The day Ronald Reagan visited Fort Trumbull
It's hard to count all the ways the annual winter show at Hygienic Art enlivens and enriches New London.
One entry in this year's show that especially intrigues me, for its power of nostalgia, is a 1988 photograph.
It depicts Ronald Reagan's limousine cruising down Bank Street, the jolly president smiling behind a big panel of bulletproof glass, his arm up, waving to New Londoners as he zooms past.
Of course, New London has hosted a significant number of U.S. presidents, who turn up regularly to congratulate graduating cadets at the Coast Guard Academy.
This visit by Reagan was a little different.
For one thing, it revived a tradition that had been ignored for a while. The last president to attend an academy graduation before Reagan was Lyndon Johnson, who in 1964 kept a commitment first made by John Kennedy.
Nixon and Carter were no shows. George H.W. Bush followed Reagan. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush attended twice.
President Obama has also been here twice.
Unlike the others, Reagan spent a little time around town.
Before the ceremony at the academy, Reagan visited the Coast Guard cutter Vigilant, moored at Coast Guard Station New London, and had lunch — Navy bean soup, cheeseburger and macaroni and cheese — aboard.
Air Force One had flown into Windsor Locks that day and Reagan arrived in Groton via helicopter. He then came over the Gold Star Memorial Bridge in a motorcade led by state police on motorcycles.
I find it curious, all these years later, that one of the only New London neighborhoods Reagan saw from the back of his limousine was Fort Trumbull, now gone.
For the trip from Fort Trumbull to the academy, Reagan's limousine roared down Bank Street, which had been cleared of parked cars.
The limousine through downtown was a change of plans from the original schedule, which had the helicopter landing at Fort Trumbull. But word traveled, and there were a lot of bystanders by the time the motorcade went through.
I remember that day watching the limousine going the other way, down Eugene O'Neill Drive, on the way to Fort Trumbull. It roared right past The Day.
One reporter in the pack covering Regan that day was Sam Donaldson of ABC News, who threw one of his trademark shouted questions — this one about embattled Attorney General Edwin Meese III — as Reagan left the Vigilant.
"No questions, Sam," the president said.
Riding in the back of the car with Reagan as it zoomed down Bank Street that day was the commandant of the Coast Guard who later confided to a reporter for The Day that the president complained the car was going too fast for him to properly wave.
The photograph at the Hygienic was submitted by 21-year-old Mark Facas, Jr., of Westerly who said he bought it from a friend of his father's, who took it that day from a tripod set up on Bank Street.
Facas, who wasn't born the day Ronald Reagan visited New London, told me he doesn't know whether the photo may be worth the $500 he is asking for it, or maybe more. He also has the negatives.
I have no idea how much it might be worth.
But I do know it's the kind of thing that makes the annual winter show at Hygienic Art priceless, a unique and irreplaceable New London tradition.
This is the opinion of David Collins
d.collins@theday.com
Twitter: @DavidCollinsct
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