The Weekender By Gabe Saglie
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley
President Reagan and Nancy Reagan with Michael Deaver and Mary Jane Wick viewing three models of the proposed Reagan Presidential Library in 1986. (Photo courtesy of the Reagan Library)
T
he Simi Valley site of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library smacks of serendipity. Its original location was slated to be Stanford University, a plan that fell through mere weeks before groundbreaking was set to begin. The sudden change led to a small group of landowners, and fans of Mr. Reagan, to donate 100 acres of undulating, undeveloped land in Simi Valley, and the rest is history at its finest. “He was amazed at how big it was,” recalls Garrick Newman, a 28-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service who spent a decade in charge of the security detail for President Reagan, both during his time in the White House, as well as many of the years that followed his two terms. He accompanied the former president on his first visit to the site of his future library, shortly before construction began in 1988, and fondly remembers the emotion Mr. Reagan expressed at the property’s vastness and beauty. “He loved the outdoors,” continues Mr. Newman, a Westlake Village resident, “and, in many ways, the Simi location resembled the Santa Barbara ranch that he enjoyed so much.” The Reagan Library, in fact, marks the halfway point between what was the Reagans’ Bel Air home at the time and Rancho del Cielo, their sprawling 700-acre ranch along the Santa Ynez Mountains, where “he’d escape for three or four days as often as he could, because it meant he could be alone,” remembers Mr. Newman. Mr. Reagan appreciated the Library’s strategic location. And when it was dedicated in 1991, it marked the first time in American history that five U.S Presidents – Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, himself – gathered in the same place. WINTER
2023
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