Video: 'Reagan Library dedication (1991)'
(Monday, November 4, 1991, President Bush spoke at 12:15 p.m. PST) — In a convergence of modern American ideologies and politics, five Presidents of the United States gathered today on the same platform for the first time in history.
They came to honor and praise the 40th President at the dedication of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library under a searing autumn sun in Simi Valley, California, 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Video: 'Opening Ceremonies at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum 11/4/1991'
And if there was any lingering animosity from the 22 momentous years in which they presided over the Republic, little of it was evident in the billows of lofty patriotic oratory and mutual praise that arose from the bunting-draped dais in front of the new $60 million Spanish-style library.
All the living Presidents came: Richard M. Nixon, driven from office in disgrace; Gerald R. Ford, the man who replaced him; Jimmy Carter, who turned Ford out of office; Ronald Reagan, who in turn, evicted Carter, and President George H.W. Bush, who served as Reagan’s vice president.
Also attending were the last six Presidents’ wives, including Lady Bird Johnson, the widow of Lyndon B. Johnson, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush; John Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, the children of John F. Kennedy, and offspring of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Video: 'KTSM-TV 10pm News, November 4, 1991' (Reagan library dedication at 9:58)
It was, in the words of Lodwrick Cook, the chairman of the Ronald Reagan Foundation, “the largest gathering of American Presidents and Presidential families ever assembled.”
Only once before have there been more living Presidents; in 1861 Presidents Lincoln, Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan were all alive.
The day belonged primarily to the 80-year-old Reagan, whose eight years in office are chronicled in the library, which was officially turned over to the National Archives at the ceremony attended by 600 reporters and photographers and 3,500 guests, mostly Republicans.
