald B. Cerf Center, 309-467-6407.
