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WINONA LAKE - Michael Reagan, best-selling author, columnist and radio talk show host, filled Rodeheaver Auditorium to capacity Thursday.
He was the American Lyceum Lecture Series guest speaker, an annual event sponsored by Grace College and Seminary and the Village at Winona.
He entertained the audience with imitations of his father, the late ex-President Ronald Reagan, and with stories about growing up with famous parents in Beverly Hills, Calif. Reagan also discussed being molested as a child and how that delayed his relationship with God and with his father.
"If there's anyone here who thinks I'm the dancer in the family, if so, they've come to the wrong event," Reagan said, beginning his hour and a half talk with a laugh.
"My sister, Maureen, bought and paid for me," Reagan said. Maureen wanted a brother and put down 97 cents at a local pharmacy to purchase one in front of her parents, actors Ronald and Jane Wyman Reagan.
The elder Reagans thought a son was a good idea, and the couple eventually was contacted by Michael's birth mother, who heard the Reagans wanted to adopt.
Maureen broke apart a piggy bank to pay the nurse 97 cents when Michael arrived a week after he was born.
"For years she asked for it (the money) back," he said to laughter, "and for years I offered to pay her back, with interest."
Famous actors of the 1940s and '50s were constant guests of the Reagan household, but Michael had no clue his parents were famous or wealthy.
Sent to boarding school at the age of 6 with the Crosby and Hope children, Michael said he pined for his parents all the time. They had divorced when he was 3 years old.
Thinking he could capitalize on his mother's sense of guilt, Reagan asked for a 10-speed bicycle. She told him to get a job if he really wanted it.
"My mother said, 'I build men, I don't build boys,'" Reagan said. "Mom loaned me the money and I got a job selling papers at church. By the age of 10, I was in debt."
He also attempted to convince his father that $1-a-week allowance wasn't enough pocket money. His father gave him a lecture on the country's tax system in return, saying Michael would receive an increase when he received a tax break.
That tax break came from President John Kennedy and Michael was presented $5-per-week allowance.
Reagan said living in a broken home is very difficult for children and admonished audience members not to let other people raise their children.
"A divorce is when two adults walk into a child's room and break everything there, then expect the child to put it all back together," he said.
Because he was estranged from his parents, because he didn't know them well enough to share his hurts and pains, he never reported being sexually molested by a camp counselor when he was 8 years old. The man also took pictures of Michael, naked, and told the boy his mother would be horrified to see them.
Michael said he didn't tell his father about the incident for decades, and when he did, Ronald offered to kick the molester's butt.
Michael said a lot of people underestimated his dad, who did things rather than talk about doing things.
He was the first U.S. president to sit down with Soviet Union leaders and tell them what to do instead of the USSR telling the U.S. what to do.
"... And the Berlin Wall came down," Michael said of his father's steadfastness.
He also talked about his dad's comments after being shot in 1981.
"'Well,' Michael said, imitating his father's speech pattern and inflection, "'if you're ever going to be shot, don't be wearing a new suit.'
"I said, 'What?'
"'Instead of letting me undress, they cut that new blue suit right off me and it's laying in shreds in the corner,'" Ronald Reagan said.
The then-president asked about John Hinkley's parents, he understood they were from Denver, in the oil business and were probably well off.
He asked his son, "Do you think they'll buy me a new suit?"
Reagan said it took him years to learn the say through all of his difficulties was through God, a God that was always there.
"But I hadn't embraced him and because I didn't embrace him, I didn't' embrace my dad. I allowed the child molester and those photographs to be my excuse to fail. What if I was successful and the pictures showed up?
"And God said, 'Michael, when was the last time you told your dad you loved him?'"
Michael related how he hugged his father the next time he saw him, telling the older man he loved him. Ronald Reagan said, "Well, I love you, too."
Michael Reagan said his father's greatest gift to him was knowing he was going to be with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
