I was on my way out the door when I realized that this Special Order was going to be on President Reagan, and as I was walking out the door, I recalled a picture that's been on my family's wall for a long time. It was a picture of President Ronald Reagan. I'm kind of standing to one side, and he's bending over, and he's shaking the hand of my daughter. It was in the White House. This was in the 1980s when I was in the California legislature. Embodied in that picture is so much the character of Ronald Reagan, the smile, the bright eyes, the enthusiasm, greeting a young girl. She was about 7 years old at the time, and you can just see that he wanted to spend that moment with her and to give to her his enthusiasm for life, his enthusiasm for America. That picture has always been there, and every now and then some of my Democratic friends, including the President, see it; what's that doing in this house? And I say, that's a very special moment in the life of my daughter Christina. But that's the way Ronald Reagan was. I was in California when he became the President and actually came into the legislature the day he left office, and he set the stage in California for much of what is good there, and he certainly did that for America, also. So I join with my colleagues on the Republican side and colleagues on the Democratic side to say a very special man, a very special man in the life of America and a very special man in my life and in my daughter's life.
Editor's note · Context
The speaker reflects on a personal memory of President Reagan and his impact on America.
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