I Love You, Ronnie (9 page)

Ronnie’s running for office himself was the next logical step—or so some people thought. Holmes Tuttle put together a committee to support Ronnie for governor of California. At first, Ronnie said no. As in the past, when both Democrats and Republicans had asked him to run for office, he said he was a concerned citizen, not a politician. He was very happy with what he was doing. He’d just get into his own car and drive to wherever they wanted him to speak. He wanted to campaign for others, not promote himself.

Ronnie making a speech,with Barry Goldwater in the background.

But his supporters kept after him. Finally, Ronnie began to consider more seriously running for office, and we talked about it all the time. Ronnie agreed to run on one condition: that he could first go out and see if the people of California wanted him as their governor.

The response came very quickly. In San Francisco, the first city we visited to test the waters, people were lined up around the block to meet Ronnie. We stood shaking hands for about four hours. The next morning when I woke up, I couldn’t move my neck—shaking hands for so long had sent me into a spasm—and a woman had to come and wrap me in hot packs. But it didn’t matter. We’d found the answer to our question, and now Ronnie’s mind was pretty well made up.And of course, for me, whatever he wanted to do was fine.

An anniversary letter.

Years later, people would sometimes say I pushed Ronnie into a career in politics. Nothing could be further from the truth, and saying that shows a real misunderstanding of Ronnie. For the fact is—and this is something that nobody, oddly enough, has ever picked up on—Ronnie has always been a very competitive person. He has never needed to be “pushed.”

If you look back at his life, he very well could have stayed in Dixon, Illinois, but he didn’t. He wanted to get out and become a sports announcer, which took some doing. Then, once he got out of Dixon, he kept on pushing. He got his position with WHO Radio in Des Moines in the middle of the Great Depression, and he was a very successful sports announcer. Later, when he was signed by Warner Bros. in Hollywood, he fought for the roles he wanted, and he fought hard for the parts that the studio didn’t want to give him.

When the studio first turned him down for his dream role, playing George Gipp in
Knute Rockne—All American
(they said he didn’t look enough like a football player), Ronnie drove home, dug out a few old pictures of himself in his college football uniform, and drove back to the producer’s office. He won him over with the hard evidence.

He knew how to hold his own. When Errol Flynn, who was famous for stealing scenes, tried to push Ronnie out of a scene during the filming of
Santa Fe Trail
by having him placed behind a row of taller actors, Ronnie bided his time. Then, as the rehearsal progressed, he quietly scraped together a pile of loose earth with his feet, to create a little hill. When the cameras rolled, he stepped on top of that pile—and when it came time for him to deliver his line, there he was, clear as day, towering over the crowd, the tallest man in the scene.

Ronnie liked a challenge, and he wouldn’t give up a good fight easily. It was never an ego trip. It was just a question of playing to win.

I supported Ronnie’s decision to run for governor in 1966—not too much of a surprise. I always supported him in whatever he wanted to do. But as the campaign began, I felt a little uncertain about my own life in the political arena. It was a new and unfamiliar world for me. Early on, I warned the campaign people: “You know, I don’t give speeches.”

And they said, “You can take a bow, can’t you?”

And I said yes, I thought I could manage that. Just that.

Ronnie’s advisers knew what my soft spot was, though. Soon they came to me and said, “Your husband can’t possibly get to all the small towns. It’s too much for him; couldn’t you help him out?” So I said yes, of course I’d like to help him out—I’d go to the small towns. But once I started, I was swept up in the whole experience. I found that I liked meeting the people, and it was exciting hearing what people said to me, seeing the character and friendliness in their faces, seeing all the new places. One place we went, I remember, was so small that there were no lights on the airfield. Trucks came out from the town and shined their lights on the runway. That shook me up a little. In
My Turn,
I mixed up the dates and said this happened during the 1976 presidential campaign, so I’m correcting it and a few other things in this book.

Ronnie had sworn off airplanes in the early years of our marriage, after two very frightening experiences. But once he decided to run for governor, he had to fly almost constantly for campaign appearances, and I worried about it all the time. Ronnie knew that I was worried, and it bothered him. He knew me so well—he understood that if anything had happened to him on a plane, I would have blamed myself for having gone along with the idea of his running for governor in the first place.

Ronnie wrote me the following letter in 1966. He felt he had to go out of his way to set my mind at ease about his having to fly, about the fact that his earthbound “groundhog days” (as he put it) of trekking by train and car were coming to an end. This thoughtfulness and sensitivity to me were typical of him, and of the way we were with each other. Also typical of Ronnie was the deep faith he expresses in this letter.

Ronnie has always been a very religious man. He was inspired in that by his mother. He has always believed, and has often said, that God has a plan for each of us and that while we might not understand His plan now, eventually we will. He often wrote to me of what was most important to him in spiritual terms, and I admired his faith, although I did not share the firmness of his convictions. I did, however, draw strength from his faith over the years.

PLANKINTON HOUSE

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

Tues. Night

Dear Little Mommie

Knowing you (in addition to loving you) I think it’s time to put something on the record. I’ve always known that someday my ground hog days would end, and now these political shenanigans have made “someday” come around.
No one
talked me into this so
no one
should have any feeling of responsibility.

I have to write this because of all our talks about flying and because you’d try to take the blame personally if ever something did happen. That would be wrong. God has a plan and it isn’t for us to understand, only to know that He has his reasons and because He is all merciful and all loving we can depend on it that there is purpose in whatever He does and it is for our own good. What you must understand without any question or doubt is that I believe this and trust him and you must, too.

What you must also believe is that I love you more and more each day and it grows more bright and shining all the time.

Good night, middlesize muffin, who is all the rest of me I need—

I love you

Poppa      

GUESS WHAT NO PRIVATE DINING ROOM. THE VIEW WILL BE BETTER WHEN I FACE THE OTHER WAY. I MISS YOU & LOVE YOU—POPPA

ON WAY ONE MUCH IN LOVE HOT DOG SALESMAN DUE TO ARRIVE SUNDAY MORNING. LOVE POPPA

FINALLY SOLVED ARGUMENT OVER BEST WAY TO TRAVEL. DON’T. NO WAY TO AVOID MISSING YOU. I LOVE YOU

Ronnie being sworn in as governor, January 1, 1967. Something was forgotten in the formal ceremony, so they had to repeat part of it. Maureen and I are talking in the background, and Ron is leaning on the desk, watching.

I
n November 1966, Ronnie was elected governor of California by a margin of nearly a million votes. We’d been out to dinner with friends on election night, and heard the results on a car radio on the way out to Ronnie’s campaign headquarters. After all the anticipation and the hard work of campaigning, I felt a bit deflated for a moment. It sounds a little silly now, but I’d envisioned staying up all night listening to the returns and had been looking forward to it! But almost immediately afterward, I felt great joy at Ronnie’s victory.